Trouble applying rosin

[James Banner]

Hi,

I started playing DB last week and my teacher said I needed some rosin for the bow since it wasn't gripping the strings that well. So, I ordered this Pirastro P9022 Double Bass Rosin and today it came in the post. The thing is, I can't seem to get the rosin on the bow, since the top of the block is concave (curved inwards); imagine like a less exaggerated "U" shape. I can't push the bow along the rosin at all as it is "foil wrapped". So what I did was get a penny and scraped the top of the rosin, which was brown, until I had some white powder form of rosin, then I tipped this onto the bow hairs and just smoothed it along with the edge of the block.

Is there a way I am meant to apply this stuff? It's as hard as rock so should I just remove the foil to get easier access to the rosin block itself? The foil is more like thinnish metal more than anything but I think I could get it off with a Stanley knife. Bear in mind no-one has ever shown me how to apply rosin and I am a noob

James

PS. The cylindrical box the foil wrapped rosin came in has a circle cut out of the bottom for some reason

[Andrew McGregor]

Just remove a little bit of the foil (couple of mm), then rub the bow hair on the rosin cake in long smooth strokes. Try to avoid the ferrule or the tip hitting the rosin, cleaning them up is a pest and you don't want rosin on your fingers while you're playing.

When the rosin cake wears down to the foil, take a bit more of the foil off. It helps if you don't try to keep the top of the cake flat, but more wear it into a cone shape, because then you can get more of it at the end. When you get your next cake you can take all the foil off the last one and melt them together so you don't waste any.

[James Banner]

Originally Posted by Andrew McGregor

Just remove a little bit of the foil (couple of mm), then rub the bow hair on the rosin cake in long smooth strokes. Try to avoid the ferrule or the tip hitting the rosin, cleaning them up is a pest and you don't want rosin on your fingers while you're playing.

When the rosin cake wears down to the foil, take a bit more of the foil off. It helps if you don't try to keep the top of the cake flat, but more wear it into a cone shape, because then you can get more of it at the end. When you get your next cake you can take all the foil off the last one and melt them together so you don't waste any.

Thanks for the help. Any idea why the top of the rosin is brown and shiny whilst the rosin itself is white?

James

[Andrew McGregor]

Rosin is a kind of varnish. The powder that goes on your bow is white because it has a very rough and broken up surface, but if you dissolve rosin in alcohol it makes a good shellac varnish, and gets the brown colour and a good shiny finish.

[Jake]

Also, you may want to try a different rosin. I've never seen Pirastro rosin. They do make some good strings, but you may want to try some of the more popular rosin like Pops, Oak, Kolstein, Nyman's, or Carlsson.

[dchan]

From your description of the Pirastro rosin, I think Ideal made a similar rosin. It was also hard as a rock and was really hard to apply during the winter. My school had a whole box full of these, probably because we had a connection with Ideal. All in all, it was an okay rosin, just not as good as the other rosins mentioned above. Too bad my only other choice was some Petz, which was much softer and too goopy.

[James Banner]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I took off some of the foil as suggested and the rosin went on the bow just fine

James