A. Cavallo Violins, LLC

What to Know When Buying a Bow
outside of shop
Dear Friends:

In the last few weeks bows seem to have been on our customer's minds. Since knowledge is power, we thought it was a good idea to give you an outline of the choices you have when buying a bow, and the advantages or disadvantages you have with each materiel and making technique.

If you have any questions regarding instruments or bows, do not hesitate to call us, as we are always happy to help you increase your knowledge and discernment.

Above all, make beautiful music!

Musically Yours,

The Staff at A. Cavallo Violins, LLC
A. Cavallo Violins, LLC
Bows, Bows, Bows
How to make the right choice

Your bow is as significant to your playing as your instrument, but it is often ignored during the purchase. We remind our customers that proportionately you get "more bang for the buck" when you spend more on the bow. Conventional wisdom is that the bow should be about 25-35% of your total instrument and bow purchase, and we believe that proportion is about right.

Bow sticks are made of at least four different materials: Pernambuco, Carbon Fiber, Brazilwood, and Fiberglass.

The gold standard for bows is Pernambuco, but the wood is endangered and the bows are quite breakable. Typically pernambuco bows start at around $200, and the finest examples are over $200,000! Bows are usually graded by the company or maker by their fittings. Nickel mounting is the entry level, Silver is usually second, and then fancier silver or frog materials such as snakewood, shell, or ivory can reflect the maker's assessment of the stick. The best commercial bows are now coming out of Brazil, as the Pernambuco is no longer available anywhere else due to import/export restrictions. Pernambuco combines a strength, flexibility, response, speed and ability to hold camber (the curve, induced by heat) at a higher level than any other natural product.

Brazilwood it thearcos brasil bow other natural product used commonly. These days it refers to any wood that mimics pernambuco. Typically, these bows do not have the playability and ability to hold camber like pernambuco, but they often produce a warm sound. Brazilwood bows can be as inexpensive as $30.00 and are often the choice of beginners.

Fiberglass is the student choice. Usually fiberglass has more strength and resilience and less camber issues than brazilwood, but is usually not very playable. Cost is low, usually under $50 for a violin bow.

Carbon Fiber bows are attempts to create a process and material that rivals pernambuco. Carbon fiber is practically unbreakable and will almost never lose its camber. The quickness and response of the better carbon fiber bows, such as the JonPaul and CodaBow brands, come close to pernambuco in warmth and tone. Many professional players have a carbon fiber bow as a "pit bow," for such playing as opera, musical, or pops that does not demand individual tone, and is used in a dangerous environment for fragile pernambuco or any other wood.

So far we have only written about the stick materials. There are many other materials and workmanship issues that affect the quality, cost, and performance of bows, but we will reserve that for a later discussion!



Interesting Bow Websites


www.arcosbrasil.com

www.watervioletbows.com.br

www.ipci-usa.org

www.jonpaulstrings.com

www.codabow.com









A. Cavallo Violins, LLC

8705 Shamrock Road

Omaha, NE 68114

toll free
877 838 6222

An Arcos Visit and Nitrating Violin Bows

The other day we had Brian, the sales rep from Arcos Brasil come by. Good timing since we needed a few extra cakes of those carved rosin boxes with refills and some good solid bows. These bows are solid commercial bows being from Brazil. It's tough being a bow maker when Les has to compete against top notch guys down South.
Les got a chance to show some of his bows and Brian them. He said he'll put in a good word for him. Afterwards, he got to work on his latest violin bow outside with his bottle of Nitric Acid.
Colorless when pure, older samples of Nitric Acid tend to acquire a yellow cast due to the accumulation of oxides of nitrogen.
The solution that Les has is 70% which isn't considered fuming but toxic enough to sting your skin and burn your eyes. Hence the need for air to disperse outside and work done with goggles and gloves.
A swab of the Nitric Acid is dipped in and rubbed up and down, all along the stick. the Acid helps bring out the dark red pernambucco color.

Horn Violin Frog: it's done

Horn Violin Frog:
-Handmade horn frog and silver button.
-Snakeskin thumb leather
-Whalebone winding
-L. Korus stamp

That's not all he's finished. A viola bow he finished last week, and a cello bow to come.

Horn Violin Frog: Almost Done...

The finishing touches and polishes to the horn frog are almost done. I plopped myself down on a chair, hit the studio lights, and took some better photos of his work.

Wait a minute...Lester just came in as I was blogging. He tells me that the frog I photographed has the wrong button and screw- he'd like to also note that it's too big and he wouldn't make something like that from scratch.

The coolest thing with this frog is that you can actually see the inner mechanical workings. It's a bit opaque but you can make out where the screw, mortise, and plug is.
I know that him Les and other bow makers would object to this, but wouldn't be cool to try out some other materials for the frog? I always wanted to see a clear see through frog attached to bow. Quartz, silicon, maybe even diamonds? Unpractical since these materials would throw off the balance of the stick:)

And we have contact: frog and bow

At last we have the critical pieces in place: silver button, silver lined horn frog, and silver tip at the other end of the bow. Lester was hoping to enter this into a bow making competition when this would be finished. The chance to compete though is looking smaller when I heard they may not have enough entrants. Plus, he would need more time to really fine tune this piece of work.

[Horn Violin Frog with Silver Fittings, Work in Progress]

If he ever does get around to finishing the bow, we'll sure to let you know. Come by the shop and give the bow a try ;)

Horn Violin Frog: Adding the Underslide

The horn frog now has its underslide & eyelet.

[Horn Frog for Violin, Eyelet & Underslide View]

How did he fit the underslide on the frog? While I can't tell the specs he uses, I can show you some of the tools he uses to to help answer that question.

[Fomer, Sterling Silver Sheet, Hammer]

The big hunk of metal on the left is called the "former". The geometric piece next to it is part of it as well. The sheet of sterling silver on the right is sandwiched between those two pieces and its hammered away create angles of the underslide. Any excess of the folded silver sheet is cut away. As for the eyelet, a hole is drilled for frog so the eyelet can then be screwed in.

Related Posts:

• Frog Making for a Violin Bow
• Making Frogs for a Cello Bow
• Frog Repair
• Violin Bow Making II: Screw & Button
• Bowmaking
  

violin

Frog Making for a Violin Bow

More headway on the horn frog bow today. The Sartory model frog now has its slide glued on with silver.

What you're seeing in the second photo is called the "heel plate". The two dimple looking things are the pins that are used to hold the sterling silver in place. Eventually, these will get filed down and will blend in with the heel plate. More work in progress to come:)

Making Frogs for a Cello Bow

Lester keeps going at it with his new line of bows. This time, he's gearing up to enter some bows for a competition in October. Many bow makers often order parts from manufacturers and fit them on to the stick. I was flipping through their catalog the other day, and I had no idea that there are over a hundred different kinds of frogs. Lester tells me though that while basic frog templates by Sartory are studied and published in books, bow makers are always reinterpreting these traditional master makers in their own style.

[Ebony Frog, Pattern]

However, Les' training since this summer has taught how to make even the small things from scratch. Screw and button making was a first for him, but so was frog making. This cello bow he's making are by far the most hand made thing he's made.

[Ebony Frong for Cello, slide]

The photo below shows his latest work in horn. I'm not sure if this comes from water buffalo but there's a bunch of other materials such as snake wood or ivory (the latter now being illegal). Usually though, he works in good dry ebony blanks.

[Horn Frog for Violin, Cutting Stage]

The length of time it takes to make a frog can range from 12 hours to a day. Realize though that these frogs are often made as the bows are carved. Frog making isn't a step-by-step process. It's a series of fine cutting, chiseling, and filing are done with adjustments to the stick.

I asked Les why he still bothers to make frogs by hand when he can order pre-cut frogs. For one, he says it increases the value of the bow. He also says that he adds an artistic value that he can customize for the player. It may not seem like much but he can control the feel of the frog in the player's hand with slight nuances of the ferrule or curves of the frog's body.

Older Related Posts:

• Frog Repair
• Violin Bow Making II: Screw & Button
  
• Bow Making
  

Violin Bow Making II: Screw and Button

When I was a kid, I thought it was fun to crank the heck out of the violin bow's button to the point of warping the whole stick. I might as well have taken wrench or pair of pliers afterwards to unscrew this little guy (don't actually do this by the way).

After seeing Lester fix so many repairs of kids with tension tightening disorders, I've gotten a better appreciation for his skill and this tiny but critical feature of the bow.

This button and screw is what fits into the frog of the violin bow. With a turn of this mechanism, it creats the needed playing tension for string instruments. The button can be made from different materials such as gold, silver, or nickel.

[Silver Button & Screw for Violin Bow, 2007]

Lester has compared this aspect of bow making to jewelry making. The process requires patience, a steady hand, and fine attention to detail. He works with a lathe first to carve out a small cylindrical piece of ebony that's less than 1 centimeter in diameter. A hole has to be drilled into it as well for the screw's place. The button's silver exterior needs to be bent into shape, welded, hammered, and finally polished to give it that octagonal look.

I got a chance to see him make one of these little mechanical designs into a smooth operating piece of art. I couldn't help but think to myself that the kind of things Les was doing was very similar to today's Industrial Designer. He was working from rough conceptual sketches, carefully prepared templates, calculating the correct proportions, and working with the modern tools & techniques that the old world's craftsmen never had.

Certainly he wasn't mass producing like a factory or had the digital precision & accuracy but the similarities were there. Lester though could care less about the comparison. He'd be happy any day if some one would call his work an artistry.

Bass Bow in the Works

A few weeks back, Lester was finally commissioned to make a double bass bow. After some early morning hours, here's his latest bow to display.

Next up, another double bass bow to boot out the door for sale. It's currently baking in the tanning booth.

Closed for the 4th, but the training continues...

Folks, we are officially closed for the week of the 4th. I'm glad to indulge in a little vacation away from the monitor.

The only person that has to work is Les. He is currently back in Durham, New Hampshire to add more training under his belt. In particular, he wants to learn how to make frogs.

Every summer,the Violin Craftsmanship Institute has a series of workshops and classes that range from repair, making, restoration, etc. Under the tutelage of the great bow making masters such as George Rubino & Lynn Hannings, Les has been spending his summers there to sharpen his skills.

In 3 weeks time, he'll be back with skills sharper than a knife, "be busting out some bows today."

Head Plate Underwraps

Les has just about finished on this bow. He currently has the bow under some tight winding.

As of now, he's trying to fix the camber on another bow. It was pulled out of a bath of nitric acid and left to dry in some sunlight. The bow is otherwise in playing condition.

Bowmaking

A quiet Saturday with very little foot traffic into the store. With some of the spare time, I thought I'd catchup on some old Amazon listings and blog a bit about current works in the progress. Les is at his bench, ready to plane out another bow.

The wood he's currently working with is a called pernambuco. It's considered the gold standard for bowmaking material. Very expensive stuff as this single orange blanc of this orange stick can go upwards of $600. Besides the cost, there's always the unpredictable nature of wood with all its flaws and cracks that can't be seen to the eye. Don't worry, no problems on this bow though.


I didn't show you the step before this, but Les gets the blanc ready with critical markings in chalk and pencil. He also has a gold template of the bow head & tip, which he has to design, and trace its outline on to the head of the blanc.

He than takes a Japanese knife and scrapes out the arching under the bow head.


Les has been trained in the French traditional bow making style and he's pretty strict about sticking to it. Sometimes though, he takes a short cut and does a bit of filing like he does above.


Shaping the blanc into an octagonal or round stick has to be done with one of these little tools. It's a specially made "finger plane" that can give your digits a grind session. Les has to get the cutting edge sharp with a wetting stone, then grin and bear as he planes. It ends up being a real workout for him.

Will be back next week to blog more about his finished bow.

6 am in the morning

The shop officially opens at 11:00 a.m. but work starts early for Les this week. Les is a our aspiring in-house bow maker of trade. I'll post a more up-close interview of Les, assuming that he agrees, of what his typical day is like.

Ever since he got off of his last university class, he's been inspired to go all out. Every morning at 6:00, he's opened up shop and planes away at a new stick. He comes in early, because there's less disturbance of customers and a chance to get in some more hours of work. Typically it takes 40 hours of labor per bow. This week? He's managed to crank out 3 bows.

Meanwhile, I have the luxury of strolling in midmorning. The daily morning ritual consists of checking emails, fulfilling Amazon sales & eBay auctions overnight, packing, databasing, and managing the phones. Despite working in a workshop environment, office work inevitably finds its way into a violin shop. It's all tedious but someone's gotta do it!