Shopmade Luthier Tools #15: Improved bow hair gauge out of brass

My first hair gauge [link] wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be so I kept an upgrade in the back of my head. The other night I spotted this string gauge [Below] and it inspired me to make something extremely similar to measure bow hair.

I made this new hair gauge using brass strip 1/2 inch wide and about 2 inches long. I used a wood coffee stirer to space them apart about 1/16 of an inch and soldered a brass cleat along one edge on both sides. Then I cleaned it up with my bench grinder, random orbit sander and a polishing block. I drilled a hole in the joined end to allow a lanyard for hanging. Theoretically I will hang this near the hank of hair, which, from what I’ve seen, is usually stored in the hanging position.

I used my re-haired 4/4 bow and my new Cheap-A 1/4 size bow to mark the volume of hair for each. The marks are not very far apart, so I doubt that I’ll need marks for a 1/2 size or 3/4 size. We’ll see what happens when I get into viola, cello, and base bows. Effectively I have 4 surfaces to make marks, one for each type of instrument so I should be okay.

Check out the other luthier tools I’ve made here:[link]

-- Ni faru ion el ligno!