The following pictures illustrate each of the steps taken when processing bow hair for the western market. These pictures were taken at our factory in Anping, China.
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99% of
the World's Bow Hair is prepared for the market in
several factories in the city of Anping, about a 4 hour
drive by car from Beijing. The hair itself comes
from inner Mongolia, where it is culled from a variety
of sources including Mongolia and perhaps even Siberia.
But nobody in Anping can actually tell you where exactly
the hair comes from. They vaguely know it is from
the area comprised of Northeast China, Mongolia and
Siberia, but they really don't care. To them, hair
is hair, and the only thing they care about is making
sure it is the best. |
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will be other companies who try to tell you that their
hair is Mongolian or Siberian or whatever, but what I
have learned is that 99% of the hair available in
North America and Europe today for use with bows is
processed Anping, and before that from slaughterhouses
all over the world.
Hair buyers in Anping go to a huge warehouse near the rail yards where animal hair from all over the world arrives in huge bales on pallets. This place is enormous, many football fields in width and length. It is dark, dirty and it stinks of mothballs, feces, urine and blood. Although most of the animal hair has been washed before it arrives here, some of it is not - and the overall stench is overwhelming to the untrained nose. Buyers from workshops all over Anping come here to bid on lots of animal hair. There's boar hair for bristles, cow tails for paint brushes, goat and yak hair, every kind of animal that produces hair can be found here.
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| Horse tail hair is a mess when it arrives at the factory. There is still a lot of work that has to be done to ready it for the market. | |
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All of our horse hair is hand washed using gentle detergents that remove dust, dirt, and other damaging agents. These concrete-lined bins are one of several sets of 2. Hot water goes into the right side and cold in the left. |
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Contrary to common belief, there is no way to tell whether hair is Mongolian or Siberian specifically, as it all comes to the factories in a jumbled mass. It's washed all together, dried together, and then later drawn, sorted, butted out and tied up. After cleaning, the hair is left to dry in another part of the factory. Here, you can see a recently cleaned pile of hair, drying in readiness for our next shipment to a distributor in North America. The air is incredibly dry in this city, and so hair dries very quickly. After drying, the hair is loosely bundled and then brought into the drawing room in bundles of approximately 5 kilos or more. |
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After drying, the hair is loosely bundled and then brought into the drawing room in bundles of approximately 5 kilos or more. |
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Here, two workers are drawing the hair. They take a bundle of cleaned hair and throw it over these metal spikes called "hackles". The process essentially combs out the hair making it easier to handle and to sort. One would think this method would damage the hair, but it surprisingly does not. Horse hair is very sturdy, and it takes a lot more than combing to damage than one would imagine! |
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One of the workers here is shown completing the drawing process. After the hair has been drawn (as shown above), it is wrapped in vertical bales of cardboard paper and tied tightly. The hair is then pulled out of the bundle in strands of 4-6 at a time. Many bad hairs are discarded at this stage of the process. Approximately 1 kilo of hair is being drawn here in loose bundles. This is our Premium Select hair and will be wrapped in paper bundles during the final stage. |
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After the hair is drawn, it is stacked. This is the stage that determines the "grade" of hair we sell. Our hair is graded not by quality of the hair, as all of our horse hair is top quality, but by how well it is sorted and packaged for the industry. |
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Our Quality grade is drawn and the only sorting is what happens from the hackle stage to the bundling and drawing stage. Our Professional grade starts at the Superior level and then goes through a visual sorting process (see below), and is then tied off in the traditional way. Our Premium Select grade starts at the Professional level, goes through a second visual sorting process, is hand tied loosely in three places and then wrapped in a clean opaque sturdy paper, thus protecting it and keeping it safe from damaging UV rays. In this picture, one of the workers is butting out the end of a bundle of double-drawn Premium Select hair. |
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Here is a guillotine/cleaver system used to trim the ends of the bundles (after the butting-out process) |
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In this picture, we are showing you
how the hair is sorted. Loosely tied in the middle of
the bundle, each hair is painstakingly examined for its
elasticity, surface texture, length and weight.
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This is an exacting process and terribly time consuming. Only the most highly trained and experienced workers are allowed to work in this position sorting the hair. |
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In this picture, two of the workers are tying off bundles of bow hair for a shipment to a customer in Europe. Europeans use a higher percentage of black horse hair in their bows than do North Americans. The man with his back to the photographer has been working in this particular workshop for over 40 years. |
I give a popular lecture series called "Horse Tail Hair Production In China". I have worked extensively with the bow hair producers in China as well as the top violin shops and bow makers in North America and Europe, and can explain the whole process in detail.
The lecture takes approximately 2 1/2 hours and includes a slide show presentation, samples and hand-outs. Discounts on opening Bow hair orders for attending students are also available. Here's a sample:
I am a former owner and Bow hair expert with Pioneer Valley Luthier Supply Co. A violinist and world traveler, I have visited the Bow hair factories, taken pictures and videos and worked closely with factory managers to ensure the highest quality Bow hair is available to my customers.