Jeff Krieger

Given that a church bass string length is approx. 3-4" longer than the standard cello, should the sound post be thicker?

Using a cork with a hole in it and the back of a hammer in a vise as above worked great! Thanks for all of the input and ideas.

Great!

Are there any other methods to remove a broken bow screw from and button besides using a piece of wood with a hole and an eyelet?

I have a nice German bass bow that needs a new ebony button. The problem is that is is slightly oversized at the end of the stick. It measures 14 mm. Is there anyone interested in making me one with a straight screw or know where I can find one?

I probably should have stopped at saying I am still looking for a very dark finish.

I have tried just UV and it does darken the wood making it look more antique. I have also tried ammonia (not lab grade) and nitric acid. I am still looking for a very dark finish. I am told that potential bow clients almost always pick up the bows from a pile that are dark first to audition.

Hi, I didn't use lab grade ammonia so this is very helpful to me. Was the ammonia enough to darken the pernambuco?

I am looking to finish a cello bow made of pernambuco wood and would like to know about successful, alternative ways of getting a dark finish. I have used ammonia and nitric acid. Are there other methods to get a very dark, even finish? Thanks, Jeff

Sorry, I stand corrected.

It took under an hour. I am still looking for 2 mm carbon fiber rods. Everyone seems to be sold out.

Great sketch! Thanks so much! I need to work on this and will report the results.

Somehow I need to securely mount such a clamp off the edge of the table.

I am still in the set up/experimentation stage of this repair. If I go in the direction of a spline, I will still need a suitable clamp to work with a Taig mini lathe pictured in an earlier post. Any more ideas on this would be much appreciated. This weekend I did a ebony dowel repair on a cheap broken cello bow as an experiment. I made the hole and dowel 2.5 mm just because that is the drill bit I happened to have. This was an experiment. I first glued the 2 pieces together with G2, rather than just super glue. I tried to pull apart the repair but it is strong. I believe it really comes down to the glue. I have repaired broken sticks with G2, one in 2 places, and it has held for several years now. However, I think a carbon fiber rod is a great idea and I plan to try this as well.

Another repair person gave me a violin bow that had a spline repair but it came apart. It had a metal spline. It was such a mess I couldn't use it even for practice.