Products November 2022: Coloured bow frogs

‘It was supposed to be a small retirement project,’ says now-retired Canadian violin and bow maker Charles Long, ‘but it became much larger than that!’ The luthier recently launched a series of colourful epoxy resin frogs, which were originally already mounted on intermediate-level black carbon-fibre bows. They will soon be available separately to mount on wooden bows. It took three years of experimentation, Long says, to achieve a design that was both aesthetically pleasing and to his standard of performance. ‘The resin is lighter than traditional ebony, so I made a wider ferrule and ribbon of hair to increase the weight and give a better grip.’ The silk winding is also dyed to match the resin’s colour, and the rest of the frog is made from traditional materials such as silver and leather…