Melted rosin on bow

fdeck · #1 07-11-2009, 09:09 PM

Getting out my bow at the gig today, it looked like it had no rosin on it at all. Indeed, the rosin had probably melted while the bass was in my car. It's Pop's. I swiped on a bit more rosin, and the bow seemed to play fine.

Do I have a problem, or should I just ignore it?

MDEbass · #2 07-11-2009, 09:20 PM

If it plays fine, I assume you may be in good shape? To be safe though, I would take a toothbrush that you dont use and run it through the bow to clean it if you need to. When I do this, I usually have the bow hair tension around medium to low. I do this every now and then and it cleans my hair just fine.

fdeck · #3 07-11-2009, 11:00 PM

What kind of toothpaste do you use?

Just kidding. Thanks for the tip.

fergus currie · #4 07-12-2009, 02:40 AM

Here's another tip for old rosin caked at the frog on French bows. Tighten the bow and rub a sugar cube over the filth that gathers where your indexfinger touches the bow. Soon the hair will be clean and you can use the extra 2 inches again!.
I also doubt your rosin melted and was no longer on the hair. Parts of rosin evaporate and sometimes in dry conditions in the cold the crystslised dust will be knocked off (ususally consiously by the player by 'frisking' the bow). Pops is very 'meltable' but the amount on the bow shouldn't be enough to form drops and fall off the bow.

Another idea that I have tried in the past is to shampoo your bow hair. dont use any condtioner of course since this smooths the roughness that maks the bow work! Then re rosin the bow with powderised rosin and a dry cloth. After that you can use normal rosin. I use Nymans and I put on about one swipe (yes only one) a day.

fdeck · #5 07-12-2009, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fergus currie

Here's another tip for old rosin caked at the frog on French bows. Tighten the bow and rub a sugar cube over the filth that gathers where your indexfinger touches the bow. Soon the hair will be clean and you can use the extra 2 inches again!.
I also doubt your rosin melted and was no longer on the hair. Parts of rosin evaporate and sometimes in dry conditions in the cold the crystslised dust will be knocked off (ususally consiously by the player by 'frisking' the bow). Pops is very 'meltable' but the amount on the bow shouldn't be enough to form drops and fall off the bow.

Another idea that I have tried in the past is to shampoo your bow hair. dont use any condtioner of course since this smooths the roughness that maks the bow work! Then re rosin the bow with powderised rosin and a dry cloth. After that you can use normal rosin. I use Nymans and I put on about one swipe (yes only one) a day.

I had assumed that the small amount of rosin had melted and re-solidified on the hair, so it would no longer appear to be powdery. Thanks for the tip on cleaning the filth -- my son's cello bow needs this treatment. He's six, what can I expect?

ZonGuy · #6 07-13-2009, 10:57 AM

Thanks for the pointer about summer heat , before you mentioned that I couldnt concieve how you could melt the rosin except if you used your bow to toast marshmallows.

Its scorching down here - 109F according to my car thermometer, couldnt guess how hot it got inside a closed up car.

Square Bear · #7 07-13-2009, 12:08 PM

yeah, rosin gets a little sticky just keeping it in your pocket. direct sunlight in the summer is the worst, especially if you live somewhere hot like i do. i keep a white towel to cover my bass with while it's in the car on the way to gigs. it reflects the heat away from the instrument (unlike a black mooradian bag which absorbs the heat). nothing worse than getting to the gig and you can't grip the string and the bass is adjusting to the temp change and going out of tune every five seconds... i just get to the gig a little earlier in the summer and take the instrument out of the case and leave it in the hall for 10 mins before i play it at all sometimes. i guess the freeway flyer thing is pretty hard on basses.

bejoyous · #8 07-14-2009, 12:24 PM

Here's what MartinT wrote to me regarding melted Kolstien soft rosin.

You can stretch another month or two out of your hair if it isn't a good time to get a rehair, as well.

CitruSolve. Safe and very effective. I learned this from my esteemed teacher the other day. I had the same problem with Pops: There was so much rosin on the hair that I couldn't play for 5 minutes without having to scrape the build-up from the strings with a piece of 0000 steel wool.

Here's how it works:

- Get a bottle of CitruSolve from your local hardware or health food store
- Poor about 150 ml or so in a small glass or metal bowl.
- Completely loosen the screw to take the frog off.
- Soak the hair in the CitruSolve, working with you fingers to dissolve the rosin from the hairs
- Wash the hair under tepid running water. Runoff will look turbid initially, wash until runoff is clear, while rubbing the hair with your fingers to make sure you get everything out.
- Use a clean towel to press water from the hair
- Air dry for about an hour

This results in very clean bow hair, similar to a rehair, so you need to rosin up as you would after a rehair.

The nice thing is that the CitruSolve does not damage any finish as ethanol would. I was at first a bit apprehensive when my teacher cleaned my bow this way, but BOY what a difference it made. He has cleaned his Sartori bow many times using this method.