How to clean your carbon fiber bow: Tutorial with bowmaker Bernd Müsing

Cleaning the bow of a violin, viola, violoncello or double bass is actually much easier than you think. If you do it regularly it will help to mantain a good grip and beautiful sound of your bow.
(Rehairing a bow is only necessary when the bow has too little hair - meaning that 5% of the hairs are broken).

A lot of times, players are bothered by noises their bow makes. It's called string noise but it's actually not a string noise, it's a rosin noise: You either have a buildup of rosin (=you simply have too much on it) which you can fight by just combing it out with a little comb and/or wipe it off with a dry paper towel.
Or it's a combination of rosin and dirt (rosin works like a glue), and then you might want to remove it completely.

These are the single steps for cleaning all parts of your bow, including the stick and the hair:
(Caution! Some of the follwing steps are not recommended for wooden bows!!)

For the stick/silver parts:
1. Polish the silver parts of your bow with a silver polish cloth.
2. Regularly wipe rosin and dirt off the stick with a dry cloth (that you keep in your violin case)
3. If there's already a buildup: Wipe the stick with a damp cloth. Use methylated spirits/denatured alcohol.

For the hair:
1. Too much rosin on the bow: Simply wipe it off with a dry paper towel or comb it out with a little comb.
2. Easy method that also works for wooden bows to remove rosin and dirt from the hair: Pour some denatured alcohol/methylated spirits on a paper towel and thoroughly wipe the bow hair until all the residual rosin is removed.
3. "Radical" method (not recommended for wooden bows) for washing the hair: Pour denatured alcohol/methylated spirits directly over the hair. Wipe of the alcohol with a dry paper towel.

After cleaning the hair with alcohol (step 2-3), let it rest until it's completely dry. Now comb it to seperate all hairs. Finally apply a little fresh rosin and it's ready to go.

Make sure that you do all steps including denatured alcohol far away from your instrument, as alcohol is very dangerous for its varnish. Please be careful with this procedure with other bows than an ARCUS or MÜSING, as their varnish or paint may suffer.

More information for taking care of your bow:
https://www.arcus-muesing.de/en/servi...
https://www.muesing.eu/en/care-and-se...

Find out more great things about our bows on https://www.arcus-muesing.de/en/home....

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A big thank you to the fabulous Alexander String Quartet for letting us use their fantastic performance of the Dvořák Piano Quintet in A Major, Op 81 - III. Scherzo:
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