To cut a long story short, I received 3 bows recently - 2 "old" and 1 brand new as gifts. While the old bows are wonderfully easy to identify as pernambuco and have clear "personalities" which I am surprisingly happy with (the folks who bought them have no knowledge or experience with anything bow/violin or musically related), the new bow baffles me completely.
Initially I dismissed it as a probable inexpensive chinese hard wood bow with a "nice" frog until I took the time to examine and put it through a few "hurdles", the sound was strangely "very pleasant" as was the handling. Upon close inspection it turns out there are what seems to be very faint wood weave marks which apparently seem to be colored the same hue as the varnish itself making it very hard to distinguish without a close look over (sad choice for varnish color!). What's also intriguing is the fact my father (competent jeweler) seems to believe the metallic fixtures are an actual silver compound, most likely stirling silver as the scratch test did not reveal any sort of coating and the porcelain indicated silver as well as the sheen and coloration but ofc he himself states there is margin for error o0
I am pretty sure it a chinese bow, I'm just confused as to what it's made out of and if the craftsmanship is decent by modern standards?
What do you all think? The tip is obviously bone, the edge work and tip seem very clean and it does not die out on me no matter what I seem to do to it.
