Violin and Fiddle Bow Rehairing

By Ryan Thomson

This started out as a reply to a

beginnng fiddler who wrote to me

asking if they should try rehairing their

own bow. I intend to gradually update

this page with more bow rehairing

information.

In this picture, Ryan is learning

rehairing from Arnold Bone at UNH

Summer Violin Institute.

You could look for someone in your

area to apprentice with, or take a bow

rehairing class yourself at the"Summer Violin Institute," at UNH, Durham, New Hampshire,

USA. Give them a call to get the course schedule sent to you- 603-862-2015. Also, there is a

good book by Harry Wake on bow rehairing. I met Harry a few years back, at his home in San

Diego, and bought a bow from him.

From my experience, its almost impossible to rehair a bow properly by yourself without

training and some specialized bench tools. I learned this during a summer course in bow

rehairing at the University of New Hampshire. Even though I took the course, learned to

rehair, and I'm pretty skilled with tools, I still send my own bows out to persons in my area

who rehair bows for a living.

I could rehair a bow if I had to, but its much easier to let a pro do it. Learning to rehair

bows quickly and accurately takes lots of time and practice, just like playing an

instrument! Knowing what I know now about bows, I would never recommend that a

beginner try it from scratch, except on a real "junker," for fun. Its really easy to damage a

nice bow if you don't know what you are doing!

I've briefly described and illustrated the construction of violin bows in my book, The Fiddle

and Violin Buyer's Guide. There are also many other sources for violin related information in

the book.

This article written by Ryan J Thomson, 2000