How tight is your bow?

[Richard Prowse]

I was practising the other day and working on tone. I suddenly got back into investigating something I had overlooked for quite a while - how tight my bow hair was. Now, I'm no scientist but, it makes sense that hair on a looser bow will make contact with more of the surface area of the string. I loosened my bow until I could easily push it onto the string and make the middle of the stick touch the hair - probably not a good test for German bows, but mine is an ex-French bow and the luthier designed the frog a little differently to keep the balance of the bow pretty much the same as it was as a French bow.
I was just wondering if anyone out there had thoughts on bow tightness, or had a system (eg. 3 complete winds) to keep the tightness of their bow regular.

[Ken Smith]

Depends on how you play. You don't want the hair dragging on the stick. That will break hairs. Play your hardest ffff with the bow and tighten it until your hairs do not hit the string. This can be altered depending on what you are actually playing. Stronger/harder players tighten the bow more on average than lighter players. On average is the key as players do what they like or feel they need. You can do the same. Do what works best for you. No rules here per say.

[Richard Prowse]

Come on Ken, we humans make up rules for everything. Maybe we need to formulate bow tightening rules?
Well, as a guide.

[Terry McDougal]

Somewhere in the middle? You don't want a tight kilt, nor a loose one, for obvious reasons.

[Bin Hire]

Well put Terry!

[Thomas Erickson]

I really don't mean to sound like a jerk, but tightening your bow is something that is so simple it really can't be explained. I mean, if it "bottoms out" it's too loose, and if it's too tight, well, it's too tight. If your bow doesn't seem to be working, you're probably a lot better off looking at your technique or maybe your bow just sucks.