There is a lot of attention being played (dad joke pun) to making violin bows from composite materials. We can put a man on the moon so why are we still using timbers from endangered trees in Brazil to make our violin bows. The answer lies partly in the properties of wood and its resonance characteristics but there are also significant downsides such as expense and fragility. i’ve earnt this first hand as two pre teen age boys can forget its a bow and think instead they are King Arthurs knights. Another is the humidty here in Qld. For me also playing other genres such as rock/country etc.. sometimes the sounds are more percussive and need a strong bow without worrying about damaging it.
Fibreglass bows were forst on the scene, and then along came carbon fibre bows. The advantages of these bows are they are much more reproducable in a factory automated sense, and this means repeatable quality and scaling up of an operation can bring down prices. The problem is care needs to be applied to achieve the same kind of performace as wood. Bows made of these materials are mostly made of epoxy which tends to soak up vibration. So getting enough fibres into the bow and aligned so they propagate sound is important.
I really like the following discourse from a reputable Carbon Fibre bow maker. he does his best to set aside is bias for his own product and talk honestly through what is going on….enjoy.
