WILL’S BOW part 11. The button.

The button can be made at any time since we can use another one temporarily; so while we are waiting for the varnish to dry we can start work on it. As with the rest of the bow we start with raw materials, a piece of ebony and some silver in a sheet one millimeter thick.

Then two strips of silver are cut out with a jeweler’s saw and bent to form rings with the ends lining up. Each ring is heated in an alchohol lamp until red hot and joined with silver solder.

Then the ring is hammered on a mandrel or tapered rod until it is perfectly round and the desired size.

At this point we get out a little watchmaker’s lathe and clamp it to the workbench. This lathe is the only powered tool in the shop although we use a bandsaw to cut up the pernambuco boards into rough sticks. A small piece of ebony is secured in the lathe and turned round to the size of the rings. Next the ends get reduced until the rings can be hammered on forming a small barrel-like cylinder.

The function of the rings is to prevent the ebony from splitting when the screw is hammered in but it now is part of the bow’s style. In the next post we will carry the button through to completion.

WILL’S BOW Part 4. Mortise and screw.

With the frog fit we now cut the mortise the screw will ride in, using a little chisel called aptly the ‘mortaise de pannes’. This is done by bracing a knee against the bench and holding the stick firmly on the knee. The stick is very stable in this position and the mortise can be cut securely. Years ago I had just finished making a new chisel and took a small piece of ebony to test it on. The ebony flipped to the side and I drove the chisel to the bone. This made it hard to climb the 6 flights of stairs to my little apartment/workshop on rue Joseph Dijon in the 18ieme arrondisement.

With the mortise cut, the eyelet can be screwed into the frog.

Then the screw hole is drilled using a traditional tool called a ‘foret’. It is operated using a bow made of an old fencing epée and a cello string. The stick is held freehand as the drill bit is directed by eye. The foret is used for all drilling on the bow and like the plane and other tools, they were made by specialized blacksmiths in Mirecourt. They are very hard to find, the violinmaker Vincent Lainé let me have one he had. But the American bowmaker Michael Hattala had the castings made and turned out some excellent forets for some colleagues.

WILL’S BOW Part 3. Fitting the Frog.

The cambering is now done although more adjustments and corrections will come later. Now the stick gets planed down to about one millimeter oversized and the frog is fit on the stick. The frog must be in exactly the same axis as the head.

The frog is fit on the stick with a small plane, the ‘fin fer’. This one was made by a late 19^th century Mirecourt toolmaker. In Mirecourt, a whole trade existed to make the specialized tools of the luthier and archetier. One of the first people I worked for in Paris was Roger Giraudon, an instrument dealer who was not from the luthier trade. A poet and musician, he kept an apartment in Paris, London and Tokyo, making the rounds to sell fine old bows and violins. Giraudon was a friend of André Chardon’s widow and he helped her sell the remaining materials from the Chardon shop. This included hundred-year-old pernambuco sticks. But Giraudon would only sell me three for every time I delivered restored bows to his apartment…to keep me coming.

This plane from André Chardon sat on a shelf in Giraudon’s apartment and each time I made a delivery I would ask to buy it. Finally he gave it to me. You can see a tiny ‘C’ stamped on the side. The pencil gives you the scale.