too much col legno...
 

i knew it, when i read the thread title...
was it a good bow?

A €3000 Otto Dölling. I never knew if it was pernambuco or snakewood, though... now that the wood is in plain sight, does anybody have eyes sharp enough to tell me?

pernambuco imho.

my deepest condolences.

(thats why i bought a 30€ yitamusic carbon bow...)

did it really happen while playing col legno?
what piece did you play?

Thanks.
I would've brought my sturdy bow of Romanian origin on my exchange year, but there was only room for one in the case so I left that at home... my bad.
I should get a CF. I should've gotten one long ago. I could survive the loss of the bow, and my stupidity of not buying a CF earlier, if it wasn't that I might have screwed things up insurance-wise, too... :o

It was a piece by a jazz composer, Erlend Skomsvoll by name. The bass section is supposed to keep a steady, bluesy groove throughout the piece and has to be heard through a big wind section. I thought I would spare the bow by hitting the string with the hair hard enough that the strings slap against the fingerboard and make a 'legno' sound... turned out there are no good way to play a loud col legno with a wooden bow. ;)
Then, there was a thin, dark ring in the wood where the bow snapped. I think there was some weakness.

i tought of something like this when i saw the partially clean cut

Yeah, I don't think it affected the sound while it was whole, but it is probably what made this happen. I will try to get the pieces together somehow, I've seen bows repaired with some glue and some fishing line, but that's been closer to the tip where I believe tension is lower than in the middle of the stick. A colleague tells me he has put some super duper glue from hell on a couple of cheap bows that had been broken by the middle, and they had kept together ever since. That's the worst case scenario, I believe. Better than throwing it away, anyway, and it could make a good secondary bow. Hopefully, though, some proper luthier or bow maker will accept the task of reviving it.

BTW, I just realized I posted in the wrong category. Scrolled the index page from bottom to top and picked the first theme that seemed fit. Dang. This just ain't my day. ;)

Okay. The bow has been stuck in the Norwegian customs for three weeks. They asked me for sme signature allowing them to open the package. I gave it to them. Still nothing. Now it seems like they'll return it to me. Gah. I hate this country.