My dauhgter received her 1st new bow for Christmas. It seems as though it is taking A LOT of rosin to get it to "stick" to the viola`s strings...is this normal??

In the past (and in mine!) she always had rented student bows with god-knows how much rosin embedded in it, so never noticed this effect.

Peter B.

New bows always take quite a long time to rosin. You probably also have brand new rosin, and it will take awhile for it to really be able to work. You`ll have to work with it awhile until the shininess goes away and you begin to see the white dust. Once that happens, rosining for a minute or so SHOULD make it work. If it doesn`t, then the rosin you have may be crappy. You also may need to press harder (so think about doing it yourself if your daughter is fairly young). I`ve seen quite a lot of new bows (I`m a string teacher) and I almost always have to rosin them for my students because they`re not quite sure how to get it going. Hope that helps.

Thanks! Your note reaffirmed my hope/thinking...

Peter

We always scrape new rosin cakes a little with a paring knife, then a new bow takes 10 minutes or more of rosining. Strat man Dwight