GOLD

Years ago I was visiting with the Parisian luthier and bow connoisseur, Bernard Sabatier. An American violinist who had recently started buying and selling bows was there and he had just talked Sabatier into selling a cello bow from his collection. It was a gold mounted Victor Fetique exhibition bow in perfect condition. It had what looked like an original gold winding but the neophyte dealer remembered being advised that one should always check to see if a bow had been grafted by removing the winding.

Grafting is done when the bow at the frog area is completely worn out from years of handling. Then a new piece of wood is joined to the original stick under the grip and the original frog fitted to it. The properly grafted bow is just as strong and useful as the original but loses value because some original wood is lost and with it the maker's stamp. With modern repair techniques grafting has become rare. Of course a gold winding is expensive and this adage only applied to a bow in an advanced state of wear, but the young dealer insisted on removing the grip.

Sabatier shrugged and started unwinding the gold, but soon all of our eyes registered a look of incredulity. The bow had been grafted and each of the eight facets of the stick at the graft was stamped 'Vtor. Fetique à Paris'. With his typical fatalistic manner, Sabatier shrugged again, put the bow back in the box and with a certain uneasyness the young dealer left the shop. He had been right but at incredible odds.

Sabatier's Fetique was revealing and being absolutely original was even more interesting as a collector's piece. If Fetique had been obliged to graft a extra piece on a too-short Pernambuco stick it could only mean one thing. He lacked enough really beautiful pernambuco for his gold mounted production and it may have pained him to set aside the too-short piece of wood.

Stephane Thomachot and Bernard Sabatier

This story obliquely illustrates an important point. The quality of the pernambuco wood in a bow is what sets it apart and truly this wood is the rarest and most precious thing in the bow. The gold may be expensive but it is not rare in the same sense, you can go to a dealer in precious metals and buy it at any time. All makers starting with the Tourte family made a limited number of bows with gold mountings for their clients who wanted the highest quality. Gold conferred more value but the bow's real quality always rested on the pernambuco stick. The great majority of the finest bows of all time are silver mounted.

Today when buying a contemporary bow it is important to know the practice of the maker. With some makers, gold mountings indicate their highest grade and commissioning a gold mounted bow ensures that you will get the best wood the maker has. In this case it could be well worth the extra cost of the gold mountings. In my case I select the best possible stick for the player regardless of the mounting and so gold is only an aesthetic consideration. I have enjoyed making the occasional gold mounted bow for those who truly love the look. For instance, Francois Hetsch, a french violist received some money when his mother passed away and he wanted to reinvest it in a gold mounted bow to remember her by; this made perfect sense.

Charles Espey violin bow 1983, Bellamy 'or rose'.

Another thing to think about when considering gold mountings is the gold itself. Gold is available in a variety of alloys and their corresponding color. In Paris we would always use 18 carat 'or rose' from Bellamy, a little dealer by the rue de Gravilliers in the jeweler's quarter. This had a beautiful warm pinkish tone against the ebony or the tortoiseshell that was still available at the time. Gold must be alloyed with other metals because if made of soft pure gold the 'passant' or ferrule would bend when the hair was wedged into place. 18 carat gold is ideal for this and consists of 75% gold alloyed with silver and copper to give it stiffness and the required color. But sometimes bows from production shops are offered in gold and this metal is often 14 carats or less. Fourteen carat gold is only 58.5% gold.

I appreciate the simple and elegant look of silver and beautiful ebony. In addition, gold is a significantly heavier metal than silver so gold increases the weight of frog and button by about a gram. This can be compensated for but it depends on the bow. Another thing to bear in mind is the fact that a maker may feel obliged to use dense, strikingly beautiful wood with a gold mounted bow. This wood may or may not be an ideal match for the musician or their instrument. Sometimes a less dense or simpler looking wood will give the best tonal return. One has only to look at the plain brown color of some of Francois Tourte's best bows to recognize this. So gold is an option but not a prime consideration in selecting a fine bow.

Today there is another more sombre consideration regarding gold mounted bows. The staggering rise in the price of gold has come with an exponential increase in exploitative and environmentally devastating mining practices in some of the world's poorest and most unstable countries. 70% of the world's gold is coming from developing countries but even in technologically advanced countries, gold mining has a significant environmental impact. In the Eastern Congo gold is being mined by forced labor under the control of militias who use their proceeds to buy arms. The use of cyanide and mercury to process gold has environmental consequences from the Amazon to the Eastern Congo. See this article for further information: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-real-price-of-gold-512591.html. These issues have prompted Hoover and Strong, a dealer used by many American makers, to market a gold certified as entirely recycled. This is a very good thing but any use of the metal effects the demand.

JEAN TRIBLE, THE COLLECTOR

It was November of 1983 in Paris and a small man of perhaps seventy sat bundled in trenchcoat and scarf on the Metro line Port de Clignancourt. Held securely in his hand like a sheaf of arrows, were a dozen violin bows, each in a wrinkled brown paper sleeve, the bundle secured with rubber bands. Arriving at Metro Simplon he came out into the drizzle of rue Joseph Dijon and at no. 9 he climbed the six flights of stairs to my attic workshop. After he had caught his breath he started removing the envelopes and laying bows out on the bench; ten Eugene Sartory violin bows in perfect condition. One for every five years of Sartory's working life starting in 1895 and ending in 1940. We talked of his visits to Sartory's shop as a teen-ager, Sartory's different bow stamps, Sartory's affiliation with Emile Germain, and of Jules Fetique, Gillet and others who worked for him. We traced the maker's development over the years seen in those ten bows, the long nosed heads of 1895 and the lovely heads of 1905 morphing into the wide and heavy heads of 1930. After discussing some repairs to be done on a Pajeot, he went on his way leaving me the bows for two weeks to study. I had asked him some questions on Sartory's early work some weeks earlier and this was his answer.

Stephane Thomachot and Jean Trible

Jean Trible, or 'Monsieur Trible' as we knew him, a Parisian bow collector and retired violinist in the national symphony, supported and inspired several generations of bow makers. It was Trible who left an incredible Persois at Stephane Thomachot's shop nearby on the Rue de Clignancourt. This bow completely changed our perception of how a frog could be shaped and soon I had radically changed my style on the inspiration of that one bow. And I was not the only one. Then there was his Tourte, 'le chat' with the clear marks of a cat's incisors on each side of the head! Monsieur Trible would show us a bow and get an impish look on his face; it was sure to be a fiendishly obscure maker to identify. But for him, bow making was an ongoing tradition and he commissioned a bow from each of us in the younger generation just as he had from Sartory, Lamy fils, Ouchard, Richaume, Millant and others. He was not without his quirks. He confided that since he hadn't the skills to work on his bows and yet wanting to be involved in their care, he would sit in the evenings and polish the tips of his bow's screws with a bit of emery paper. But his insistence on carrying a sizeable fortune in bows on the Metro without a case, often a number of Peccattes or Tourtes, was probably reasonable. The 18th arrondisement was relatively rough and a nice case might have been tempting to some.

I last saw Jean Trible in 2003 when Stephane Thomachot, Noel Burke and I had lunch with him. He was living in Normandy and with his health failing rarely made the trip to Paris. Two years later he had passed away, the end of an incredible link to the past. Not long ago we had a bow maker's session with Bernard Millant to hear his recollections of his early days in the trade and his apprenticeships in Mirecourt, where he both refined his violinmaking and also learned bow making with the Morizot family. He talked about the difficulties of starting his own violin shop in Paris across the street from his father and uncle, Max and Roger Millant. In those hard economic times shortly after the second world war, Millant was 23 years old and wondering where his direction lay when completely by chance Jean Trible stepped into his shop. Although I knew that the two were friends I was moved to learn that Trible had been a catalyst for Millant's passion for bows as well.

Jean Trible with Noel Burke

AN ELUSIVE STICK

For a bow maker, the selection of the Pernambuco stick is the most important element in matching a bow to a player. Some time ago, the violinist Jan Mark Sloman and I started a dialogue and at the end of each telephone call or email I went to my store of sticks held in racks. Promising sticks were examined and in the end half a dozen sticks had his name penciled on them. When the time came to start work on his bow the first task was to decide on the right one. Sloman wanted a rich and dark underpinning to his Vuillaume's sound and I decided to use a wood of a somewhat lower density than the wood I usually use. He also wanted a bow that could respond to his entire repertoire and so finding these qualities through increased flexibility was not a good option. This stick had to be very strong so it could be taken down to fine diameters but I also wanted some complexities in the grain especially down near the frog. I found a great stick and began planing it out, fitting the tip plate, and mounting the frog. I pictured the process on this same bow in an earlier post called "ebouchage' or roughing out.

Unfortunately, at this point I began to question my original choice. The stick's response was slower than I had hoped for and I also wondered if the sound was going to be right. So the stick was put back in the rack and I selected another. But this stick did not reach expectations either. So I found a third stick that filled the original requirements of lower density, excellent strength and a complex grain structure. It also had a nice little pin knot just beyond the winding and came from my first trip to Brazil in 1984. In one of our conversations Jan had mentioned that his friend, the late Sergio Lucca, believed that most great bows had a pin knot. So this seemed like a good omen and I also agree that a tiny knot adds a certain nobility to a stick. As the stick took shape it felt good but it was even lighter than I expected and to give it the right level of resistance I made it about one tenth of a millimeter larger than I expected in some areas. My experimentations with light frogs that have no under-slide appear to create conditions for brilliance in the sound. Since this was not the direction we wanted to go I made a normal weight frog with silver under-slide.

In making a bow there is a period of polishing and varnishing when one has to control their impatience to know what a bow will really be like, especially in terms of sound. When the bow was finally completed and the hair received it's first rosin I played it for the first time and compared it to another bow with unlined frog I had in my shop. I knew the first bow had a rich and focused sound so I hoped the new one would exceed it in these qualities. Instead the new bow's sound seemed very broad but with a razor sharp definition or zing and a tooth to the sound not unlike a reed instrument. With my violin it was not possible to hear its full potential at the lower end but I began to doubt my original intuition for the stick. But the stick's playing qualities felt good and I was very curious to find out what Jan would think. To give him the same frame of reference I had experienced, I sent him both bows without indicating which bow was the new one. On the first day he wrote back saying "the unlined frog bow is fabulous for me...'. So I had to resign myself to the fact that I had failed in my stick selection after all, although not for lack of effort. At the end of a week however, Sloman came to the conclusion that the bow I had made for him really did bring out what he was looking for, a full, dark lower end combined with a 'sizzle' that gave the sound definition. And so goes a lifelong process of discovery; making a bow in response to an individual player and their instrument.

EBAUCHAGE

Now a stick is being planed down prior to putting in the camber or curve. This stage is called the ebauchage or roughing out. During the cambering the stick will be one or two millimeters over the final dimensions allowing the stick’s taper or graduations to be subsequently matched or tuned to the stick’s curve. A substantial amount of time selecting the right pernambuco stick has already been invested in this bow. The violinist this bow is destined for wants to emphasize the rich warm sound his Vuillaume violin is capable of. He also plays with a Dominique Peccatte which brings out a beautiful chocolaty sound but in this case he would like something with a bit more power. The basic level of strength players currently want in a bow is fairly high given the scope of today’s repertoire but it is a mistake to over-react to this fact to the detriment of sound quality. Flexibility will promote warmth in the sound here so it will be more advantageous to make a bow that is almost too flexible than one that is more resistant than necessary.

For this bow I have gravitated in the choice to a lighter brown stick with a honey-brown striping, not too dense but very strong. The fresh shavings are light colored and darken in a few days in the air and light. The grain also has a certain pattern of perturbations that I feel will help accent the lower frequencies without cutting out the violin’s upper frequency incisiveness. The height and mass of the head and frog are important elements as well. Here I’m making a decision regarding the stick and how it is shaped based on experience and intuition. I’m confident I can make a bow that plays to my client’s taste, it’s the bow's sound potential that is my biggest challenge as a bow maker. Creating a sound signature in a bow is not something we can do with technical accuracy and the wood has a voice of it’s own.

A VIOLA BOW

I come back to this blog after a long hiatus due to my travels. Before leaving in early June I finished a viola bow for Toronto violist Ivan Ivanovich. The thought process for that bow was interesting and subsequent long email exchanges with Nicolas Cords, violist with the Brooklyn Rider quartet, reinforced an important dialogue on what a viola bow can be and what development of the form can be anticipated.

In Ivanovich’s case, he plays a 16 ¾ “ Greg Alf viola that he loves but he felt it needed to be paired with a bow that had plenty of power to drive the ‘C’ string. He also wanted the flexibility to explore the nuance and color his instrument was capable of. Here the challenge was to select a strong, resonant wood and camber the stick to match his playing style. In Ivanovich’s case he likes to play with the hair fairly close to the stick so there had to be enough camber to bring the hair to tension before it got too high. The important thing here was to apply exactly the right amount of camber to keep the hair reasonably supple at playing height. A hair band under too much tension would have compromised his violas sound potential. The bow had to have enough power without exceeding that level unnecessarily and the wood chosen could not be too heavy.

Finding the right balance of power and flexibility is of particular importance with the viola bow. Another viola bow, for British violist Helena Baillie, took advantage of her comfort playing with the hair up high. A similar wood was indicated but the camber could be different. Here she had the option of playing with a more relaxed hair band for certain repertoire but most importantly, the match was right for her instrument, a Zygmuntowicz.

SOUND POTENTIAL

Sarah Mnatzaganian of Aitchison & Mnatzaganian, the English cello specialists, asked me some questions for an article she is writing. ( She and her colleague Robin Aitchison, have organized a number of exhibits of contemporary cello bows.) Sarah’s questions have to do with the sound a bow generates on an instrument and they are good questions that nearly everyone wonders about.

Sarah: What makes bows sound so different?

Bows of course do not make sound themselves but they accentuate different ranges of an instrument’s potential sound spectrum as well as simply mobilizing more or less sound from the instrument. There are a number of elements contributing to the bow’s sound generating potential. First and foremost is the wood. The wood’s density, it’s grain structure, presence of perturbations in the grain, it’s stiffness and the quantity of extractives such as pigments and waxes in the wood can all effect the sound. Secondly there is the bow’s structure; it’s camber, it’s graduations or diameter from tip to butt, the height of frog and head, weight of frog and winding. Of course the qualities of the wood are reflected in the bow’s structure, strong wood will permit finer stick diameters for example. In addition the quality and quantity of hair has an effect. All these qualities of wood and structure are combined in an infinitely variable way in a given bow. The response of different instruments to this bow also varies, although certain qualities such as brilliance tend to be consistent.

Sarah: As a maker, how much control do you have over the sound of a bow during its manufacture? (for example, if a player asked for a bright sounding bow, would you be confident of fulfilling his/her request?)

As a maker one can definitely affect the bow’s sound generating potential. It helps greatly to have a stock of wood from one region that one comes to know over the years through trial and error. For instance when a stick from a particular board has certain qualities one can assume the sister sticks on the same board will be similar. Also one associates a certain look in the wood to a certain result. In the same way through experience one associates the mass of the frog or the amount and type of camber with a certain result. Brilliance in the sound can be achieved through choice of wood and other physical traits one puts in the bow.

Sarah: What makes the tone of some bows so much more interesting/complex in tone colour than others?

Richness or complexity of sound is a result of matching the right stick and the right dimensions. Once again we are beholden to the wood. There is always some magic to the overall sound signature a bow can produce; there is no simple formula and the maker is inevitably going to use their intuition as well as their knowledge. When players use poetic metaphors like ‘chocolatey’ or my favorite, ‘buttery’, the maker is going to mine all their experience to dig a stick out of their stocks that simply feels right in addition to having qualities that in their experience will produce the desired result. The instrument the bow is destined for is a large part of the equation as well.

CELLO BOW COMPLETED

Here is a recently completed cello bow shown in some earlier posts. It was made for Eric Jacobsen, a cellist based in Brooklyn, NY and member of the quartet, ‘Brooklyn Rider’. The completed bow weighs 79.9 grams with a winding of ‘argent sur soie’ or French tinsel.

THUMB PROJECTION

There doesn’t seem to be an established word for the part of the frog above the throat that sit behind the thumb so I’ll call it the thumb projection for lack of anything better. The thumb projection was always squared off by bow makers in the early to mid nineteenth century. In addition it was left with rather sharp angles because at that time, players often played with the hand further up the stick. By the time Voirin developed his distinctive light and rounded style in the later half of the 19^th century the hand position had settled further back with the thumb up against the projection; I believe like it is today. Voirin completely rounded his thumb projection and Lamy, Sartory and everyone else followed suit.

Many players preferred the earlier sticks and adapted to having their thumb on the angular frog and in most cases the frogs had become a bit worn, softening the angles. They normally didn’t put their thumb right on top of the projection like you can do with a Voirin and instead set the thumb on the thumb-leather and against the projection. But everyone transitioning fro a Sartory to a Peccatte would have to make this adjustment.

When early in my career I moved from the classic late 19^th century style to a style of bow rooted in the 1830’ies, I had to face the fact that leaving the thumb projection sharp would be uncomfortable for many of my clients. But rounding the projection as Voirin would have done on a frog like a Persois simply looks horrible and somewhat akin to grafting a camel’s head on a horse. I felt strongly that a stick that articulated in the early 19^th century style should look appropriately in that style as well. I decided that the answer was a fine chamfer instead of simply rounding off the angle a bit. A chamfer has the effect of keeping lines looking crisp and often the eye forgets its there. Rounding the projection slightly would make it look like the frog was antiqued in one place. I remember showing the luther, Bernard Sabatier on the rue de Rome, my first bow with a chamfered thumb projection. He didn’t like it. In time though, no one noticed it and players adapted to it well. Since that time I have never had a player not adjust in a week or two.

Cellists are manipulating a bow much more strongly that any violinist and it has become common for players to ask for surgical tubing over the projection and thumb leather. Although it lacks in aesthetic appeal it protects the bow in an area that can become quite worn. A common repair to cello bows is to graft wood into the depression worn in the stick by the thumb just behind the thumb-leather.

CELLO BOW HEAD

Now the cello bow head is carved and polished until it is ready for varnishing. In this case our head is styled fairly robustly with the front of the head rounded into the stick. On the other hand, the ‘dessou-cou’ or curve from the back of the head into the stick is fairly angular. The tension between the two curves gives the head its look.

The head on a cello bow is quite different from the head on a corresponding violin bow by the same maker. Traditionally the cello head sweeps forward compared to the violin head’s vertical stance. But originally, when the modern bow was being developed by Francois Tourte and some of his contemporaries, the cello head was sometimes cut like an oversized violin head. The forward sweeping head became the norm for a two reasons. First the cello bow is under proportionally quite a bit more tension than the violin bow and the head must be very strong. Sweeping the head forward allowed the head to be lighter and finer by transferring some of the stress into the stick. Since the cello head had a tendency to look heavy and bulky, makers and musicians appreciated the more graceful look of the swept forward heads. In the early to mid 19^th century violin bows were also occasionally made with a cello-like head. These are called swan heads or ‘col de cyne’ and have the back of the head rounded instead of defined with chamfers. Occasionally, several makers including Peccatte made cello bows in the ‘col de cyne’ pattern as well.

Through the course of the 19^th century cello heads became lighter and finer. Francois Tourte’s heads typically sweep forward but they are angular with a strong hatchet-like look. With Voirin and Lamy the cello heads became very fine and rounded and in fact they push the limits of adequate strength. In other stylistic details, cello bow heads follow their violin counterparts in the way the tip or ‘bec’ is shaped and the chamfers or ‘chanfrein’ are cut. But there is one exception. The tip plate or base of the violin bow head curves upwards while the cello tip plate is nearly flat. This looks better with the larger scale of the cello head.

CELLO BOW CAMBER

At this stage the camber has been finalized and the stick, which has been octagonal up to this point is rounded. The taper of the stick and its curve or camber is critical to how the bow will play and sound. Because of the power needed to drive the large diameter cello strings the bow must be far more resistant than a violin bow. On the other hand there is an incredible range of expressivity to the cello’s sound and without flexibility the cellist cannot access this potential. Yet there is no consensus between bow makers as to what will work best and this is for good reason because there is no consensus between fine players either. I have measured bows belonging to a number of today’s great players and they vary in every way; weights ranging from 76 to 90 grams and widely ranging camber concepts and stick graduations.

The bow maker can approach commissions it two ways. One is to simply do what they think is best and the players who like these bows will buy them. The second to tailor the bow specifically to the player but in this case one inevitably has ideas on how to reach this goal. Although I’m in the later group, the solution is not to simply copy the bows a player has. If they want another bow its because they believe they can unlock more potential from their instrument or their technique with a different stick. It is possible that something quite different would be ideal for them if they can make the technical adjustment. They have no doubt tried certain bows belonging to colleaugues that they loved. If it was a well-known maker like Dominique Peccatte or Eugene Sartory, that gives us quite a bit of information up to a point because each of these maker’s work also varies considerably. In the end the maker has to make an intuitive call on the camber, stick selection and graduations or taper that he hopes will give his or her client all the power and potential for expression they need. There is a kaleidoscopic interchange of different elements that effect the hoped for outcome, a bow that joins both power and technical response with the flexibility to bring out the full spectrum of a cello’s sound.

PLANING THE STICK

The cello bow progresses and the stick is getting planed down to rough dimensions. At this time the frog is fit on the stick so that we can adjust the stick with the frog in place.

TALON

The silver heel plate or ‘talon’ is about half a millimeter in thickness and it is fit in a shallow channel cut with knife and chisels to accommodate it. When the silver heel is fit and bent into place, the forward edge is squared perfectly straight across where the pearl slide must join it perfectly. Then it is glued and riveted with small silver pins.

At this point the dovetailed channel for the pearl slide is completed and the mortise and channel for the hair is cut freehand using different chisels. The pearl slide or ‘recouverment’ is then fit and trimmed so it fits perfectly on all sides. Finally the bottom of the frog and the heel is filed so all parts are flush with the ebony and smooth. The pins, which have been left proud, are filed off at this time and usually disappear. The pins on a new bow are tight and very difficult to see but over time the miniscule movements of the ebony frog due to changes in humidity rock the pins slightly. So in older bows the pins are usually noticeable.

The frog is now well advanced and all that remains is the underslide or ‘coulisse’ where the frog joins the stick. Here a silver lining is usually fit and pinned in place and a bronze eyelet screwed into place. At this point the frog is complete and ready to mount on the stick but the polishing will wait until the bow is nearly completed.

CELLO BOW

A cello bow is now in process and as with the violin bow we make the fog first. This is because the frog needs to ready to mount on the stick very early on in the process. Since I covered the frog making process in earlier posts I’ll only cover what is unique to a cello frog. The cello frog has a rounded heel or ‘talon’ so this necessitates a different approach in that area. The amount of curve or radius of the heel varies quite a bit between bow makers and in general the earlier 19^th century bows have a bigger radius or are more rounded. There is an aesthetic and stylistic relationship between the curves of throat and the curve of the heel. Since the length of the flat area on the bottom of the frog determines the length of the pearl slide, the rounder heels have a shorter slide all things being equal. In this case our radius is relatively large. The tighter heel curve of late 19^th century makers like Lamy was a bit easier to make and made possible a longer pearl slide since the flat area on the frog was longer.

Once the frogs heel is rounded we fit the eyes in the frog sides and in this case we are using a eye ringed with silver or ‘grain et cercle”. . To receive the ring, a narrow groove is cut with a special drill bit, which cuts the recess for the pearl eye at the same time. Each bow maker makes these bits themselves to the requirements of their taste and style. Francois Tourte was probably the first to make this type of eye and to begin with the ring was fairly heavy, getting finer during the course of the 19^th century. To make this eye a thin strip of silver is cut, bent into a ring and soldered. It is then put on a tapered rod or mandrel and hammered to the correct diameter. It is then filed until it fits snugly into its groove. The pearl eye is filed to fit and glued into its recess followed by the ring, which is hammered lightly into place. When the glue is set, any silver sitting proud can be filed off flush with the sides and the eye is completed.

FINAL STEPS

The frog illustrated in some previous posts has been mounted on a stick and the bow is nearly finished. This bow is for Antonio Anselmi, a violinist in Rome who is concertmaster of the I Musici chamber orchestra. The selection of the stick was critical for this bow as it always is for the bow maker. Anselmi plays on a late Amati with a Tourte weighing about 57 grams and he wants a soprano vocal quality to the sound. So the challenge was to find a stick with the right tonal potential of low to medium density wood. One such stick was found but ended up being set aside well into the process because intuitively it lacked too many other requisite characters. So a stick of very responsive wood of medium density was chosen and the projected weight raised slightly to 59 grams. The stick is quite powerful but much of this is placed in reserve through the cambering approach to give the stick flexibility. Several earlier bows I made with the same wood proved to have a pure, singing upper register.

In the picture you can see the unlined frog while the screw and evelet are lubricated. An unlined frog should not swing laterally on the stick as this can weaken the edges. So the frog is carefully adjusted for a snug fit. Finally the bow is measured and the camber recorded so I have the record of the bow and can duplicate aspects of it in future bows if need be. The diameter of the stick is measured in 12 places and also the height of the frog and head are noted.

Now the bow is photographed and the basic work is done. But the bow is not complete; it is now rosined and played for a day or two. If there are any final adjustments to be made to the camber they will be made before the bow is shipped.

REHAIRING

Rehairing may be the most common work done on bows but it is not the easiest. Since the most delicate parts of a bow are open during rehair, both skill and care are necessary to avoid damage. It also requires a lot of experience to select the correct amount of hair and ensure that it is of even tension. There is also a wide range in hair quality and the conscientious rehairer will use only the best, which can easily cost three times as much as ordinary hair. The good rehair person is also checking over a bow to make sure no problems arise like a frog that becomes too loose or an eyelet that needs replacing. More serious problems like an enlarged screw hole can be brought to the attention of the player. That way the problem can be repaired before the bow becomes weakened.

In addition there are two basic methods of rehairing, one in which the hair is secured first in the head and the other where the hair is started in the frog. In France the hair is always started in the frog, which ensures that most of the work takes place with the frog mounted securely on the stick. When the hair is started in the head, the frog is loose and must be placed on an often ill-fitting jig to press in the wooden wedge that secures the hair. So while a competent person would no doubt do a good rehair with either method, I think the latter method is preferable, especially for a bow without a silver under-slide on the frog.

It’s rare for a bow to be damaged in general use and more damage occurs during rehair by poorly trained people. Although the frog is quite durable as long as it is securely mounted on the stick, it must of course be removed for rehairing. Then the under-slide or channel between the frog and stick is exposed as well as the knife-edged dovetail where the pearl slide fits. These edges are sharp and delicate, especially when there is no silver underslide. They are easily chipped of damaged. This makes the selection of a really competent and conscientious bow rehairer of importance. Too often in even well known shops the bow-person is under a lot of pressure and must work at top speed. It’s a very good idea to know the person rehairing your bow and their credentials. Every player is the guardian of their bow for it can be of use for generations of musicians.

THE UNDERSLIDE.

The last step on the frog before polishing is to cut the underslide channel or coulisse where the frog slides on the stick. This is done freehand with a narrow chisel. Normally when it is completed we stamp a piece of thin silver in a press and glue it into the channel. This strengthens the area.

In this case we are leaving the coulisse unlined as Tourte and his contemporaries did in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. This is for several reasons. For one thing we want to minimize the weight of this bow and the silver lining weighs nearly one gram. In addition we want the tonal effect created by a frog of the lowest possible mass. And lastly the unlined frog enhanced the style of this bow, which is rooted in the early 19^th century. Contrary to some opinions, this frog is quite durable with one exception. When the bow is being rehaired the fine edges of the coulisse are exposed and easily chipped. This bow should only be rehaired by a craftsperson with the required experience.

The stick, which has already been cambered and planed down to oversized dimensions, is then planed to match the frog’s underslide in such a way that the frog is in exactly the same axis as the head. Then the mortise is cut and the stick drilled. Finally a hole is drilled for the eyelet. At this point I have outlined the whole process of making a bow starting about two months ago. So rather than repeat myself I’ll cover the following steps in more general terms and write more on other areas of importance to bowmaking. Anyone who would like to know more can go back to the earlier posts.

RECOUVREMENT or the pearl slide.

This blog has been in existence for about two months. Its proving to be hard to post regularly especially during times like last week when I’m traveling. I think once or twice a week is possible.

Before cutting the coulisse and fitting the heel, a piece of shell is cut into a rectangle and glued to a strip of ebony. Now it is ready to fit by filing an angle or dovetail on each side and gradually bringing it down until it slides in snugly against the heel. The coulisse or channel is slightly tapered which ensures a tight fit. It would not be good for the hair underneath to push the slide up. Then the other end is trimmed carefully until the ferrule can slide back on and fit tightly against the shell. But the ebony strip underneath continues on under the ferrule to prevent the slide from lifting.

This particular piece of nacre or shell is very beautiful but for some optical reason it’s difficult to record this in a photograph. When the pearl slide is fit the frog is nearly finished and only the under-slide where the frog fits on the stick remains to be done. Since the stick hasn’t been chosen I will put the frog aside for now and think further about the bow and the choice of wood.

NACRE

The pearl-shell or nacre has long been used to decorate bows, certainly since the time of Tourte. This was normally Abalone; species in the genus Haliotis that are found throughout the world. In the early 19^th century an abalone found along the coast of Brittany known as Ormeau (Haliotis tuberculata) was used but the shells were small and curved requiring much labor to make a pearl slide. This was the typical recouverment or slide still to be seen on an original Peccatte with very tight and brilliant waves. This shell is still available for restoration work.

Around the mid 19^th century, a lady of a certain class was obliged to carry a fan with which dispel harsh odors in the streets or strike boorish gentleman. Fans made of delicate Abalone pearl strips were much in vogue and this Abalone came from the Far East, no doubt creating a trade in the shells. Bowmakers soon adopted this material for its beautiful hues and its use continues to this day. Delaruelle, an intrepid supplier of tools and materials to the luthiers and archetiers around Paris during the 80ies discovered a cache of this shell dating to the 19^th century. For quite some time we were able to buy parts of abalone shell fans from him. He continued to supply the trade with shell until his untimely passing a few years ago.

Although the normal shell is a bluish green with some pink striping, some shells are a blaze of red and gold, the colors boiling and bubbling to the surface.

CARVING THE THROAT. The frog part 3.

To fit on the silver ferrule, a projection or tenon is cut into the ebony frog piece and this is shaped until the ferrule slides on tightly. Then the frog is brought down to the final height and length. The sides of the frog are scooped out with a gouge and then we are ready to start the ‘degorgement’ or throat. Like the head, the frog is a sculptural form defined by its function of holding a flattened band of hair a certain distance off the stick and sliding back to tension the hair as needed. Beyond that the frogs shape is defined by a combination of tradition and the desire of each maker to do something different, something a little different from the next maker. This is expressed most noticeably in the sculptural shape of the throat, the area between the ferrule and the thumb projection. The throat can be squared off and angular as in Persois’s bows or gently rounded as in Voirin’s or a combination of the two as in Peccatte’s.

The challenge of the throat’s design lies in the fact that the ferrule presents a steeply convex surface while the sides of the frog are hollowed out or concave. Then the thumb projection is steeply concave again so the throat’s shaping must gracefully traverse these opposing surfaces. In addition the continuation of the flanks of the frog into the throat can be abrupt or tapering inward to a small radius. So this simple shape bounded on three sides by the rest of the frog can manifest an almost infinite number of shapes that express the personalities behind them.

The throat is shaped with a knife and here as in the head we rely on tools that give us the measure of control we need. Once the shape is fully defined, some strokes of a needle file smooth it out and we are ready to go on. Now the frog looks complete except that there are no channels, mortise or pearl eyes and slide. The polishing will come later.

SILVER. The Frog part 2.

Bow making requires a number of techniques that a jeweler uses and that includes cutting and shaping silver or gold and joining them with solder. Normally we work with silver. Each nation has precious metal standards and England and the US have the Sterling system. France has had several standards over the last two centuries but for quite some time their silver has been called ‘argent premiere titre’ and it consists of 95% silver alloyed with 5% copper to harden it. Since Sterling silver has 92.5 % silver and 7.5% copper it has a slightly different luster than the French silver we use in this shop.

Gold commonly accompanies the finest work of a maker but this is not necessarily the case. All we have to do is look at the elegant silver mounted bows of the great makers Francois Tourte or Dominique Peccatte; it is often evident they went all-out to make a given bow, the stick is phenomenal. A silver bow may have been made for a great professional player who could not justify the expense of gold and indeed at the time gold mounted bows were likely destined for the nobility or the wealthy. It is also a fact that of all the precious materials in a great bow, gold is the most easily obtained. The gold is expensive but the stick is priceless. Gold also weighs more than silver; gold mountings will weigh about a gram more, which is sometimes an important consideration. But some contemporary makers consider a bow with gold mountings to be their highest grade so in this case purchasing gold mountings from them is well worth consideration.

After the rough frog piece has been prepared, we make the ‘passant’ or ferrule that contains and spreads the hair. According to Bernard Millant this ring was invented by Francois Tourte in 1782 or 1783 to accommodate the demands of Viotti and Kreutzer who were troubled with the hair bunching as they played at the frog. Prior to this time the frog was open with the hair coming out of a mortise in the same way it does from the head. A jeweler’s saw is used to cut out two pieces of silver, one of which is bent into an arch. Then they are heated to red-hot and soldered together to form a ring. This ‘D’ shaped ring is hammered out to shape and it is then filed to size. Now it’s ready to fit on the frog.