Will this work? or will the steel strings damage the hair more rapidly than if it were played on synth or gut strings?

Basically should one bow with real horsehair on steel strings?

~ Stravinskysaurus

Yes of course it will work. Apart from anything else, it`s very difficult these days to get bows made of anything other than real horsehair.

Liz

DUH BIG RED TRUCK

Well, I don`t play violin (yet), so I was just wondering. I would have thought that steel would be rough on the horsehair, but I guess it must be tougher than I thought!

Sorry for the misunderstanding. That was kind of a dumb question I suppose.

~ Stravinskysaurus

They experimented with spider silk to replace horsehair, so you wouldn`t need rosin, but it never caught on.

Spider silk has a higher tensile strength than steel, so I guess the silk was damaging the steel strings.

The only dumb question is the one you don`t ask. There are some people on this board who think they know it all (and these people rarely know half as much as they think they do) and have no patience with those who know less than they do. A pity.

Liz

From what I`ve heard, spider silk is supposed to be harder than diamond! I`m pretty sure I heard that from some reliable source. From a Science book or a National Geographic. Something like that . . . But I could be wrong.

If it is true though, no wonder it could cut through steel! That would probably be like playing a razor on paper streamers!

~ Stravinskysaurus

I`ve seen lots of people use non-traditional materials for violin (or bow) parts. I think they`re either expensive or don`t improve anything much. But they`re all good ideas, such as the spider silk one.

Stravinskysaurus,

Steel strings will break long before the horese-hair does, even though a few horse hairs do break every now and then.