By Laurie Niles: When I was a young violinist I asked my teacher, "How long does rosin last?"
Rosin, derived from tree resin, is that stuff we rub onto the hair of the bow to make it sticky enough to make a sound.
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I wasn't sure if rosin was the kind of thing that "goes bad" after a while (it's not). My teacher, Jim Maurer of Denver, held up his own rosin, a round cake glued to a cloth, definitely a good deal shorter than a new one but worn perfectly flat, no groove in it.
"If you are careful, it can last a very long time," he said, pointing out that he deliberately used a different angle every time to keep the flat surface and avoid creating a groove. And then he added, to my complete astonishment, "This one is 12 years old."
Twelve years old -- that rosin was as old as I was!
I'm not as wowed by that as I used to be - I have a few cakes going on 20 years by now! But as a teacher, I certainly witness a lot of rosin-gone-wrong. For example, one very quick way to wreck a cake of rosin is to drop it on a hard surface. It will shatter like glass!
And while most rosin isn't terribly expensive, replacing it seems to inspire procrastination, as it requires a mail order or a visit to the music store. Very often a student will continue to try using the remaining shards that cling to the cloth or woodblock. Keeping the broken rosin in the case leads to a proliferation of "rosin sand" that spreads around the case and sticks in the corners. It creates such a mess - I feel it's better to throw away rosin that has been cracked or broken!
A slower way that rosin can meet an early demise is the infamous groove, which can get pretty deep and either weaken the integrity of the cake until it breaks, or just become too deep to reasonably get the hair in there.
My current rosin - a nice woodblock of Leatherwood Bespoke Rosin - is about four years old. It is long and rectangular and I've worn a bit of a groove in it. Though it is not cracked, it's worn down quite a bit, so am thinking of replacing it pretty soon for that reason.
For the vote, I'm asking how long you've had the rosin that you are currently using (or, if it is actually broken!) Please participate in the vote, and then tell us your rosin stories. Do you tend to be able to keep your rosin intact for a long time, or does it tend to crack up? What kind of rosin are you currently using? Is it round or rectangular? On a piece of cloth, or wood? Is it actually currently broken? Does yours have a groove in it? And beyond the rosin you use every day, how old is your longest-surviving (i.e. unbroken) cake of rosin, if you have several?
