After our little mini-festival, we ended up selling a few of our loaner bows... these are the cheaper factory bows that we lend out to people who play with us as apprentices, in large ensemble festivals, or when we are directing an amateur ensemble.

They aren't crazily great bows by any means... they are functional, and give an initial first taste of how these bows respond differently to the heavier modern violin bows.... and along with that, part of the reasoning behind why we interpret Baroque and Classical music so differently to our modern Classical instrument colleagues.

Even though I wouldn't personally use them as regular bows, I have occasionally used one as an emergency bow... they do sound duller and less well balanced than my regular ones... but the price difference is obviously quite different to an artisan crafted bow!

Still... the average quality of these factory bows are good enough, and we stress that they are definitely nothing more than a starter beginner bow. But people are still keen to buy them as a first starter bow... and so, we do end up selling them as well.

We do cull the worst of the bows from a batch... and they are ranked in order of whether or not I am likely to use them. So, that is how we do our pricing... but even still, we are selling them cheaper than most shops, and the buyers can pick and choose whatever they like from the ones that we have in stock.

And seeing as we did sell a few, we did need to restock... and this time, we ordered 5 violin bows and a single viola bow. No need for a cello bow at the moment, as we still have a few of those. The violin ones are the ones that tend to go.

... and just in time as well, as I am making a trip... and there were some participants in our earlier festival that were keen to introduce some of their friends to these bows!

So, it is a bit of a sideline income for our ensemble... which is different enough to the more problematic representation of a particular bow artisan that we had issue with earlier. These ones are only starter cheap bows, and we are definitely NOT endorsing them as anything more than that. The artisan one... well, that was a little bit trickier with the commission, and the amount of money that each bow would need to be sold for!

Have to get these properly recorded for the ensemble's asset register though... photos of the frog and tip, a weight, and description... and then the rough pricing as well. Luckily enough, this batch didn't have anything that needed to be culled immediately. The last one had a couple of really bad ones which are now serving duty in the garden as stakes.

Handy Crypto Tools

Infinex: The future of self-custodied crypto wallets. Simple but powerful to use, made for normies!
Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Coinbase Wallet: Multi chain wallet with lots of opportunities to Learn and Earn!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
WooX: The centralised version of WooFi. Stake WOO for fee-free trades and free withdrawals! This link also gives you back 25% of the commission.
GMX.io: Decentralised perpetual futures trading on Arbitrum!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
KuCoin: I still use this exchange to take part in the Spotlight and Burning Drop launches.
MEXC: Accepts HIVE, and trades in most poopcoins! Join the casino!
ByBit: Leverage and spot trading, next Binance?
OkX: Again, another Binance contender?