anyone heard of this method for cleaning gummed up rosin?

[tbassist4]

I use pops, and it's an old cake too (new one's in the mail), so my bow hair was very gummed up. One of the graduate students here recommended using violin rosin on the bow, then, on the back side of the hair, running your finger perpendicular to the hair direction, and then using a toothbrush to clean off the gunk. He said the extremely powdery rosin would stick the pops and cause it to flake off. Has anyone heard of this?

I just did this with my bow, mostly because it has a lot of that red plush residue from sticking to my bow case, and it seemed to work very well. I didn't really run my finger across the backside very much, but the toothbrush seemed to work great. The residue is almost gone, and the rest is looking pretty white. I haven't yet tried the bow on my bass, so I 'll have to see if it actually helped, or just ran violin rosin into my bow hair. I'm sure it will be fine, but I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with something like this.

[basshood]

Always use new rosin, fresh pops in the mountian climate is the best! You can clean up your bow hair by loosening you bow as much as possible and running a tooth brush through the hair towards the frog. If your hair is really old and gummed up and you can't get rehair, dip the tooth brush in a little bit of rubbing alcohol, and do the same process. BE CAREFUL NOT TO TOUCH THE WOOD OF THE BOW WITH THE ALCOHOL!!!!! IT WILL RUIN THE WOOD!!!! Let the hair dry before bowing.

[Silversorcerer]

Don't get violin rosin anywhere near a bass bow. Seriously. Once a violinist put some of that on my bow and I thought I'd never get it working short of a rehair. If you have too much rosin on the bow, rehearse until it wears off. Shouldn't take more than a couple of days.

[bejoyous]

Try using Citra-Solv. Read this tread for the full story: Gummed up hair

[Don Higdon]

Originally Posted by basshood

You can clean up your bow hair by loosening you bow as much as possible and running a tooth brush through the hair towards the frog.

I agree with the tooth brush, but disagree on the direction. I go from frog to tip, for the same reason that you apply rosin in that direction.

[tbassist4]

Oh I do, that was basshood's comment, not mine, haha.

[EJ_Dad]

Search for the Denatured Alcahol thread.
It worked great for me, but keep it off the stick.