Split cane bows

[Whittler]

On 11/4/2022 at 4:41 AM, HoGo said:

I wonder if he rotated the split cane pieces 60 degrees for glue up (they're showing the grain)?  AFAIK, most split cane rods or arrows are made with the outer hard/strong layer of bamboo left as is on the outside of the rod/ shaft (except minimal smoothing at nodes and some final smoothing).

No, the split "cane" / bamboo pieces were not rotated- they're in the normal rind-outward orientation. Those grain striations are showing because an excessive amount of the outermost rind was removed. This typically is caused by flat scraping / block-sanding of an inherently curved surface. Better grade rods are not flat faceted- the facets retain their natural sl. curvature, and larger diameter whole bamboo culms are generally preferred as raw material, since they yield flatter split strips to begin with. The usual heat tempering process (generally done early on, before tapering of the splines and glue-up) will tend to sl. flatten this curvature further. The rest of this post is quite correct- optimally, as little of the outer enamel as possible is removed, and striated appearance should be minimal. Node work should be neat and rel. small. Starting with good raw material (culms having small nodal dams, not big "knobby-kneed" ones) helps a lot in this regard. Any balance problems with bamboo bows would be entirely due to design flaws, and certainly not inherent to the material, which imo is superbly suited to this application. 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

Bow makers should just grow new slender bamboo shoots a few feet long and skip all this cutting, joining and gluing parts of big sections.

Nature knows how to design light weight stiff things. I recommend the paperback book: "Plant Biomechanics-an Engineering Approach to Plant Form and Function" by Karl j. Niklas, The University of Chicago Press, 1992

[Whittler]

There are E. Asian instruments which traditionally use bows made from whole slender bamboo stalks, much as you describe, Marty. Agree, nature's designs are incomparable. Just for one example out of a zillion: the fiddle-head scroll, derived from the naturally graceful fern shoot, wherein, like a nautilus shell and too many other instances to name, the Golden Mean is expressed. Though some are remarkably good (or even astoundingly good) at whittling them up into fiddles and such, no luthier will ever make a tree.

[Ratcliffiddles]

On 11/4/2022 at 11:39 AM, baroquecello said:

As a player, I'd hold absolutely nothing against them, or any alternative material, as long as it plays well and is appropriately priced. If anyone want to sell a cello bow of this type, I'd be potentially interested.

I have one somewhere...funnily enough, it used to belong to a baroque cellist

[jacobsaunders]

1 hour ago, Ratcliffiddles said:

I have one somewhere...funnily enough, it used to belong to a baroque cellist

I have two Cocker Split Cane viola bows in my front room. Apart from an (English) customer in Klagenfurt who uses one, nobody in Austria has ever heard of Split Cane bows, and it is almost impossible to even get anyone to try one out

[Marty Kasprzyk]

8 hours ago, Whittler said:

There are E. Asian instruments which traditionally use bows made from whole slender bamboo stalks, much as you describe, Marty. Agree, nature's designs are incomparable. Just for one example out of a zillion: the fiddle-head scroll, derived from the naturally graceful fern shoot, wherein, like a nautilus shell and too many other instances to name, the Golden Mean is expressed. Though some are remarkably good at whittling them up into fiddles and such, no luthier will ever make a tree.

Tree nurseries often grow young trees in thin transparent plastic tubes to ensure the trees grow straight upward.

I suggest that a curved plastic grow tube be used for the bamboo shoots to have them grow with the proper bow bend shape. 

[David Burgess]

"Grow-your-own" bows.

[Andrew tkinson]

17 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

Tree nurseries often grow young trees in thin transparent plastic tubes to ensure the trees grow straight upward.

I suggest that a curved plastic grow tube be used for the bamboo shoots to have them grow with the proper bow bend shape. 

I may have posted a photo like this before? This screenshot shows a chair formed from a young tree trained over years to form a chair-like shape. I wonder if pernambuco has ever or is being grown in tubes to encourage branch free bow length young tree trunks?

I reckon a chair like this, maybe without the 'armrests' would be nice to sit in whilst playing your fiddle with a home grown bamboo bow? It would be even better if you could grow a couple of cushions or persuade a very tame sheep to be living upholstery?

 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

1 hour ago, Andrew tkinson said:

I may have posted a photo like this before? This screenshot shows a chair formed from a young tree trained over years to form a chair-like shape. I wonder if pernambuco has ever or is being grown in tubes to encourage branch free bow length young tree trunks?

I reckon a chair like this, maybe without the 'armrests' would be nice to sit in whilst playing your fiddle with a home grown bamboo bow? It would be even better if you could grow a couple of cushions or persuade a very tame sheep to be living upholstery?

 

Thanks!   I looked at their website https://fullgrown.co.uk/about-us-full-grown/ and this is a really big effort.

Growing bows would be simple in comparison. I wonder what wood would be best.

[baroquecello]

4 hours ago, Andrew tkinson said:

I may have posted a photo like this before? This screenshot shows a chair formed from a young tree trained over years to form a chair-like shape. I wonder if pernambuco has ever or is being grown in tubes to encourage branch free bow length young tree trunks?

I reckon a chair like this, maybe without the 'armrests' would be nice to sit in whilst playing your fiddle with a home grown bamboo bow? It would be even better if you could grow a couple of cushions or persuade a very tame sheep to be living upholstery?

 

250 Pounds for a tour of the orchard ?!?!?!

[Andrew tkinson]

On 8/3/2024 at 2:52 PM, baroquecello said:

250 Pounds for a tour of the orchard ?!?!?!

I do admit that seems a bit expensive, if the tour is that much I wonder how much one of the chairs costs? I suppose it does look like a lot of work and time is spent on each chair so they are trying to get a bit of revenue in any way they can? Hopefully, as part of the tour, you might get given a few tree seeds/magic beans or even be allowed to take a chair cutting or two so you can try growing a chair or beanstalk of your own?

As Marty says, growing wood for bow sticks, should be a lot less elaborate. I would envisage a tube or some other means of encouraging the seedlings to form branch/knot free trunks, I would be surprised if this is not being already done with permambuco? I do wonder if some trees or more likely shrubby trees, which are nice and dense and elastic but are usually naturally a bit too crooked for bow use, could be forced to grow into straight long bow length pieces. I wonder if some trees or shrubs could be pollarded to encourage the tree to produce straight wand type poles suitable for instrument bows a bit like the way willow 'wands' or rods are sometimes cultivated? Some trees (such as ash) seem to produce denser wood when grown fast so a species that has this tendency may be able to produce a regular crop of bow suitable wood?

I do admit, though, that I am no aboriculturalist so this may be all nonsense but if this all failed at least the reject sticks could be used for firewood/kindling and maybe save some old well loved, inherited,  old violins from the fire?

[David Burgess]

On 8/2/2024 at 11:25 AM, Marty Kasprzyk said:

Tree nurseries often grow young trees in thin transparent plastic tubes to ensure the trees grow straight upward.

I suggest that a curved plastic grow tube be used for the bamboo shoots to have them grow with the proper bow bend shape. 

Add a crook at the top of the tube, and one might have a continuous-grained and stronger head, than the typical method of using a cross-grained head. .

[Whittler]

On 8/4/2024 at 7:54 AM, Andrew tkinson said:

"I do admit that seems a bit expensive..."

Maybe that includes hookers and unlimited booze. Probably not, though.

That's a neat chair- thx for posting the pic.

 

[Whittler]

W/ re. to the member who previously posted about making bamboo / "cane" bows in Japan, madake (a native bamboo of Japan, traditionally used over centuries for archery bows there) is said to be a little lower in modulus (Young's) compared to Chinese "tea stick" bamboo, but clearly has plenty of stiffness-per-mass to make fine musical bows. It is also used in Japan for making traditional fishing rods.

[Dave Slight]

Some pictures of how the nodes look on a finished bow.

Cocker called these built cane bows. I can’t help feeling he missed a trick, by not calling it the Bambow