Fig. 115. plans for an egyptian fiddle
How to Make the Bow.
—The best kind of wood to make a violin bow of is Brazilian lance-wood or of snake-wood, but for this one stringed fiddle of yours you can use a piece of beech.
Take a strip of wood ¹⁄₂ an inch thick, 1 inch wide and 24 inches long and saw it out as shown at D; then round up the stick and sandpaper it smooth. Cut out two blocks to fit the ends, or frogs as they are called: drill a hole in each one and screw it to the bow but not very tight.
Fig. 115d. how the bow is made
Now comes the hard part and that is putting on the hairs; get 50 or 60 white horsehairs about 2 feet long; I do not advise pulling them out of Dobbin’s tail but rather to buy a bunch of them from Sears, Roebuck, and Co., Chicago, Ill., for 10 or 20 cents.
Having got them somehow put one end of each one under one of the blocks and when you have them all even and close together screw the block down tight; this done fasten the other ends of the hairs under the opposite block, and when you have them all drawn taut screw down the block and put a little glue on the places where they go under the blocks.
If you will look at a horsehair through a microscope you will see that it seems very like the scroll saw blade I told you about in the second chapter, that is, it has a lot of fine teeth on it and all of them run the same way. By rights then half of the hairs ought to be put on the bow with the teeth running in one direction and the other half with the teeth running in the other direction so that the friction of the hairs is the same on the string on the up and the down strokes.