Brad Dorsey

That sounds about right.

If the hair-tightening mechanism works to your satisfaction, this is not really a problem. If you stop turning the button once the hair is loose, I don’t think the gap will appear. I think that more turns are now required to tighten the hair because you now have a screw and eyelet with finer threads than the old ones had.

Henley also says that the Reichel/Tecchler bows had whale-bone lapping, which the bow in your pictures appears to have.

Pecatte and some other French makers made some very fine nickel-mounted bows, but they are not considered trade bows. Despite having seen some nickel-mounted trade bows that were better than some silver-mounted trade bows that I have also seen, I think that "all nickel trade bows were lower quality" is still a pretty good general rule.

Either that or he was the prime minister.

I’ve had bows stamped TECCHLER, but I never knew anything about their origin until, consulting Henley just now, I see: “Bows made by C. A. Reichel at Markneukirchen. Brazilian wood imitated to have the appearance of pernambuco...Not refined work...”

Or set up a left-handed violin the regular way.

It's a higher grade than the ones I usually see, too. I can't judge the condition from those pictures.

While holding the body of the cello with one hand, gently pull and twist the neck in every direction with the other. While doing this, look closely at where the neck attaches to the body. If the neck is solidly attached, there will be no movement at the neck/body attachment joint, so there's a better chance that this joint will be able to withstand string tension. If there is motion at the joint, there a good chance that string tension would pull the neck off the body. From your first picture, it is obvious that the neck broke away from the body at some point, and that the damage was b

The authenticity of a violin cannot be confirmed by examining its label.

What about just using a large viola strung with viola strings?

I’d say about $5 for the salvage value of the frog and button.

It is a lot harder to distinguish between them when they're polished, but the polished metal in the other pictures is white like silver; it doesn't have the slight yellowish hue of nickel.

The black tarnish visible on the ferrule and on the button in the last picture of the original post indicates silver.

That's what I see on this bow although, admittedly, we can only see a little bit of the wrapping on this bow. It looks like high-quality imitation whalebone, not the cheap stuff. But the main reason I say it's fake is that I can't imagine that a near-new Chinese bow, as this appears to be, would have real whalebone.