My grandfather passed away on the 30th of last month. I went to see him that day, and hoped to show him my progress on this project, but unfortunately that didn't happen. I decided to put his initials on the violin case. The violin was made in Germany, so I used an old German stencil (made of tin) to spray the lettering.
I purchased six broken vintage bows from England for about $20, which was ridiculously cheap. A modern student bow generally sells for $50. With a little cleaning and component swapping, I've ended up with 2 good student bows, and 2 antique intermediate level bows. The only reason that I'm purchasing vintage bows:
1) I like old things
2) save some trees
3) old things are cheap
4) quality craftsmanship
I just finished rehairing one of the bows. I'll rehair one or two more later in the week, when more horse hair arrives. The first batch of hair was white unbleached 31 inch horse hair from China ($6). I'm getting some darker hair (solely for the dark natural color) from a seller in the US. We haven't agreed on a price yet, but hopefully they can compete with China.
When looking at a violin bow I never thought that rust would be an issue, but the threaded nut within the stick (which pulls the frog and hair taught) is very susceptible to rust, and seems to be the downfall of most vintage bows. The force required to loosen a rusted screw is tremendous. Imagine loosening a rusted screw from within an eight inch thick wooden tube, without being able to use the wood as leverage for fear of damaging the stick. Even without using the stick as leverage, the simple twisting action of the nut could rip the wood apart... and did. I lost one of my 6 bows this way. The lost bow was beyond repair... but could be made into a shorter bow.
