Columbia resident Yasuoki Tanaka has repaired violin bows for nearly 40 years

Watching Yasuoki Tanaka work is like stepping back in time.Surrounded by hand tools and little vials of resin-colored liquids in the workshop at his Columbia home, he combs out strands of thick, white horsehair — to weed out the bad ones, he said — and cuts the appropriate length for the violin bow he's rehairing.&quot;Individual bows need different lengths, so you can't go by numbers,&quot; he said. &quot;It's an educated guess, that's what it is.&quot;Tanaka has rehaired the bows of string musicians from across the Baltimore region for nearly 40 years.The work was a side gig until he retired from the violin section of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2011.&quot;I never intended to make a business,&quot; said the 71-year-old. &quot;I just did it for myself.&quot;When Tanaka joined the Baltimore Symphony in 1970, he said, there was only one shop in Baltimore that did bow work.&quot;But it wasn't particularly great,&quot; he said.According to the membership database of the Violin Society of America, there are less than a dozen shops in Maryland and about 260 across the United States that both make and repair string instruments and bows.String instrument players have to replace the horsehair on their bows at least once or twice a year, depending on how much they play and the climate they live in.&quot;So most of the people used to go to Washington, D.C., or Philadelphia, and probably New York also,&quot; he said. &quot;I used to go to Philadelphia because I bought my violin from one shop in Philadelphia. And the only problem was that you drive over two hours and then just drop off the bow, and then wait another week, and go back there again.&quot;Another musician in the Baltimore Symphony started rehairing bows, but left the orchestra not long afterward.&quot;That's when I decided, why not do it myself?&quot; said Tanaka.He said he had always been curious about the way musical instruments are made.While growing up in Japan, he took apart his first violin — after he had outgrown it — to see how the sound came out of it and to find out &quot;what's going on inside.&quot;The first time Tanaka tried to rehair a bow, one of his own, it took about four or five hours, he said.&quot;But I started doing it as my hobby, so I didn't mind it,&quot; Tanaka said. &quot;But little by little, I got better and faster.&quot;He bought a few books about building bows and drew on his experiences observing instrument repairmen in Japan.&quot;Those days, people bring bows and they wait until it's done,&quot; he said. &quot;And so I used to watch the people do the bow work.&quot;The modern iteration of the bow was created by Francois Tourte, who died almost two centuries ago. The process for rehairing it has not changed much since that time.Someone told Tanaka he had to rehair about 500 or 600 bows before he got comfortable with the process, which involves preparing, tying and wedging the horsehair into place with a tiny piece of hand-cut wood.&quot;And I think that's true,&quot; he said. &quot;After a while, five or six years later, I began to consistently do a good job.&quot;Other musicians in the symphony started asking him to rehair their bows and were happy with his work. A few that taught at the Peabody Institute, a music conservatory in Baltimore, told their students about Tanaka's shop.&quot;I never advertised or anything,&quot; he said. &quot;It became a business sort of naturally.&quot;At one point, Tanaka said, he monopolized the bow works in the area, because there was no other competition.His background as an accomplished musician has also given him a leg up, he said.&quot;A lot of bow makers and repairmen, they don't play instruments a lot,&quot; he said. &quot;I know how frustrating it is for musicians if things are not done well.&quot;'Inspiring'Tanaka, who is married and has one adult son, initially came to the United States as a middle schooler on an invite from his violin teacher, who was moving back to the States to begin a teaching job at Yale University. While in high school, Tanaka moved from New Haven to Boston and began studying with the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony.At the time, he lived with the parents of Tina Olton, who remembers coming home from college where she was majoring in violin and hearing Tanaka play.&quot;I said to myself, 'Oh Lord, this guy is so good,'&quot; she said. &quot;What I am I even thinking?&quot;She subsequently decided to go to graduate school to study music history.&quot;He was inspiring, in a way,&quot; Olton said of Tanaka. &quot;Only in the reverse of what you might think: I knew I would never play as well as he did.&quot;Tanaka won his position with the Baltimore Symphony after graduating from Indiana University in Bloomington, and aside from a short stint as a freelancer in Japan, he remained with the group for his entire career.When asked why he retired, Tanaka said, &quot;It's like sports. After a while, you know, it's physically harder. And then as you get older, it takes longer to learn new pieces.&quot;He also got tired of rushing out the door after dinner to get to concerts.&quot;Just when you get older, everything gets harder.&quot;In his retirement, he thought he would have more time to make bows from scratch, a skill he learned when he attended an instrument-making workshop in New Hampshire.&quot;But I got lazier, too,&quot; he said.He's made three so far, one that he uses to play, and two others that he sold.Other than that, he continues to rehair about 500 bows a year, he said, and will keep doing so for a long while.&quot;I just don't see anything that will stop me,&quot; he said, laughing. &quot;Actually, I turned 71, so I can go another 10 years.&quot;

Columbia resident Yasuoki Tanaka has repaired violin bows for nearly 40 years

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