Don Reinfeld, Bow Maker

The Violin Bow

The violin bow is to the violin what the breath is to the singer: it evokes, shapes, and colors the sound of the instrument. The player will prefer one particular bow, not only for its responsiveness in the hand, but for the quality of the sound the bow draws from a given instrument. The bow, in short, is a critical part of the player’s equipment. Concert artists, teachers, advanced students, and amateurs are willing to spend thousands of dollars for19th-century French bows (among others) of superb playing quality and artistic workmanship. Fortunately, the art of bowmaking lives on, so that excellent bows, made by contemporary craftsmen in America and elsewhere, are available at prices within the budget of many of today’s musicians.

As with violin-making, the art of bowmaking takes skill, extended study with a master, and long practice. The makes fashions every part and detail of the bow and even makes some of the tools used. The art demands the skills of the consummate woodworker in shaping the stick of the bow, and of the jeweler in handling the metal-work of the frog and button. The aim of this article is to show the reader what can be done with rather simple tools in the hands of an experienced craftsman who is willing to focus on every detail of precise work. After noting the care and control the Bow Maker exerts, the demands of fine cabinetry may seem a bit less formidable. Also, you may well pick up some hints and tips that can apply to your own woodwork.

Modern bows - following a standard perfected by François Tourte (1790 - 1835) - for violin, viola, cello, and bass differ in weight and length, but they share this common feature: the stick is curved (cambered) toward the flat ribbon of horse-tail hairs. When the hair is tightened by the screw mechanism at the end of the stick, the stick is partially straightened. The bow is thus spring-loaded and ready for the range of strokes required in music of the 18th to the 20th centuries: long, sustained tones; crisply detached notes; passages of individual, bounced strokes; and rapid-fire chains of staccato tones carried out in a single, up- or downward sweep of the bow.

THE STICK

While a great amount of detail work is involved in making the frog and button of the bow, it is the stick whose elusive subtleties bewitch the maker and determine the playing qualities of the bow. Very long experience has shown that, thus far, the ideal wood for the modern bow proves to be the hard, resilient, reddish-brown pernambuco. This slow-growing tree comes from the mountainous coastal region around Recife, in northeastern Brazil. Bow Makers treasure their stocks of this precious wood, cutting, storing, and using it with great care.

Block-planing the octagonal facets on the sawn bow-blank.

For best strength, the stick should be straight-grained, dense, and have high mineral content. The plank is first bandsawn into straight bow blanks, which are then seasoned for several years. When the stick is roughed out, a simple block plane (for example, an old-style Stanley 102) shapes it to an octagonal cross-section. If no knots, checks, or worm-holes show up, the back of the head is carved with the Bow Maker’s knife - beveled on one side, and with a burred edge that allows the knife to scrape. Next, the bottom three facets of the stick are draw-filed to removed any tool marks. The stick is then heated, a few inches at a time, over and alcohol flame or charcoal embers and pressed against a hardwood form to give the bow its curve, or camber. If the stick twists when heated, the facets must be recut to line up with the symmetrical, triangular cross-section of the head and the top three facets of the frog.

FROG

Before work proceeds on the head of the bow, the frog must be roughed out and all its parts fashioned, so that the stick can be fitted to it. The frog holds and tensions the hair at the foot of the bow. The maker squares the rectangular frog blank, made of ebony or, less often, horn or lignum vitae. He or she then planes the sides to give the blank a trapezoidal shape, checking progress with a T-bevel, as the finished frog will be several millimeters wider at the bottom than the top. The sides are then shaped to their characteristically gentle flair with a #5 gouge that has been reverse-ground and given a burr for scraping.

Flaring the cheeks of the frog with a reverse-ground #5 gouge.

The front end of the frog is drilled and sawed to shape: a “U” lying on its side, open toward the head of the bow. The tip of the U’s lower leg is carved into a half-round; around this “tongue” goes a metal ferrule to spread and firmly hold the ribbon of horsehair entering the frog (a basswood wedge is inserted to fill any blank space). The upper leg of the U - that is, the entire top of the frog - is shaped to seat against the stick; the side of the player's right thumb will eventually rest against that leg of the frog.

Ferrule-making is the first of several jewelry-like procedures involved in bowmaking. Two pieces of sheet silver are cut to measure; one is left flat, but at least 1mm over final width to facilitate removing it from the frog with vise-grip pliers. (The extra width is filed off after the tongue of the frog has been trimmed to a final fit.) The other component of the ferrule is shaped to a curve. The two pieces of silver and soldered (brazed) together with silver solder, and the flat part is hardened by hammering it on a mandrel. Those seeking shortcuts will be happy to know that half-round (“D”-shaped) tubing is available commercially!

Leading back from the ferrule, a shallow, hand-chiselled dovetailed slot in the bottom face of the frog carries the pearl slide, which covers the horsehair entering the frog through the ferrule. The slide is thin and rectangular, but flaring slightly outward toward the front of the frog to make it easier to remove whenever the bow is being re-haired. It consists of a slab of mother-of-pearl or abalone shell glued to a slip of ebony. In the floor of the slot, a small mortise with an undercut back wall is hollowed out with custom-made drill bits and a small chisel to receive the end of the ribbon of horsehair (tightly bound with thread or wire) and the small wooden plug that locks the ribbon in place (glue should never be used here).

The ebony slip to which the pearl slide is glued extends slightly past the back end of the frog’s mortise and slides into a pocket formed by a silver insert at the end of the frog, glued and pinned between the walls of the groove. At its back edge, the metal insert butts against a metal plate inlaid into the heel of the frog. The pearl slide extends from the edge of the ferrule to that of the metal insert at the other end of the frog.

Frog and butt-end of bow-stick, showing mating shape of the two.


If the heel of the frog is rounded into the bottom, the inlaid metal plate is formed to suit, as one piece, with its end pinned to the bottom of the frog. In Peccatte-style bows, the bottom piece of silver is glued and pinned to the ebony slip, which then runs the full length of the bottom of the frog to butt up against the heel plate. Finally, in many less expensive bows, the heel plate is bent over at right angles to form the insert on the bottom of the frog.

The top edge of the frog is shaped to a slant-sided, flat-bottomed groove by first cutting two small parallel V’s, again with the small chisel, then removing the inverted V between them. The bottom three facets of the octagonal stick will be shaped to fit this groove. To protect the ebony against wear and cracking, a thin silver liner is etched by briefly soaking it in nitric acid, and then glued and pinned (2 pins or screws) in place in the groove. A hole is drilled through the liner and into the ebony to receive that threaded stem of the brass eyelet. The Bow Maker always drills a slightly wider hole into the liner alone before drilling the smaller hole into the ebony to house the stem of the eyelet.

SCREW AND BUTTON

When the frog is mounted onto the stick, the tapped ring of the eyelet (available commercially in various sizes) projects into a mortise that has been cut in the bottom facet of the stick with shop-made spade-bits and a small chisel.

Drilling eyelet hole in the frog liner, using vertical milling machine (useful but not necessary).

Here the eyelet receives the screw that controls the tension of the horsehair. The screw (3mm, but 4mm for bass) is mounted with a cylindrical ebony button that is turned to a smaller diameter at each end and fitted with two silver rings. Except for a delicate, lathe-turned collar where the button touches the butt of the stick - at a mating hand-cut or lathe-turned seat called the nipple - the entire body of the button is filed to conform to the octagon facets of the stick. Many makers give the button an elegant, subtle outward flair of a few thousandths or an inch.

Ebony button-blank, cemented onto threaded screw, with ends turned down to receive ornamental rings; center: semi-finished button, with shell dot inserted in end; right: finished early 20th-century button.


Nipple on end of stick, corresponding mortise in button.

HEAD

After fine-tuning the fit of the stick to the frog, the next step is shaping the head. With knife and file, the Bow Maker carves the head’s characteristic swooping contours and detailing, often following distinctive patterns set by such masters as François Tourte, Dominique Peccatte (1810 - 1874), F.N.Voirin (1833 - 1885), Eugène Sartory (1841 - 1946).

Chiseling out the ivory facing of the head to shape the mortise that houses the knotted hair-ribbon.

A thin mastodon ivory, silver, or gold facing is glued, and, if metal, pinned to the face of the head, partly for elegance, in keeping with the elegance of the frog, but certainly for added strength and protection from accidental blows against walls and music-stands. A mortise is cut through the facing and into the wood to house the upper end of the hair-ribbon and its anchoring wooden plug - again, never glued.
Tensioned bow, showing hair-ribbon held in head of bow; and hair-ribbon pulled back to show wooden plug that locks (no glue!) the hair into the head.

When preparing a metal facing, the maker must be sure to drill a preliminary hole for the mortise in the metal before gluing the facing to the wood. Otherwise the metal heated by the drilling would come unglued. (This step is not necessary when preparing an ivory, bone, or wood facing.) After the facing is glued in place, the opening is carved with a knife as the mortise is shaped with a chisel.

FINISHING

Final carving and polishing of the frog follows, including the inlay of a decorative shell dot on each cheek. Now the bow can be haired and tensioned. Any needed corrections in camber or side-to-side deflection are made. Also, the top and side facets of the stick are graduated with scraped planes for optimum strength, balance, and responsiveness, from thinnest behind the head to thickest toward the foot of the bow. If the stick remains too stiff, the maker may decide to temper its strength by planing the octagon to 16 facets or, finally, rounding the stick using very finely set scraping-planes, sandpaper, and MicroMesh (a graded series of abrasive-coated cloths commonly used to remove scratches from plastic lenses, windshields, etc.). These same materials are used if the stick remains octagonal. Color the wood, if desired; burnish it, first with a shop-made pernambuco burnisher, then with a gold-leafer’s agate burnisher; and apply French polish. At last, you have a bow! - but only if you've exerted judgment and dexterity in the hundreds of decisions and steps that preceded.

Experiments in bowmaking using non-traditional materials are being actively explored: for example, sticks made of fiberglass or graphite compounds are now available at competitive prices. Most Bow Makers continue to maintain that the materials of old prove best where it counts: in sound and responsiveness. And, though there are makers who use modern machining techniques for some of the roughing-out of stick and frog, skilled handwork still predominates in producing a fine bow.

Don Reinfeld, a cellist in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, makes, repairs, and restores bows in western New York. Abram Loft, former member of the Fine Arts Quartet and chair of The Eastman School of Music’s string department, is a writer and amateur woodworker. Both men live in Rochester, NY.