Faux snakewood bow head graft

I don't know if I can call this a tutorial, since it's more what NOT to do! But the ending is happy.

One of the bows in my 3-bows-for-$20 lot was painted in an extremely obvious faux snakewood pattern and missing the head. The head was visible in the Ebay pictures but not even in the shipping box...explain that one...needless to say I was not thrilled. The frog was also destroyed. There just wasn't much left of it, and if it was painted with this tacky fake pattern, it probably wasn't much to begin with.

However, just for fun, I did the bathtub float test to see how dense the wood was. This bow sank like a rock. Only really dense tropical wood does that -- the good stuff. Maybe it's ironwood. I don't know. At any rate, my curiosity was piqued and I decided to graft the head of my old cheap bow onto it and let it have the plastic frog from it too. It would be a nice repair challenge. I had this design in mind, except of course an un-matching head.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRxqFQoTCP_HpMidhMkCFcFCJgod7lMEdA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maestronet.com%2Fforum%2Findex.php%3F%2Ftopic%2F325936-violn-bow-removing-the-ivoryebony-tip-from-the-head%2F&bvm=bv.106923889,d.eWE&psig=AFQjCNHayqQOGu_rH7wtLgE3h90o0L9xHA&ust=1447189073777371

I spent maybe an hour and a half carving out the head graft. It had a spline about two inches long and an eighth inch thick or less. Very involved work. Here I have the shape roughed out:


Halfway through -- I alternated between sawing through that tough, hard, dark tropical wood and carving my much softer head graft.



It was time for dry-fitting. It was a nice tight fit. Then -- heartbreak. I tugged to pull the graft out of dry-fit to apply glue, and the head snapped off. Oh, why oh why. I went to bed.


I glued the spline in to repair the stick. I had already carved a 2-inch-long slit into my nice bow wood. It was unnecessary -- I could have just done the standard repair for grafting on the original head.


Then I used some walnut veneer to spline on the head.



It worked. It seems to be working, anyway.



Subjectively speaking, the sound from this bow is beautiful. It makes my instrument sound so much warmer. The pull is so smooth. Oh I love it! No one else will ever want this old thing anyway. To me it's a keeper!

(It can't even be blamed on new bow hair -- I temporarily used my old bow hair since I need to play tomorrow, and the new stuff won't get here till Saturday. It's thin and oh so brittle.)

However, a recorded playing test is still needed. I have two more bows to hair when the horsehair arrives in the mail!