My rosin came crisscrossed perfectly. I made a stupid mistake of taking a paperclip and trying to add more roughness to it, a tiny chip fell off and it’s sort of messy and tore up on top.
Should I throw it away? Can too much rough lines and carvings in the rosin cake be harmful to the bow when applying it?
I should add that all the strings align perfectly flat as they glide across it, it’s not interfearing with going back and forth, but I don’t know if it’s causing unseen damage to the hairs.
I always just use a scrap of sandpaper or an emery board. I’ve had them chip, but no problem. I find that the surface has to be roughed up once in a while, especially if humidity has made the surface smooth over. Don’t throw it away.
I’ve seen fiddlers use the most mangled pieces of rosin imaginable, so I wouldn’t worry. Hard to think how you could damage the hair. Maybe just make a few extra passes with an odd-shaped surface. I can’t imagine binning a new cake just because of a chip.
A friend of mine melts down his old rosin chunks and donated discards from others, and cooks them into a nice new rosin cake. Don’t ask me the details.
I second the rosin melting idea. I’ve done this with many cakes before.
-I wrap tin foil around the base of a glass to get a circular shape. Then, I put the old rosin chunks into the foil mold, and ‘bake’ (usually at 350 F) until the rosin has re-molded. Then all you have to do is let it cool, and pull the foil away. I often glue a piece of felt to on flat side of this cake, to be used as a holder, and then wrapped around the cake later.
-Or, if its in one of the wooden liners, just tightly wrap foil around the sides/bottom, and the process is the same.
I’ve used all kinds of gnarly rosin chunks over the years; and have never had any problems with bow hair (I maintain about 10 playing bows at any one time; some of these I’ve been using for upwards of 7 years). I also found a jar of rosin poweder. This is really nice to use when breaking in a new bow; I poor some on a piece of light fabric, and rub it gently into the bow hair to get it saturated. I typically use a quarter to rough up the top of a rosin cake, (much like a scratch lotto ticket). However, after a lot of regular use, the cake curface will become naturally rough (that is, for a circular cake; just alternate the direction you draw the bow across the surface.)
Too much rosin info!!! Sorry…
Never too much info!! I need all the advice I can get.
Well, that was all good news, I don’t think I did any damage.
The make-your-own rosin thing would probably turn into a fire in my house.
The advice you’ve gotten is good…don’t wotty about the chip
Little story here: Like lordofthestrings, I like to use powder to get a new bow started. One time I busted up a solid cake to get a small pile of powder for that purpose. Later on I couldn’t put my hands on a solid cake when I wanted to touch up a bow. I just used a left over chunk of the solid cake that I had tossed into bag holding the powdered rosin.