Guido

Very helpful, much appreciated.

Anyone seen any online tutorials on how to best do a (faux) whalebone lapping?

That's not it. If you try it, you will understand my hesitation to spell it out :-)

It distinguishes ivory from all other materials, but I suppose elephant and mammoth would be the same (not having tested mammoth).

If you give it a little polish it will be keen to leave a white trail even on 4000 micromesh. Then, if you have a smell of the material on the micromesh, it will be extremely distinctive and strangely familiar, possibly with a gender bias.

Do you know more about Goldin, its composition and use? And the time frame of its use? I would suspect it could be a troublesome material as it really looks quite convincing when polished. The hexagonal shape must be quite experimental then, if not even you have come across something like it. On the other hand, they did seem to mean it, making a matching hexagonal button for it! And also, whoever produced it, didn't position it at the very entry level, as it sports a genuine ivory face and had some remnants of genuine whalebone on it. But I guess these materials were not at all special back then. One feature of interest I'd like to re-visit: the screw that fixes the underslide. I have often seen the use of only one screw in this position at Bubenreuth trade bows. However, the OP bow seems older. Have you (or anyone) ever seen the underslide fixed with only one screw like this on a pre WW2 bow?

It’s was only about half of the black left on the bow, no white, no leather. But it would be interesting to know about the bow

So how is this for example? Its all black but has a greenish middle under black light.

Is there a way to tell if whalebone lapping on a bow is the real thing rather than a later imitation product?

The face has returned a positive test for ivory. Some better pictures of the wood and head after some more cleaning and in better light. The head still looks a bit rough :-)

Btw, now that you had me double check and count facets… the button is hexagonal, too!

Hexagonal indeed, butt to head. This being a bit unusual is the main reason for posting the bow. The wood is hard to tell under a good bit of varnish, which had at some point taken some heat damage and been messed with. Overall, the fittings appear better than the stick though. Also, maybe worth mentioning, the face appears to be ivory. bit of a curiosity item.

A rather odd bow, maybe someone knows more about "these". The stick is indeed hexagonal (not octagonal), and the mounts are odd in a few ways. The metal oxidises with some orange-brown tarnish, but when cleaned, looks deceivingly like gold, even typical bow gold with a little red in the colour. I assume it's not real gold, but I thought I ask on the off-chance: often jewellery gold contains only 1/3 gold, mixed with other metals... could the gold content here be even lower or some other metal present in the alloy lead to the oxidisation? The screw to fix the underslide has a curiously off-centre slot, sometimes seen when hand-cut. The mounts have a quality touch and feel to them and are made with a high degree of precision overall. Bow and frog have matching assembly marks (III), applied with some care. It shows typical German features, but I haven't seen anything quite like it before. The position of the single screw to fix the underslide is something familiar from Bubenreuth though.

German mass produced violin around 1900 in a typical Stainer model that has very little to do with a Stainer violin. The label is just bollocks all around.

I'm aware of Laberte's range of bow output... Just wondering if there is any significance to bows stamped "Laberte" vs "Marc Laberte"? Was this intended to signify a difference in quality, or was it used at different times?

The bridge looks like you can't possibly know how it sounds. Anyhow, $450 is super cheap if it doesn't have any issues. But price/value is very circumstantial...

350 is full size, many classical examples. Plenty of places/times where 350-352 was the rule rather than the exception.

Yes, I think that's it. Well done. Chapeau!

Tourte doesn’t seem to fit very well. I was thinking it might be the brand of a shop, rather than a maker. It’s a nickel mounted Mirecourt trade bow (pretty sure). It could even read BOYER, or something starting with R. It’s probably impossible to read unless you happen to look at a clear version of the brand on another stick. Long shot…

Anyone have any idea what the brand is supposed to read?

Seems to be a 3/4 size. One of the bows is noticeable short in the case, too.

Might be easier to fabricate something to "mount" the bow on the tool rest and take the tail stock off altogether?

This is from the Stagg book and looks like you won't easily get there starting from a new mini lathe?

These new mini lathes generally start at 50rpm. I suppose one could swirl the head around at that speed when mounting the handle in the head stock. Is that what people do? I have no practical experience in this regard and just assumed it was a bad idea... and rather try to turn the drill than bow.

I've been drilling screw holes into bow handles with a free standing drill press, the bow held vertically by a table vice with most of the bow protruding down through the table. You get the picture. Now I'm about to buy a new mini lathe for many reasons (something like Sieg C3, but let's not discuss mini lathe brands and models). I would like to then also use the mini lathe to drill the screw holes in bow handles and wonder how to go about the necessary modifications. John Stagg (in his book) suggests a set-up that is actually somewhat similar to my drill press solution - just horizontal instead of vertical. He puts the drill bit into the headstock, which sounds easy enough, and makes sense as you want the drill rotating, not the bow. Then he modifies the tailstock with a 4-jaw chuck to hold the bow, which is protruding out the tail stock bore at the other end. This last bit about the tailstock sounds troublesome. Any practical advice and guidance for this? Also, if you clear out the tailstock bore to feed the bow through you'd lose the hand wheel and the ability to extend the tailstock towards the headstock... how are you supposed to move the bow butt and the drill towards each other? What am I missing here?