Kviljos Turkish hornbows

Very nice.

How did you make "v grooving" tool? I tried few years
ago to make one with key-files and I couldn't make all
equal tooth.

Thanks :)
I filed the teeth manually with a triangular file. It was pretty hard getting them evenly spaced, so these grooves don't match all the way.

Looks great.

What woods did you use?

I have not seen anyone else using horisontal kerf in hornbows. I think it sounds good solution.

The handle is not spliced, but glued on top?

The core is cerry, while the siyahs are birch. The handle is ash. The rumor is that the handle might pop off, so I'm not sure if it was a good idea to just glue it on like that. It is glued with gelatine and grooved too, so the joint should be okay, I hope...

Your work looks good Kviljo. Only -for me - reflex is too low. And i mean hide glue is better than gelatine.Good luck.

Cherry heartwood or sapwood?

Yes, cherry wood is maybe questionable ... But good for us . More experiences, not in own risk :oops: I test more wood too , but not cherry.

I can't say about the glueing properties, but otherwise cherry sapwood is great.

Making notes :)

The reflex is pretty moderate, definitely. Perhaps too moderate to make a good bow. But I'm only aming at getting a working bow, so that I can learn as much as possible from it while still getting to try the whole process of making it.

It is cherry heartwood from a board, so I bet it is american cherry. Adam Karpowicz wrote in his book that he had tried cherry with good results.

Is gelatine more brittle than hide glue?

I dont work vith gelatine definitely. If one havent chance buy good fish glue or cooking own sinew glue, hide glue is best choice.

Kviljo, don?t be so decent, you know very well how to make great bows.
I admire your flightbows very much and I?m very curious how your flightbow will perform.
I did never use gelatine for bows, use hide- glue, as Dusan has mentioned.

Good luck, Michael

Only with file. I must get few triangular needle files and try.
I bet that that steel plate is from scraper.

How about this, cut two plates with big file and than move
them half teeth apart. Maybe 3 plates. I must try.

Redhawk, Thanks for the kind words :)

Rapsod, yep, it's a scraper. Seems to stay sharp forever. Didn't need to sharpen it even after doing the whole bow. You might be on to something with the extra grooved plate for spacing the teeth evenly. Let us know how it goes.

Alright, this is taking more time than I hoped for. It won't get a string within christmas, I guess. - I haven't put on the sinews yet.

I've been reading Adams book lately, and now I'm regretting that I glued it up with as little reflex as I did...

So, here's the question, how do I give it more reflex when the core is already glued to the horn? I guess I could heat bend it a little, but I cheated a little after the glue up, and filled some small voids with cyanoacrylate. The voids weren't large, but they might create some problems if I heat the bow too much?
Should I rather tie the tips together as much as I dare on a cold bow, when putting on the sinews?


The next one will definitely be a full reflex one, if this first one survives beeing shot!

Cyanoakrylate ? :roll:

Super glue :D

This is probably more for your own relief, I don't think it will perform better in securing voids than hide glue.

Never do this again :). Hide glue is superior glue than any modern variant !

Why is not very much reflex bad? From Adam's book I thought that too much reflex --> risk of delamination.

(I probably didn't read / understand properly ...)

Why haven?t you worked with hide or fish- glue?
I don?t think, that modern glues are as flexible as it is necessary for a hornbow. Modern glues are becoming brittle, a well done hornbow, glued with hide- or fishglue, will last much longer.
Don?t over- estimate the reflex. If you take into account advantages and disadvantages of a heavy reflex, I don?t think that a heavily reflexed bow is better.
Keep in mind the boo/ipe- lams, almost no reflex, straight skinny- tipped limbs. I guess B. Kooi and others have prooven, that too much reflex is not worth the effort.
Usually you can heat the limbs for to get more reflex, but I?ve no experience with modern glues and horn will always try to take its way back into its original shape.
Maybe you should try to provoque a stronger reflex by tieing the ends together.

Michael

I'm having trouble getting the hide glue into such voids. The superglue sucks in like crazy, on the other hand. I'll hopefully avoid voids on the next one :wink:

I'd really like more reflex, but this one won't get any more than the sinew will add to it. I put on the first layer of sinew tonight. If it was a bit heavier than this (probably) will be, I wouldn't mind the low amount of reflex... Anyway, as long as it shoots, I'm happy!

Here's some pictures of tonights session at the kitchen :) I also experimented a bit with putting birch bark on a copy of the ?rbyhus-skipole-bow (original from 18.c Sweden). The other recurve got some touch-up on the sinew before it too will be covered with birch bark. It is a reconstruction of a birch/pine Norwegian medieval laminate.

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Very haevy siahs , Kviljo. Its probably in original too . Not very good for shooting quality...You are talented kraftsman. Your future hide glue bow must be super. :wink:

I think Kviljo leaves the siyahs still overseized, for to get enough materiial left for the final shaping after having braced the bow the first time.
That?s the way to do it right.

Michael

Yep, I leave the tips large on the turkish one till I am ready to tiller it. Hoping to use some of that width of the tips to stabilize it.

The tips of the two wood bow is also quite large, but that's the way they were constructed - at least the Siberian ones. It's got a nice draw force-curve though, and shoots heavy arrows really well, and it is quite stable for the short 60" length.

Yes, i misunderstand -like this is reconstruction Norwegian bow or ... Tips have time.

A few days ago I put on the second layer of sinew, and it has been gaining quite a bit of reflex. If it gains as much from the last layer, I will be quite happy with the reflex. There are some air bubbles under the second layer of sinew, which I am not quite sure what to do with. Perhaps I will stab them with a knife and try to get some thin glue into them. (?) I couldn't stop myself, so I tried to bend it a little, and everything seems fine. Perhaps it is bending a little too much at the kasan bend. Something tells me it will be "slightly" heavier than I first planned, hehe.

I made myself a new grooved scraper today. I hope the teeth is more evenly spaced on this one. I will try it on my next bow, which is the one on the last picture.

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Nice clean work place , Kviljo. :D

I had air bubbles on mine, too. They were up to 2mm in diameter. Stephen explained the air bubbles forming due to applying the sinew at an insufficiently high temperature. When the temperature is higher, the air contracts further upon cooling and bubbles are smaller/not visible.

I thought about glue injection, too, but then I thought that voids in the glue are not affecting the sinew - unless the are lots of them, in which case the stress will increase because a smaller cross-section has to take all the force. So I proceeded by ignoring the bubbles and it went fine. I didn't even have any glue crack lines across the limb, so I guess aside from the temperature I did it right. Must be Adam's weight formula. My first attempt cracked a lot and every cracking noise increased my heart rate by 5 beats.

It's your bow, so it's your call! But always bend slowly and listen to it.

I was wondering if that center will hold?


The handle-Sal joint takes the highest load in a bow.
I assume you are going to add sinew backing and sinew wrap around the spot. I hope it will be enough.

Do any of the masters have any opinnions about this?

I am nowhere near a master, but I made a grip like that with an additional layer of wood on top that faded into the limb. It held.

However, Kviljo, I think that jkekoni is raising a good point. Unless the horn thickness is already sufficiently tapered (problem is you don't know how much is sufficient), the bending will be very hard at the grip ends. It could break there. I think you should add a much more pronounced fade-out!

By the way, your scraper looks very good! Looks like machined!

Too cold sinew and glue might be it. Mine was probably close to 25*C when I put it on. I think I will leave it as it is, although I have seen some bubbles up to 5mm in width. Stop me if it is a catastrophic idea ;)

I hope the grip will hold. I red somewhere that the Moshcheveya balka bow core was made in one piece? I interpreted that as to the grip having to be laminated on top of the core on the back side. The plans for the same bow, which I found here on Atarn as a .pdf-file, made by Andrew Hall, also seems to indicate this kind of construction.

I would be really scared by the construction if I were to back it with wood, but I hope it is another story with sinew? The original seems to be wrapped at the fade outs, plus it has bone laths on each side of the grip.

The core is about 6mm thick at the moment, so I will thin it a little just out of the fades. That might help the glue line a little, perhaps.

Those of you who have experience with this - don't hesitate to chime in :)


The scraper IS machined, hehe :wink: Bandsaw and belt sander. The scraping part is more human, though. I'm so glad we have these electric things that enable us to skip the tedious things.

Forgot to add the latest pictures, and another question:

What could I do to avoid these longitudinal cracks in the sinew? I left it for drying in the living room. It might be too dry and hot?

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Like i once said- you are good crftsman, but - if its mine , i wasnt call him "flyghtbow" :) ... (vith his 3mm horn, short kasan and no reflex bash ...?) Maybe recall him in "hornbow 1". Cracs in sinew layer is -like you said- because hot and dry room climate.

Thank you :) It is still called "First attempt at a flight bow" :wink: I would perhaps not call it a flight bow myself either, if I really knew how a real flighbow should look like :) I've never seen one in real life, so I'm hoping to narrow in on the design as I make more of these baby bows. It will, however, experience some flight shooting. (hopefully, at least)

I'll try to find a cooler place for it to dry the last layer of sinew. Hoping to put it on tomorrow. I just prepared the last 25 grams of sinew tonight. Holy cow, it really is time consuming!

Well,well .Time , material, money, smell in home :D , and in every step you can destroy all this ... :lol:

Everything will get better with time. You will be faster separating the fibres, you will get used to the smell and the wife will eventually stop complaining.

I have made only one sinew backed wood bow, so i am not an expert, but I would say that the sinew crack:
a) is not a problem that needs to be fixed.
b) may be due to too cuick drying
c) could be fixed by adding a short piece of sinew inside with glue. Toothpick could be handy in this. You can do do this when adding next layer or before that.

If you fill it with just glue the glue will crack, but will not cause other problems.

Yep, all that work, and it could end in just a second... Still, I guess all of the sinew could be re-used, in good Redhorse-style, and probably a few other things, if the worst should happen.

I filled the cracks with sinew and glue. Don't think it will be a problem, and the 3. and last layer haven't cracked yet. I have kept it in a cooler rom, and it seems to have solved it. I remember Adam writing in his book about something that Kani should have remarked - that the bows should be kept low to the ground when drying. The words Kani should have used was "prevent from cracking" or something like that. Perhaps this is the problem he was talking about?

Yes. Because in the ground is lover temperature and more cirkulated air. Old masters and todays Korean bowyears sinewid his bows from this reason in autumn time.

Hehe, I tried to bend it a little today. I bent it till the tips were almost in line with the grip. It didn't follow the string more than perhaps 1cm (didn't measure). But I did notice that the sinew layer that was almost see-through became a little gray - just at the places it bent the most.

I guess this is something that happens to the sinew layer when it is bent for the first time? Is this something you use in the tillering process? I think I noticed that one limb bends a little more in the transition to the kasan than the other, so I think I will adjust it slightly with some more sinew (plus a few other places that I'm not quite happy with).

Any similar experiences?

Yes, this is normal. There are microscopic cracks in the glue that scatter the light and hence make it opaque.

Kviljo, Daniel is very right about the backing becoming grey.
I would not add sinew right now.
I begin the tillering after the first stringing. At brace height you?ll be able to see more exactly the weak points of your bow: now you know where to add some sinew, to rasp the horn down or to heat- treat the bow. It depends.....

Michael

Okay, this is how it has been resting for the last week:

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This is how it looked when I just untied it today:

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This is how it bends :lol:

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And this is how it looked after it was bent 8)

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This is how the sinew got opaque on one limb. I think it looks quite promising?

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Just a minor update, that feels like a major step:

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Alright :) Time for an update, now as I have killed the bow :lol:

Half way prepared the tips a few days ago. The leather patch went on much easier than I thought.

I made one tepelik today, and I tested the limbs. One limb went nicely around the tepelik, but the other delaminated. - just as Adam described in his troubleshooting-section in his book. The horn separated from the core at the reflexed part by the kasan bend.

The horn didn't suffer any major damage, so I decided to give it another try. I wasn't really prepared to soak the limb in hide glue to fill the crack, so I filled it with super glue. Let's see if it holds :)


I'm really happy that one limb held. After all, this is my first one, and it was glued with really fast gelling gelatine.

All thoughts are welcome :)


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Kviljo,
I'm no expert but are you bending that limb a little close to the grip? As for the bow, it looks very nice. I like that white flash on the horn in the grip area.

I was a bit worried about that too, but the small cracking of the sinew layer tells me that it stops bending just where the fade out starts at the grip, so I think at least that part of the bow will be okay.

I'm really not too confident that it will live through the first shot. I think I will de-stress it a bit by sanding the sinew layer at the sal just slightly, before I try to bend it again.

The untied end of the tepelik is easier to get to if you have it hanging off the end of the bench. This makes it easier to wrap the cord around the bow and tepelik. The Chinese use a block to raise the centre of the tepelik but it isn't necessary most of the time with smaller bows.

I noticed in Reflexbogen that the tepelik was even more inaccessible (p. 277). One of the reasons I made tepeliks for my bows to make it easier to string highly reflexed bows. There is a photograph of a Chinese bowyer using one and he is bending a strong bow with little effort. There might be a copy on this site somewhere.

I realise the photograph is only of testing the bend of the bow and safety should be the first concern when bending a new bow for the first time so I am not criticising what you did.

Beautiful............very good work. If it doesnt shoot an arrow you have still done very good work and you will be able to bring alot of understanding and wisdom to the table on your next attempt.

Please keep us updated.

Joseph

Thanks, both of you :)

Not sure how long I should wait for the super glue to be fully hardened, but I'll wait a few more days. I think I will just lash some string around the limbs when I test it the next time, to prevent the horn from selfdestructing if it is to delaminate again.

I wonder, perhaps the horn would be more securely fastened to the wood if the horn was thicker, so that the glue line wasn't beeing put under as much compression?

This is the third 8)

The core is birch, grip beech, and siyahs some kind of fruit tree. The horn is 4-5mm thick. I'm aming at full reflex, but only 40-60 pounds.

I will mix in some fish glue with the hide glue for glueing the horn this time, and use clamps instead of the rope. Hope that will ease the process a bit.

Every comment is welcome :)

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kviljo, go on like that, everything looks good, don?t forget to coat your core and horn with a thin solution of glue several times, heat your workship till you?ll sweat, when you?re going to glue.
I don?t want to keep you for a fool, but sometimes to forget the little things may turn out very bad.

Good luck, Michael
.

Kviljo:

I see snew is seperated after using the tepelik. Wrap this place with little piece of wet snew. İt will work.
Tip /kasan angle is too low, it is no good.
Heat the sal from horn side( not too much) then bend it close to sal/kasan(minimum 5-6 time , step by step). Check the twisting after tied the tepelik's rope, it is important.

Cem

Thanks for the tips. My workshop is a cold place, but I will try to get the tempereture up a little bit at least.

Cem, are you thinking of the picture of the limb seen from the side? That is actually where the horn separated from the core. I filled the gap with superglue, hehe. Not sure if it will hold. Perhaps I should wrap it after all.

On my first attempt, I thought it would be a good idea to keep the angles a little low, just to be able to get a shootable bow. There were some voids in between the horn and the core that I filled with super glue, so I'm not sure how well it would work to heat-bend more reflex? I think perhaps I will just leave the first one as it is, and see if I can get some more authentic angles and overall reflex on this second one.

Kviljo, you are truly talented craftsman, but - sorry this too bows are not " turkish" bows. Its your "fantazy" bows. I understand - you said- its mi first, second... I see your bows in another chats and you are experienced bow maker. I dont understand what you dooing now. (So many work for nothing..?)

Woot...?

What am I doing wrong? Am I not using maple? Do I need more reflex? :lol:

Man, i mean that Turkish , or Korean , or Mughal bow have his character mainly in his kasan tip (bash) area. You havnt no kasan, no tip in good reflex angel.Its your chouice about materials (i have fue experiment vith birch wood too...) but this disain is houndreds years experiences. I understand if you started like me 10 years ago vith 0 information , but Atarn an Adams book is big source of information. I dont understand your work.

Hmm, I hope it is quite clear that this is only my trials towards making something good, and not a display of how it should be done? Especially not when it comes to typology of horn bows! (I have not even seen one old horn bow live yet :lol: ) I share this so that those who want can have a peek and perhaps give some directions. Again, I'm not claiming to make anything other than a horn bow inspired by the Turkish bows, with the goal of making a working bow, gaining experience with the materials and adapting bow shape to the materials I have at hand.

Understand? :)


The core limb pieces are a bit too thin to give a thick kasan ridge. It's because I didn't find any other piece of diffuse porous wood with straight grain in the pile, and I still wanted to make a bow... :) I think I read somewhere that the kasan in at least one old bow were mostly built up with sinew, so I thought I would do the same. As for the tip bend, it is as far as I can see quite identical to an old bow. I made new siyahs for it before the glue-up by the way. The first ones had the bend continuing into the tip, while the new ones have a bit more straight tips.


Is any of your work viewable on the Internet, Dusan?

Kviljo,

I think your horn bows look good, no matter if the shape and angle of the siyahs are not exactly like the ones of originals ;-)

The first hornbows somebody makes, however, should be seen as a training for future, better, more authentic bows... There?s a lot to learn and a lot of mistakes that can be made! Experience can only be gained by making that experience!

Btw, Dusan, let?s finally see some of your bows. Don?t be so shy ;-))

Best regards, JJ

Kviljo,
For what it's worth, I think that's a very nice looking bow. The pictures clearly show your talent as a bowyer.

Dusan,
If you are of the opinion that a bow has to look exactly like a museum piece and draw to over 100# to be considered a 'Turkish' bow, fair enough...but that is just your opinion. I'm quite sure there were slight differences of finished bows from bowyer to bowyer, that's inevitable. To criticise as you do is quite rude.

The kasan is easy to build up. But more worried about the reflex in handle? I would have done that straight and let the reflex come later.
Reflex when bow is braced at ears do no good . Its enough if the ears are straight out at brace :)
Reflex in limbs seems not to give any speed or efficiency, just more weight. So I guess the old timers just used draw weight for long flight. So reflex don't need to be more then it keeps the bow bent from the belly :) The force in the braced bow does not go to the arrow anyway. Its the force drawn that goes to the arrow.
I may have to consider this again later but today its what I have find out.
I made 250 meter with 400 grains catalog arrow with my 80 lb, 280 meter with my 66 lb target bow and 200 grains cedar arrow. Non have any reflex to talk about.
Over 300 meter with 40 lb is well balanced bow as some one did shot.

Well, its again.

Kviljo, I trust you like good bowyear and craftsman. Its not about some ?rude? words against you. For me is ATARNET more than comon chat , when people ?blabla? about all, and send pics , and wait from others reaktion like- OUU tis is cool, beatifull and so... Here ?this is mi personal feeling ? we try max. And do max. Ours knowledge about history , function and konstruction asian tipe hornbovs.Not only ? hey guys (!) i was now glued hornbow !!! Nice , isnt it ? You must understand ? its mi first. Its mi second . its mi third , but cool - ! WHY ? You are not alone in this . I wrote same komentar fue times.

Every time, when i criticize people asked me- And where are your bows Dusan ? Its meaning, if you can criticize ? you must be better bowmaker ! You think , that theatre , opera or sports reporters and critics was profesional singers or sportsmans ? But this is not mi case. I am in hornbows more than 10 years.

But i dont work bows consistently all this time. I am from this happy people , who have job like hobby. But i have more another hobbies and only some time i can work in bows.From this time i glued many horn bows and teach miself more and more. But i am not EXIBICIONIST like some people .

This is mi problem , and ?who know, maybe i am wrong ,- but i dont understand why people show his not best work ???!! Why ?I am no satisfied vith mi bows, than i DONT show him. Now i have in work 7 new bows. About 1-2 yers if i shot them and be satisfied, i show this bows.

- JJ , you are like devil , ha- ha , you provoke me ..

- Orda. I think we must first glued bows EXAKTLY like museum originals , and shoot this pfenomenal records and than, you can work vith fantazy. I agree vith you about little diferencis between old bows . But this is about fue centimetres or milimetres not like Kviljios and others vith ?novaice fanatsy?. I respect old bow masters . It is 1000 years experiences. Must i say more ?

About mi rude. Idont think , that deceptive praise was good for people who try somthing in max. Quality. I know, good praise in right time is big help and motivation in start way. Especialy if it do it child. But Kviljo and others was not childs. And i mean that Atarnet is not galery for first glued attempt. But this is only mi personal think.

Guys, if you like it , i can post some pics from mi work vith materials , wood working , glue cooking, sinew cleaning and etc. /I post some earlier/But bow , only if i shoot vith him more than 500-600 metres ? sorry guys. Thats mi way...


For me its not about ? boys !!! I glued horn bow !!! For me its about , Boys , i glued hornbow who shoot more than 500 m.

Understand ?
:lol:

Thanks for the kind words, folks. I do appreciate it, as well as Dusans comments on what I should improve. Often the "negative" criticism is more productive than the "positive". However, I do not see the use of the negative off-topic chitchat.

I do agree with some of your sentiments, Dusan, but I think Atarn has room for both novices and experts. - that's necessary if Atarn is supposed to be a place to bring the subject forward.


Anyhow, I think we should leave this and get on track again.

As an eager flight shooter myself, I would be very interested in hearing how far have you shot with your horn bows, Dusan? Perhaps something worthy of a few pictures?


Redhorse, thanks for the tips :) Perhaps I should pull some of the reflex out of the bow when I glue the horns. I am a bit worried about having the horns delaminate because of the shear effect, but then again I really like the reflex. If nothing else, it will enable the bow to stay braced for longer periods of time without gaining too much string follow. But I am sure a fully reflexed bow has a fatter draw force curve than a bow with only half the reflex?

Dusan, If I understand you correctly you are saying that there is enough information out there for guys to skip the learning process and just copy what the masters left. However if people only talked about and displayed the absolute pinnacle of success then this forum would be totally dead.
If you feel that you are qualified to criticize people who still want to experiment then you have to ask what you yourself are missing if you haven't even reached half the distance of the old records. If the knowledge is all there, where are the performances?
Remember that the bows that set the records were once someone's fantasy.
I would be willing to bet that the difference between 500 yards and 900 isn't in a little kink at the kasan/limb junction.

Patrick , everyone can criticize. Or, from another site everyone can say his meaning. I dont think that i am "qualified " . :) I only say that espacialy this part of hornbows- kasan /tip and his degrees is very important.

You are right, i think that there is enough information to learning the right proces . Maybe about 70 %. Because this is not "ONLY" copy the masters. To this days we dont know everythink, about materials etc.

I am painter artists. If you "only" painting and buy colors and canvas in artists shop, you can think that here is no secrets. But if you try be a tru profesional and you search how this colors was borning , how all material work , how you can restauration old painting and do it like 800 or 2000 years old master- than you open new world full secrets and you must hard teach many hours and years.... Same is vith old hornbows , or another artisan profesion.

Every handicraft you must first teach from master. Many time copiing . And if master or you /if havnt master / feel that you do it good, than in next step you can work vith "experiment" .
But here is somthing like ilness. Novice cant search maple wood , than work vith hornbeam or osage and say - why not ? This is experiment. He havnt any glue - ok . Glued horn vith plyuretan glue- why not - this is experiment. Haevnt good wood for kasan or he dont know how curved wood in right degree- why not - this is experiment...

This all is experiment ??? Than all tis work was posted vith pics and we all was happy ?

I am not a Judge. C'mon , say what you vant, post what you vant. But please leave me say mi thingk about this. 8)

In the end, i am not against novices. I only dont understand ,why novices posted his "experiments". If i do it , i feel shame , thats all.

Kviljo and all; I am enjoying your posts. Keep it up. In a way we are all students of archery, experimenting through trial and error. And we can expect and embrace criticism by going public.

But a friendly tone is what has been typical at ATARN so please forgive any rough treatment and return to your hard work.

Let us please be good friends to eachother while saying what we must. Jack.

"kasan /tip and his degrees is very important"
Is it? It can be anything, look at old bows, there is not two with same. If it was important all bows had been same.
Fat fd curve seems to give less efficiency so hard to tell if any use for that.
But if you look closer at this subject, how many data do you find on bows at Atarn? From Adam, from me but from how many else?
So far most bows are lookalike copy of old bows with less knowhow.
I try to do a new thing on every bow even if it is against others info, many times the info is just what people do believe without any experience.
And what goes most wrong is the core wood, I cant see why they do break. Thin or thick, wide or narrow, the break :(

Redhorse wrote:

The force in the braced bow does not go to the arrow anyway. Its the force drawn that goes to the arrow.

Due to lack of knowledge I cannot comment on the effect of reflex on draw weight vs. physical weight. Possible additional weight because of the width required to maintain stability must be considered as well as the increase of draw weight due to reflex.
Regarding energy storage, I think the reflexed bow at brace can be compared to a pre-streched elastic spring. If you pull a spring from length 0 to length L, you store a certain amount of energy in the spring (this corresponds to bracing the bow). If you pull it from length L to length 2*L, you will add three times the amount of energy to the spring (drawing the bow). But since the length difference is the same, the net force for both distances is the same. So there is more energy per draw force. How much of this energy can actually be transferred to an arrow is another question...

Daniel

Jack, this is all friendly. :lol: I dont write vith "hot" head.I mean we come to interesting point(for ex. vith Redhorse). Is kasan tip and his degrees important ?

You are right R. , core wood and every another piece in bow is important. But i stil think , that most importent part, who is diferent in old bows is kasan/tip.His degrees, long. width etc.

If you look litlle more in old turkish bows (and measurment in Adams book, what i mean is most important part for me) you can see this more and less "uniformity". Yes every bow has his small difernces , like every bowyear try do it best and experimenting , but this fue cm or mm is not same like no kasan...

Sorry brother, i like your bow science work , but you too make kasan and tip ... by chance. In Adams bows you can look hov he try maximum teach from old bowyears.
:?

As you, I like to provoque too, but never I would ciriticize the making of a traditional bow by one of you. I know very well how delicious the subject is.
We can?t replicate an old bow posted in a museum exactly, if we want to do it, we would not have understand traditonal bowery. Cause we will never succeed in working the same raw materials. Times have gone, one horn is not exactly a copy of another horn.............................The very well knowledge of the old designs is a must, but a bowyer has above all to choose his material very well, as well he(or she) should be able to adjust the given materials to an old design.
I believe all the ATARNOS are trying to give the best they are able to keep alive real traditional bowery, with all the successes and errors, that?s life.

Michael

Thats right. We haevnt same wood, like 400 years ago. Maybe horns is not the same quality , glue is questionable. But still we have possibility see old bows, measure , and teach .

Dusan wrote:

You are right R. , core wood and every another piece in bow is important. But i stil think , that most importent part, who is diferent in old bows is kasan/tip.His degrees, long. width etc.

If you look litlle more in old turkish bows (and measurment in Adams book, what i mean is most important part for me) you can see this more and less "uniformity". Yes every bow has his small difernces , like every bowyear try do it best and experimenting , but this fue cm or mm is not same like no kasan...

:?

Now we should talk about the total balance in the bow. That I believe is the clue.

Ahh, well... Guess what :wink:

It seems the superglue holds quite well. I was able to put a tepelik on the fixed limb tonight. But when I tried to tie the tepelik to the other limb, that helt last time, it too delaminated in exactly the same manner as the other :lol:

So now it rests with superglue in both kasan bends :roll:

I guess I should just have re-glued the horns when the first delaminated. Still, it's a learning process.

Pictures of my stupid failures will appear suddenly :D

I think it shoes thats not a gluing failure. May the design or parameters are not good. Use better glue than gelatine to outclose the first point. I mixing hide and rabbit glue and it working fine for me.

Yep, it wasn't properly glued. I'll just keep adding super glue till it stays in one piece :lol:

Here's the pictures, plus a few of todays work.

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Uh, sombody have many good looking horns ! Go on and dont use gelatine no more... And Rabbit glue too :lol:

Whats wrong about rabbit glue Dusan?

For sinewing is very good to me, as I know thats the most elastic glue after fish glues and just a little bit less strong than hide glue.
For wood and horn glueing may hide glue stronger U mean this?
Please explain it for beginners :)

I mixed hide and rabbit glue 50-50% for sinewing now to try. Before that used just rabbit glue for that. Those are just sinewed back selfbows but all working fine.
For wood working use just hide glue?
Thanks Zoltan


Great stuff Kviljo! Highland Horn? My first order will arriwe this days.

Yes. Hide glue is fantastic glue (if you dont cook your sinew glue and some fish glue ). Any rabbit glue cant change hide glue. Rabit glue has less qulity for us , but more for art restaurators. Hide glue is much cheaper than rabbit glue and i dont know any reason why use him... He have some negative characteristics for us but this is for longer discusion...

In fact Im a paint restorer :)

So U use hide glue with some negative characteristic but dont know why? :) Have some negative expiriance with rabbit glue, where? I think If Im not make my own glue..., will use different glues for wood and sinew work.
Sturgeon glue is the best but not for this prise. Have to make some compromise and use the best others.
Put away some sinew for that and can by fish air bubbles so it will be a funny experiment to know what is the best solution.

Thanks the reply and Im opened for a longer discusion from this, may not here.

I glued the horns to the third bow tonight, using 1/3 fish glue and 2/3 hide glue. Burning some propane, I was able to heat the workshop to 27*C. I also made myself a (waxed) leather strip with wooden blocks on for the clamping. It all eased the process considerably. I was able to clamp it before the glue gelled, so I am pretty confident that this will stay in one piece.

I just need to get myself a few smaller clamps, so the bows won't end up twisted by the weight of the clamps.

The second bow got 10 extra grams of sinew too. I did bend it a litte before I put on the sinew, and it didn't even creak. Hope it stays in one piece till I get it braced, at least :roll: Not sure if all the reflex was such a good idea 8)

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may i suggest that you get a hot plate and put a big pot of water to steam while you do the gluing.

Hmm, interesting. Would that be to rise the humidity in the room? Or should one do the glueing over the steam? - sinew-glueing, or horn-glueing?

the humidity definately helps and the heat gives more time to work.

Aha, I see. It prolongs the time before the glue gels. The humidity were onl 35% RH, hehe, can't remember when it was as low before.

I do not remember if I wrote that in my book, but I avoid rabbit skin glue. It is because it contains 5% grease, unlike other glues. The fat content makes it "wet" surfaces better, but I believe the adhesion will suffer after drying. I have never used it in pure form for bows and would not use as an additive either.

Adam

Thanks Adam the usefull info!

Will have your book soon :)

Adam: I think you did write it in the book.

I have read positive experiences in paleoplanet, but sinew backed woods bows have lower requirements than hornbows.

I have always stayed away from it.

Anyway as I know the today made glues which could by in shop is no fat in because they are DIN controlled. Especially the rabbit hide glue have fine qvality.
Music instrument restores use it between fish glue.

I am not so in restauration technik , but there is much more facts(i dont go to this -mi english ...) For example PH in fish glue is another then hide glue or Rabbit. I read that Rabit is more sensitive in humudity. For me is importand experience old masters and rabbit glue is no in his list. If was rabbit glue cheap like hide glue, i will do some experimental test...
Anyway , Fusizoli- its your chois , go on ! :D

I dont want arguing just discuss and learn things from expert bowyers :)

Here Rabbit glue is not so expensive about the triple than hide, sturgeon is that huh....

Birds talking about there is some common fish which have better glue (from air bubble of corse) than others. Is this secret information or U know anything about this? As I know some kind of wide fishes but dont know more.

If comming to Budapest U schould buy glues here Pannon Color
Rabbit 1kg is about 3500ft ~13Euro

There is more srcrets than ,another materials and part of bow :lol:. But no because i need secret ,but because glue and all steps about his cookeng , temperature , humidity , --- alll about glue is less information than about horn or woood. I notice , that most bowyears talking about horns and wood , but about problems vith glue nobody . problem is only if buy hide glue or fish glue- you have rabbit glue.

I think , that this part of hornbow is very importand - because we can say - that this bow is "colagen " bow. Than all info you must try mostly vith experiments . Mi (and Jano Nagys )works vith glues say us somthing.

Maybe your experiences say you that rabbit glue is good. Thats because i say- ok. go on. Maybe your "glue" give you best performed bow. :idea: Another new experiens. :wink:

I'll call this a success already! 8)

I haven't drawn it more than a few inches, but it definitely feels like it could be around 100# at 28".

The sal on the upper limb (the one which bends the most) has a bit too concentrated bend, and the lower limb has some twist that will need heat correction. I guess all the stringfollow is mostly due to the fact that it hasn't had time to cure fully, plus the core is pretty thick. I didn't heat it before stringing.


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It can already be broken at the hing. If not, more sinew. And move the bend.

Kviljo,

I think you should try to spread the bend more evenly on the kasan. It seems concentrated on only one spot (where the splice of the grip is ending). If there?s enough horn, I would suggest that you scrape away some horn on the stiff kasan parts and try to get them bending with a little heat. I don?t think the core is broken.

JJ

I would have heard if the core broke, so I think it is still intact. In fact, the bow has regained all of its "reflex" now.

I'm a bit scared of making it bend in the kasan/sal transition, because that's where the horn delaminated. It seems solid, but I'm not sure how much stress it will take. I think the lower limb looks pretty alright, so I will start by duplicating it to the top limb. Maybe I could make the section above the kasan/sal-bend bend a little more, although it would look weird.

What is the brace height in this picture? It looks rather high.

Daniel

Don't know :) It's an untwisted endless loop string. I guess one can't use twisted strings on these bows, because of the siyah loops?

I'll probably make a new string for it, if it is going to shoot arrows. I like to keep the brace height as low as possible, not to overstress the materials (for my wooden bows, at least).

Wrap the bad sal/kasan section with sinew.

I use a standard flemish string with longer loops. I think you should make a proper string before proceeding. It is no work wasted because the bow will not break, right?

If the brace height is too low, the bow can be unstable. I had one limb flip back to its unbraced shape, clamping fingers between the string and the bow. That told me it was too low. Adding 1cm to the brace height helped.

If you brace the bow and the limbs are not balanced, you should not leave the bow in this state. You can either unbrace it and add sinew or use a barshak to press the string towards the weaker limb and correct by scraping (if the pressing alone doesn't help, see Adam's book, he explains it all). I tried both methods and both worked, but I found the latter can trick you. It appeared to me that the overstressed limb behaves weaker than it actually is (maybe because of string follow?). The limbs were balanced after scraping and exercising, but the next time I braced the bow, the situation was reversed, with the former weaker limb now being stronger. It happened twice, as if the bow took some time to settle. I still like to work on the braced bow because bracing on the peg board is testing my nerves every time I do it.

Daniel

Actually I'm not too sure that it won't break :oops: But it will get a new longer string. I think it could live with quite low braceheight as it has so little reflex. The new one will be a different story though. Here it is shown after the first layer of sinew, which was mostly added towards the tips and to build up the kasan. The tips are going to cross on this one, wether they want to or not :P


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Oh, look - I've added more sinew :lol:

I'm quite amused by adding reflex to this bow, hehe. This one seems much more willing to gain reflex than my two other bows. I guess it has to do with the thickness of the core. It's got 40 grams of sinew now, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it will look after the last 30 grams has been added. As if I will be able to make this one shoot :roll:


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8) I made a new longer string for the first hornbow today. Now it's got 6" braceheight, measured from the belly. Guess what: It draws 80# @ 22" :mrgreen: That should be 110 to 120# @ 28".

It does have some twist at brace, but it doesn't seem to be a major problem when drawing it. I will try to correct it with some heat later. All I've done with it today to correct the shape of it is bending it while cold. It did affect it more than I thought it would.

As you see, I also added some sinew wrapping at both sal/kasan bends.

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Kviljo, this is good news-120 lb !

I'm not sure about that, because I won't be able to draw it fully :oops: Definitely not with a thumb draw :)

But I might make some flight arrows for it that are as long as I am able to draw them. That could be interesting. As a horn bow it should not be fast, but it feels pretty fast compared to my wooden bows.

Nice! How did it feel to keep drawing further (especially from an experienced wood bowyer's perspective) with this intense bending near the grip?

Did you measure how much sinew (fibres without glue) you put on?

Daniel

I'm afraid I didn't measure how much sinew I put on, but it must be between 70 and 100 grams. I did measure how much it weighed at different stages, but inbetween I reduced the tips/etc.

The bow seemed pretty smooth up to about 20", but I must say I don't see how it is going to bend all the way to 28". My estimated 110# @ 28" is based on +5# per inch draw after 22 inches, so if we add for stacking at the end of the draw it should probably be more like 120-130#. It will be interesting to see, although my scale stops at 100#.

If the grip had been shorter and the sals closer to the grip, the limbs would have better angles towards full draw, which would probably provide less stacking. Plus it should have had a bit steeper siyah angle.

It looks better now but agree that , not draw it to 28 but it is just a feeling. I think 25 is the end , and thats better than a blow. Blow up the next one and let alive this first one :)
It seems the whole limb working on this draw and a working outer limb is not safe on a bow with this strenght. I would reduce some weight for lower stress.
I ve got my first horn plates from HH so will follow U soon ;)

You got enough weight in the bow so you can tiller it and move the working part. Yes you will lose some weight but got a bow that works better.

Zoltan: Yep, I think I should be happy if I manage to get it back to 25" by hand. That is if it will ever shoot more than one arrow. It's birch tips is perhaps not the safest for such a draw weight, combined with a ~300 grain arrow.

Redhorse: I really wanted to lengthen the bending sections, but it won't go any closer to the grip due to the thick fade-outs. The horn is too thin to take of enough material near the grip. Towards the kasans is perhaps not the best solution either, as it will make it stack even more, plus I don't want to stress the superglued areas too much :)

I will try to deflex the non-bending fade-outs a little, as Adam K. adviced. That will de-stress the bow a little, plus I won't worsen the stacking any. After doing that, I will probably leave it and concentrate more on the next ones.



Can anyone tell me why it is so stimulating to see a Turkish bow wrap itself all the way around? I'm sooo pleased with this second try 8) It's got it's flaws, and it will probably not make it to a shootable bow, but I think it looks a bit like one of the unfinished original bows shown in Adams book :P

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... maybe you understand now.

It looking great! Put some more sinew to the edge of the horn plate. Oh man I really cant wait for start th efirst one, but have to :)

I filed away all of the excess glue from the horn tonight. I'm not sure how much longer I will be able to wait before starting to tiller it :oops:

It's been drying for a week now since the last layer of sinew. Do you think it will gain more reflex if I leave it un-tied like this for a while? - or do I need to tie it in some manner to let it gain more reflex? Don't think I have seen that before.

It would be nice to have the tips crossing, even though I will probably need to heat out a large amount of it to get a string on the :twisted:-bow

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Wow thats fantastic! Wait for a month, work on the others :wink:

Be strong and patience. I think if it looking dry, U schould put in a 30-max35C place to reduce time if U can't.
Mesure weight & RH if it possible. After "forced" dry let it on 20C 50RH for a few days..... but u know Im not an expert

Weak nervs , Kviljo :lol:
Than you imagine wait 3 years... and than understand that you must start again. Training to Nirvana. :shock:

I understand the feeling of joy just looking at that curled up bow.

I used to feel the same way when I saw good photos of similar bows. It is sort of like looking at a woman of perfect beauty, you just sort of stand there entranced with your mouth kind of hanging half open unaware of time passing.

I think the feeling comes from realizing the dream of a perfect bow, that idea of the mythical bow that is perfect in a philosophical sense but never actually exists. It began in your mind as an idea, then a picture, and now here it is, maybe...

When you see it curled you are looking at potential power hidden in those seductive curves. It may be a success, or a failure, and you won't Know until you string it and shoot it. So It's kind of exciting, and scary too, like the few days before the honey moon.

I m not on that point , schould say wait 3 years, yet.

Understand and feel your point, but technologicaly it needs time to wait 1 week 2 week and 3 after the last one and than schoud tiller it without capital stringfollow.

After wooden bows it is hard times, and thats just 2 month and not two years like others say, for the best performance.

I ve cut some nice flowering ash and cornus mas for core :)


This bow is looking real good, wish the bests
and looknig foward.

Hehe, brilliantly summarized, Hermitking! :lol:

The bow has been resting in the living room for 14 days now. During that time it went from 330 to 323 grams. It also gained a crack in the grip. The first one did that too, and it seems like the relative large amount of wood in the grip is not as willing to dry in a controlled manner like the rest of the bow.

I think I will let the tillering wait untill the humidity has rised in the spring.

It is way longer curing time than I am used too, although I have realized that yew needs many years to season if it is to be made in the best manner. Even 3 years is sometimes not enough to prevent cracks around knots and the marrow.

I do see that I could have made the three laminates more even, as it has curled up a bit unevenly. But I'm happy that it crossed it's tips without having to force it :P


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Next flight meeting, woodbows go home? :lol:

Yep, August the 22. is the date to prepare for :D

Now, we just need to alter the rules to make it legal to use a siper 8)

Kviljo,

I like this bow, wish you luck. Be careful about tillering because it will be powerful bow.

Cem

Thank you :) I'm looking forward to beginning the tillering, but it really seems to be quite a task to unwrap such a bow. It will be interesting, to say the least.

It is 10-11 mm thick at the sal. From that I guess perhaps 70-90 pounds? Does that sound about right?

Kviljo:

İt sound right. What is the length of the sal and kasan and total ntn bow?

Cem

You might be interested how the Americans formulated their flight archery rules. Considering the influence of English archery on one side and Turkish archery on the other, they made some useful compromises.

http://www.usaarcheryrecords.org/Flight ... _rules.pdf

Primitive Complex Composites allow the use of wood, horn and sinew bows with full length arrows or an overdraw of up to four inches that is not a siper. I was allowed to shoot with a majra last year because it allowed a limited draw which complied with with the overdraw specification.

Primitive Turkish Style Bows requires a siper and a thumb ring to be used.

Two other classes are designed for self bows and reinforced bows.

My fingers crossed too :)

The sal is 19cm long, and the kasan 22cm. I forgot to measure the overall length, but if I remember correctly it is 44". It's a bit longer than I would prefer now, but it started out as a bow that I didn't have flightshooting-hopes for :) At the sal it is 32mm wide.

I did bend it a little tonight, just so that the sinew/glue cracked a little. Holy bow, this will be a monster to string :shock: Scary is probably the best word!


Thanks for the hints regarding the flight rules, Bede. The overdraw usually has to be mounted on the bow in the Primitiver complex composite?

How well do you find that the marja works in flight shooting, by the way? Performance-vise how does it compare to the siper?

I think perhaps we will just copy the american rules.

When I discussed it with the committee members, we came to the conclusion that the rules did not specify that the bow and the overdraw had to be connected. However, there had to be a mechanism which prevented drawing past the nominated 4 inches. In my case, I put a small bead in the majra that prevented overdrawing.

The general consensus was that a siper was to hard to regulate for the correct draw length while the majra was adaptable. Hence, the Turkish section was the best one for the siper user. They thought that inherently the majra was not an efficient flight instrument because of the potential for friction on the sides of the guide. A bow mounted overdraw would be much more helpful. I was shooting against someone who wasn't using an overdraw and did have some advantage, but I agree with the committee that a bow mounted overdraw would be more effective.

What I have to determine is there a break even point where the support the majra give the arrow allows an arrow light enough to compensate for the friction, but that is my problem. I think that the Primitive Complex Composite category is perfect for both the unaltered composite bow and also modified form with an overdraw.

I see.

I guess only a lot of shooting will give the answer on wether it has any advantage. If nothing else, it sure looks cool :wink:

Kviljo:

19cm sal is too short for 22 cm kasan, be careful for stability.
How long have you waiting for a drying period?

Cem

Hmm, okay. I have built up the kasan with sinew, so I might be able to convert some of the kasan into sal by fileing away some of the ridge.

What would the best proportion of sal/kasan be?

It has been drying for 40-25 days now - I sinewed it over a period of 15 days. I guess I should leave it a bit longer.

Kwiljo:

I suggest 17-18cm kasan for 21-25cm sal in target bow. Flight bow's kasan should be 1-3 cm longer.
40-25 days are not enough for diffussion. İt is better min 6 month. Turkish old way is min one year for target, 2-3 year for flight bow.

Cem

Okay. I think it should be possible to adjust it closer to your suggestions. Thanks!

I don't think I will be able to wait longer than untill june/july, although I probably should. I need to have a flightbow ready for august :) And by then I should have been practicing a bit with a turkish bow.

scemdonmez wrote:

Kwiljo:

I suggest 17-18cm kasan for 21-25cm sal in target bow. Flight bow's kasan should be 1-3 cm longer.
40-25 days are not enough for diffussion. İt is better min 6 month. Turkish old way is min one year for target, 2-3 year for flight bow.

Cem

This is something I have been looking at, is there any data on the proportional.
My fastest shooting bows had 15-16 cm kasan, 45-46" bow. Shorter bow with shorter sal but same kasan has no shot so fast.

Redhorse:
I got original measurements from İstanbul Military and İzmir Ethnography Museum. İn addition old text said( Abdullah Efendi 7-b, ?uhadar Ahmet-11-a) flight bow's kasan should be longer (1-2 finger) than others. Generally kasan is 17-19 cm for target bows.

Cem

Yes, but do we know why the parts are as they are?
How many have give it a thought?

Long kasan makes the bow faster but only kasan length is not got to do with speed. Sal/kasan angle is important too. I see long flight bows too, its sal generally short. I believe form is much important. Long kasan makes the sal much stress, Turkish flight bows should not stay a long time in strung position. I see war and target bow's sal is longer than(rational) flight bows.

Cem

Cem thanks the usefull datas.
If U have some inspiration to open a new topic with this kind of things I will be your fun shure :)

Nice going Ivar. Pry the darn thing apart with a longer asa gezi until the siyahs point up, then switch to tepeliks. The grip looks long and the bow may stack....

Adam

Thanks. I need to go through your chapter on the process again before I take this further.

I don't remeber reading anything about it - would it be safer to open it up over some days. E.g. leaving it like in the picture for a few days, before progressing with a longer asa gezi? I'm slightly afraid that the horn will pop off :roll:

You can warm the belly up a little a the location of the kasan/sal and kasan before that as well. The idea is to have siyahs point up (and the limbs aligned) with no pressure (no asa gezi) at the end of this operation.

Adam

I see. Thanks! I might start this slowly, because the air humidity have been as low as 30% for most of the winter, although it have risen to 35% now.

The bow has not been loosing weight for some weeks now. Should i expect it to gain a few grammes as the air humidity continues to rise?

I have never tried to check the mass as it changes with humidity. It depends how long the bow has dried from the start. The moisture content for horn and sinew is similar to wood and I would expect a few grams per bow per, say 10%RH, as the humidity goes up (this is assuming your bow is in equilibrium which I doubt - it probably still dries).

Adam

I am interested in the comment that a bow looses flex at a certain point. What would cause that? What is the remedy? I have this problem with a hornbow.

Okay. It would probably be hard to measure the difference in humidity. Anyway, I pryed a longer asa gezi inbetween it's limbs yesterday. Some sideways adjustment is needed, but not as much as I was expecting.

Are you thinking of stacking, Jack? The one on the picture below, does stack like mad from about 20". The reason is two-fold I think. The tips should have been more recurved to give better leverage for the string, plus the handle is too long which also makes the string angles good for stacking.

Wood seems to have near linear bend resistance, but it does seem like the sinew might rise its stretch resistance when drawn to near the breaking-limit. If that is the case, it might produce some material-dependent stacking in a hornbow that stresses the sinew fully?

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Well... now its maybe more understable what i say earlier about history sources and "experimentators" . If you have good nervs and endurance every new bow must be better. Maybe... :D

Well, it seems the first one is better than this one...

I had left it overnight with the smaller asa gezi, and was going to pry in the larger one today, when the core (!) gave up. It split at the kasan eye, where it had the most reflex. It seems it started at one side in the core, ripping through to the other side through the sinew. :shock:

The horn is still intact, and incredibly still securely fixed to the core.

So, now I am not sure what to do. It seems the birch I have used as core is not strong enough, so I'm not sure if I should try to repair it. I guess I could immerse the part in hot glue to try to fill the gap, but then it might just split in another place again...

I'm thinking of drowning it in water, and re-use the horn. Is it possible to re-use the sinew on a bow? Just soak them off, and apply again?

Or perhaps I should hang it on the wall as a reminder of not using birch as core wood for a highly reflexed horn bow :lol:


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Just put it in water, then you learn also how much water the hide glue will stand :)
The horn and the sinew can be reused.

Good stuff :) I'll probably do that.

Can I harm the sinew by soaking them for too long? - should I soak it a little and then rip them off manually, or just soak it till they fall of by themselves? How long should I expect it to take? (as I guess I shouldn't dry the sinew again before re-applying them?)

Kviljo,thanks you shere your works here,we can see this topic has 11 page and 9838 readers!

11 page for i read will spend lots time, why your sinew only break at kasan,i doubt you are use too much glue and the too much glue will weak, maybe i will try hammering sinew on bow so got sinew wood horn 3 part :D , my sinew work i can use a knife and my hand remove successful not need damp or soak it,insert knife to sinew layer and prize up, you can form sinew end to handle or form sal to others ,got the sinew layer or string you can use hand hold it or prize up

let us see you do this and post picture

thanks

You can keep the sinew in water till they start to smell :)
You can dry them as package or as strands. You can wet them, dry them several times. But one thing that always happens, when moving them to an other bow, its never enough sinew left ?? So you need more second time.
If the bow has no damage in the core, just rasp bad the sinew of and put on new.
Remember my bow that did break twice at kasan? I just glue on new horn on belly side and more sinew. It still shoots.

Jiao; it wasn't the sinew which broke, it was the core wood that split itself because of all the cross-fibre tension at the highly reflexed kasan. The wood failed in shear, so I need to use a wood that does not split as easily. I'll go with maple from now, hehe :lol:

Maybe I will try to pull the sinew layer of the bow. But it needs to be soaked a little before you re-apply it again?

However, I will need to soak it to take the horn off, so I will probably just throw the whole bow in water.

It is too bad to give up on all the work I put into the bow, but I don't think I will risk breaking the horns by trying to fix it. If it really was the wood that failed, it will probably fail again. I guess I could fix it and scrape down the horn to de-stress it, but I'd rather start over again I think.

oh,it is wood break, Kviljo ,you can try two ways, first is remove the sinew form dry ,then wet it, why i advice you pull/rip the sinew layer?you can know how strong the glue add to sinew, some of my result is very weak/incompact sinew back job, it not enough strong so the wood break so you consider which wood is best, the week/incompact sinew can not suffer from the power by hand and knife and hammer and the wood knighthead you put on the two retroflexion kasan,

about the wet the glue, i doubt how many time the glutin allow it in wet will fail, i use glutin only a few time i try made glue by myself, i am not reuse any things save it as a keepsake lost it in times of move home.

Sad to saw that! I ve missed your post.

If it have to soak down, let it about 4days in cold water and after put in warm. Than schould pull down everything from the core.

This is just a copy-paste-post from the flight-section at Paleoplanet. Just thought it would be nice with a follow-up on the performance of the bow here too:


I'll post some data on my "Turkish" hornbow tonight
First of all, it survived the weekend! I was fairly convinced that the birch tips would snap off from being near-dryfired.
Secondly, I was able to draw the shortest arrow all the way! - So, I am considering this a fairly good test of the bow.

The shortest arrow with the smallest fletchings went the furthest: 271 meters. It is 23 1/2" long from the point to the inside of the nock. I drew it till there was about one inch margin of sticking it into my knuckle, which should be about 21 1/2", measured from the belly of the bow. At that draw length the bow is now 73 pounds.




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This is what the bow looked like after resting 28 hours. It regains most of the original reflex. The string is made from dacron, and is a little over 3mm thick.


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The bow, plus the 271m arrow.


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I usually don't wrap the nocks on my flight arrows, but wanted a bit more security as it was the first hornbow-test.


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This is what the bow looks like seconds after it has been unstrung, after having been drawn to 21-22" several times.



This makes me quite optimistic that if such a bow was drawn to 27-29 inches, it should easily shoot 400 meters. If the bow had even more reflex and generally a better weight-distribution and shape, plus a lighter string, I'm sure it would do much more too. ...and with a siper...!

...next year! 400! :)

nice !

Congrats! Please, tell us more about the arrow (weight, measure, point, nock construction, material, etc)

Thanks!

The arrow is made from high spined spruce, with an iron nail as point. I don't have a weight right now, but it weighs between 12 and 18 grams. The nock is simply cut into the wood, with a linnen wrapping. The thickest part of the arrow is slightly behind center, and the balance point is about 1-2cm behind center. The surface is regular spray-can car paint, which is sanded and given a final polishing with car wax. The fletchings are cut from the tip of turkey feathers.

Beautiful bows, read all 11 pages very interesting.

Thanks :) - but please be aware that this was my first attempt at such a bow, and that it really does not resemble the original turkish bows in a good way. In other words, you should rather look at the bows that Adam K. or Scemdonmez has made, for originality :)

However, this bow took me through a steep learning curve, and perhaps there is something for others to learn from it too. I am currently working on a new 3-piece turkish. Hoping to put out some pictures when it is starting to look like a bow.

An extra 6 to 8 inches will make a big difference to the range. Perhaps you should check the tip angles at that longer draw length on a tiller. If they go past 90 degrees to the string there will be problems.

Good luck, it looks like a strongly made bow.

If i had all the tools and all the materials i would try to do one of these bows, unfortinatly at the moment i cant allow me to try.
Still i think this bows are to complicated to begin with, so i first try with a self/longbow mixture bow and see what happens.
My opinion is that i must first do a good simple bow, then try to make somthing more complicated like the turkish or mongol bow.
And those horns dont grow on trees either i think.

Good shooting and good arrow Kviljo!

What was the mass of the bow?

JJ

Starting out with some wooden bows are definitely worth starting with, although the process is in many ways very different from making a horn bow. Buying the book Adam Karpowicz wrote on the Turkish bows is probably the best head-start one can get on making horn bows.

Bede, I have already set the bow aside (well, actually both). They will probably only be used as dust-collectors, hehe. I am in the process of making a few new ones however. Perhaps I will have a new one ready for the next flight shoot in august.

I wish there was more people here flight-shooting horn bows.

JJ wrote:

Good shooting and good arrow Kviljo!

What was the mass of the bow?

JJ

Thanks JJ!

The arrow should probably take most of the credit, hehe. One of its brothers and sisters have been shot 370 meters (with a bamboo/ipe-bow).

I'm not quite sure what the mass of the bow is - it is probably written down in the rather long thread somewhere, but the mass-placement it has is really bad. The limbs are also very wide. It has birch tips and a cherry core, however (both kiln-dried 8) :lol: ).

Kviljo, you could put it on a scale to weigh it ;-)

I guess you have got an accurate scale for arrow weighing ...

JJ

I would have to drag it with me through a ton of snow to the workshop, so I think it will have to wait :) When it was made I did however check that it was going to be in the normal mass-range. Between 300 and 350. My second, which delaminated, weighed 330 grammes.

Haha, I didn?t think of the different climatic conditions... So your bow is ca. 100g lighter in mass than my first try. I am happy with it and shot some tournaments. But I doubt it will shoot very far ;-)

JJ

I'm kind of hoping that I will be able to make a 400-meter bow within August. It is probably a little late to start for that now, though...

Anyway, a friend welded a nice pot for boiling the horns and core. 26" long. I used it today and bent two limb pieces. The form is made for a 42" flightbow. It is quite astonishing how much bend green, soaked, maple will take. The core is 13mm thick at the tip/kasan bend, while the tips are 20mm thick.

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Only for curiosity some pic from mi work too. More than 80 curved maple, mulberry and acacia cors or kasan+bash parts -half year old.What you mean Kviljo its sufficient material for work ? :P
But i cant promise you working bow earlier than 2 years... :roll:

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Hehe, that ought to be enough to keep you busy for a while... :D

Some of those slightly darker ones look very thick and still bent very sharply. Is mulberry and acacia similar in colour? Perhaps one of them are even more bendable than maple?
It looks like one should be able to make a crab-bend easily with this wood?

I find it slightly hard to imagine that all the crab bows are made with grown curved "kasan/sal"-sections. It ought to be possible to boil-bend the shape. Perhaps?

Yes , its possible, but i dont recomended. I think that more gluead parts is better for realy super bow working... Lighter color is acacia. Mulberry when dreyed is very dark .Only vith work in mulberry i understand why Koreans love this wood. Its extraordinery super wood for curving! Acacia is oposite- hell wood . But work if you know his "soul" . :lol:

Having naturally grown pieces should make for a more effective bow, but the originals seem to be quite heavily overbuilt in the bend anyway. I'm setting aside a pair of maple cores to try to bend a set for a crab shape. It does seem easier to obtain straight near perfect pieces than finding suitable grown bends.

Need to start looking for some mulberry then. :)

It seems you have been making quite a few horn bows 8) Any flight-bow experiences to share? I can't help but think that an ~80-pound properly made and shaped flight bow will easily shoot past 400 meters, if the arrow and loose is good too. - but no-one seems to have tried/done this, except for perhaps Dan Perry shooting the arrow-shelved turkish bow Harry Drake made.

:lol: like i once said- i shoot fue times about 400 (measured only vith mi foot... :oops: ) but i dont think its somthing extra... Because i didnt write about, and this bows was use like material source for another generation :twisted:
But i dont make so much bows how i plan! Live, mi work , family - and like tsunami sick from crushed or bad bows makes long distance time period between each generation..( new information evolution and1,5-2 years waiting too.)
I stil think that only 550-600m bow was good for Atarn publicity !I like Crabs too , but if you dream about flyt records dont make this lovely bow. Turks was that bows !

I see :)

It seems plausible that the crab bows need heavy arrows to be effective.

It does not make good sense that given the scope of Mughal India, their trade and contacts, that their bows would be inferior to Turkish. I suspect that Turkish bows have captured greater notoriety. Weather could be a design factor.

If sufficient effort were made, it seems likely that there would be found flight shooting ranges from antiquity all around. There is a distance marker in Mongolia.

there are maidans of ancient noteriety in all of the old cities in india,paarticularly the city i was born and raised in Agra,The most unfortunte thing for the indians was that the brits considered us such a formidable lot even after defeating us was that they banned the production of any weapons and sport relating to weapons,the only places that weapon training openly thrived was with the nihangs who were not concerned with being killed so the brits thought it better not to stir the few bees left in the pot lest they gather a swarm and recruited them in their armed forces.
I have learned that there is a library in U.P.Luckhnow where there might be some documents related to the manufacturing of bows that might still be preserved,I am hoping to make a trip to India to explore these possibilities.
I found out about the library while trying to find a recipe for a kabab that originated from the region,believe it or not.
cheers

Kvilijo , you mean somthing like this ? :lol:

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one fine piece of mulberry:

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good mulberre curving example -1,8 -2,3 cm thick , 6cm wide...

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jack farrell wrote:

It does not make good sense that given the scope of Mughal India, their trade and contacts, that their bows would be inferior to Turkish. I suspect that Turkish bows have captured greater notoriety. Weather could be a design factor.

If sufficient effort were made, it seems likely that there would be found flight shooting ranges from antiquity all around. There is a distance marker in Mongolia.

Comparing bows of different designs to determine which is "best" is in my opinion misunderstood. Every type of bow represents the best solution of the task at the time. Climate, materials avaliable, tradition and the type of use, are all factors that have shaped the design of the bow.

But I feel it is quite obvious that the turkish flight bows, which have had some time to evolve towards the task of shooting very light needle-type arrows a long way, is the best flight-design we even have today. (with the natural materials) The crab bows seem to have a more rigid and heavy "kasan"-section, which gives more leverage and perhaps more energy storage, but also reduces the bows dry-loose-speed - which is likely the most important quality a flight bow needs.

In fact, we have a local place here, which is mentioned in the norse sagas. With modern measurements the distance reputedly having been shot is 1300 meters, hehe. Einar Tambarskjelve was a strong man, but not that strong :lol:

PjS.: That sounds like some very interesting documents! I hope you get the chanse to visit the library, and that there is still some unknown data to be found. That would have been fairly awesome 8)

Dusan: Yep, something like that! 8) Now get some horn and sinew onto those, and run outside with the measuring tape... :wink: Let's see who will be the first shooting past 500 meters :P (and let's hope Adam hasn't got the shooting machine ready just yet, hehe...)

I didn't know mulberry was ring-porous and not diffuse-porous as maple. I would have thought there could be massive problems with lifting growthrings on the outer curve while bending. - or did you bend the core while it had a single growth ring on the outer curve? Cool stuff!

I have to say that I am in love with mulberry as i find it one of the best and easiest to work with,wether it be dry haet of steam,it just bends beutifuly and it absorbes glue like a sponge.I just destroyed my korean style bow and it had a mulberry core and i can tell you it was my stupidity not the fault of the materials.the mulberry held verry verry well and i do not think i will be able to salvage the sinew without extensive soaking.Oh well live and learn.

:wink: hm, maybe this generation for about half year... :lol:

acknowledged Dusan,impatience is a disease of the young.i have learnt a lot from all of you and will continue to do so in the future.

Of the many bow designs of India we have not identified which one might be a candidate for flight shooting. But I do see arrows in collections which would be good for flight shooting. Variously, we would not know the absolute rules of the contests.

For instance the English are long involved in flight shooting. Lately the rule of "standard war arrow" has been observed being used for their contest.

Ivar; I must point out just how thin and fragile some Mughal war arrows are. I agree with your assessment of worldwide bow technology. To your list i might add development. I cannot believe that a Turkish bow was more greatly than a Mughal one, for the purpose and place.

Jack , i think that all Asiatic composite bows was used especialy for long distance war shooting. This is his biggest advontage.
From this point in every kingdoms like training discipline was flight shooting. If bow was best or not. All training long distance shooting. Only thanks Otoman burokracie officers we have best evidence from Otomans Okmeydans.

Agreed. It would be interesting to do a quantitative analysis of all known crab bows, regarding the overall shape, to see if it is possible to differentiate various types adapted for different uses. The difference between the flight-bows and the (turkish) war bows does not seem too great.

But still, the task of shooting perhaps 10 grains arrow weight per pound bow weight, is a very different matter than shooting say 3 grains/pound. While 10 grains/pound can allow a sturdy design, 3 grains/pound does not - if the efficiency is to be good for both examples.

How much does a regular Mughal arrow weigh?

I think Dusan made a very valid point.

"For instance the English are long involved in flight shooting. Lately the rule of "standard war arrow" has been observed being used for their contest. "

Jack, you may be right saying that different replicas of the English war arrow are today used as in a flight competition, but flight shooting, as we know it today, or practiced by the Ottoman Turks, is a relatively modern competition in the world of the English archery, the whole point of the compulosory practice of shooting for distance was to deliver a very heavy war shaft a long way and to do a lot of damage, which would be pointless with a light flight arrow, the empahsis wasn't to achive the longest distance possible, but to smash through people and horses with enough power up to the maximum range of the longbow with those given heavy arrows.

Well just think about it. There is flight shooting with the lightest arrow possible and then there is the English version of shooting with a war arrow. It is imaginable that different places had different rules.

Some Mughal bamboo arrows;

Flight? - 16.9 grams, 6mm mid shaft, 72.5 cm LOA
Bullet point- 14.0g, 6x73
Bullet- 16.5g, 7x71
Bullet- 13.6g, 6.5x72
Bodkin- 27.8g, 7x73.3
Bodkin- 26.4g, 6.5x73
Broadhead- 34.6g, 7x65.5
Broadhead- 30.4g, 6.5x67
Broadhead- 28.6g, 7x70.3
Heavy bodkin-47.0g, 7x68
Heavy bodkin-51.0g, 8x79.2

Definitely. It depends on the definition of flight shooting. I was thinking of the sport of shooting for the furthest distance, which seems to demand very light arrows.

Are the light arrows with bullet points fletched with regular-size fletchings? They too seem fairly light.

My assumptions are of course not backed up by experimentation, hehe... 8) Perhaps someone how has some experience with flight shooting these types of bows would chime in with some hard data?

wait, wait , wait... Big and haevy war arrows - yes mostly.But history of composites show us light tiny arrows used in war. For example -like we call him"Skitas" arrowheads .We found this litlle beasts in full steppe road from /mi country/ Slovakia cros Ukaraina to Mongol steppe.
Anyway more composite bow arrows are lighter than anglish ... In contrary spme of Mongols or Chines arrows was realy"monstrouz" :lol:

Yes Jack, today the different English 'war' arrows are shot purely for distance at specyific competitions, but back in the late medieval times this wasn't the case, the practice at butts and roving marks was always done at relatively long distance, but always too, shooting took place at specyfic targets, the emphasis was to develop accuracy, especially on the long distances, the range was always set to suit the military purpouse, long, but bacically this was still long distance target shooting. The arrow storm wasn't just random rush of arrows, the archers were required to judge the distance very accurately.
Think of golf, it derives from shooting at roving marks, it started on previous roving fields.
Please, Jack, don't think I'm trying to put tags on anything, just my thought on the subject.
Ivar, apologize for taking up off topic disscusion :oops: .

Ashbow; I asked Hillary G. as I thought there was more solid footing on the English distance shooting history but those folks are not quite there documentation wise. There is an old reference to minimum arrow weight. it does not seem such a stretch to see how far their archers could put that minimum arrow.

Nevertheless my point is still demonstrated that there may be more than one criterion for distance shooting. At Bonneville, I think there is a category for broad-head. Again, this merely demonstrates a variation in mind set.

An English longbow or any bow could be appropriate depending on the arrow criterion.

Jack, forgive my fierce scepticism, I took you meant shooting purely for the maximum distance.

Regarding the min. weight of English arrows, the only thing that comes to my mind is rather a matter of restrictions regarding shooting with a particular practice arrow at less than a given distance, one of Henry VIII's legislations forbid anyone under 24 of age to shoot with lighter types of arrows, at a standing mark 220 yards away or closer. However, all that still involved shooting at particular targets.
Today the English 'war' arrows are shot purely for the maximum distance, like in a flight category for hunting/broad-head arrows you mentioned.

We've recently started competing in the english "Standard arrow"-class here in Norway. First official competition was last August. It looks like it is quite popular, and a good addition to our "unlimited all natural material"-class (well, except for glues and strings).

I've made and experimented a little with some turkish forms, and think I've got it right. Here is the latest set of cores from the latest forms:

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A new turkish, made while partly looking at an original war bow. I think I may have over-shortened the sal/kasan radius. I'll problably have to heat out some of it. The core+horn is 9,5mm thick by the grip, and 8,5mm thick before the kasan eye. Both kasans are a little too thin at only 11,5mm, but I will build up a ridge with sinew.

At this stage it has got one layer of sinew.

Any comments are welcome, as always :)

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The tips are almost touching now on this bow.

A question for the experts: When pulling the tips closer to eachother after sinewing, should one try to force the kasans into more reflex too? I.e. by binding the rope between the tips down to the grip? This seems only to be possible to do when the sinew at the grip has dried somewhat, as the rope would make a mess of undried sinew.

Is this Y-binding between the tips and grip something that is only done in the last stage of reflexing, when heating the dried bow and curling it up for seasoning?

"Is this Y-binding between the tips and grip something that is only done in the last stage of reflexing, when heating the dried bow and curling it up for seasoning?"

Yes

Adam

Cool. Thanks!

Total sal thickness is 12mm now, which should translate into 3mm sinew. I've used about 86grams of sinew on it now, and will spend the next ~14 building up the sides a little more. I'll shorten the tips and try to pull the rest of the reflex into it as well.

The reason for my question is that I would have liked to make the kasans bend a little more as I don't think it will look too good if they go past straight at full draw. The core should probably have been reflexed a little more at the kasans.

Don't like the sharp sal/kasan bend, although I guess there are originals that have similar shapes.

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Now it is going to rest untill August. The goal is to have it ready for the flight shooting in the end of August.

It's not as symmetrical as I would have wanted it to be. This may be due to slightly different thicknesses in the core and horn. Would it be okay to "tiller" the core with horns before sinewing? I.e. pulling it into reflex to check that it will curl up evenly? - or will that perhaps weaken the core too much? I can imagine that the slow gaining of reflex while sinewing may be more gentle to the core.

Anything I should alter for the next bow?

It's 42" long and sal is about 12mm thick.

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Kviljo

Last week I spent a short but good time with Jaap and Kay in a Workshop in Germany and we were talking about Kay's "World record in flight shooting", her bow and of course bow-making.

Jaap highly recommends to build flight bows with rather shorter Kasan areas and a "better" design of the limbs (until the kasan begins), and still achieving the "Brezel-form" for seasoning the bow.
Actually we "ATARN-members" follow Adam's bow design in his book, but this is not necessarily true (no critism to Adam?s book!) for flight bows. The power should go more into the limbs or the first 35 to 40 cm and end just before the kasan eye. The longer the bending part becomes, the more energy the bow can store at a relatively low draw-weigth. From the material point of view you need less horn and wood, but more sinew. That's all?

Reto

Yes.I can agree. But not all members... :D

Jaap has certainly achieved a bow that performs well at relatively low draw weights. This is outside the area that Adam was writing about (high draw weight bows). This is not so much a flight bow issue, but instead it is about how to make efficient low draw weight composites.

I can see why such a design would be good for lighter bows. Less mass in (less) motion will yield a bow with a faster dry-loose-speed.

Another way of seeing it is that a light bow with kasans designed for ~127# will have a lot of dead mass in the kasans.

However, I'd say a bow with long bending kasans will store less energy, because of the geometry of the bow and string. It will stack more and store less energy. Lightly stressed limbs may keep more of their reflex to give a fatter draw-force curve though.

It's an interesting way to go, but I am hoping to be able to make a bow that is just on the border of what I can control. After all, the easiest way to achieve distance is raising the draw weight... :)

The above discussion about low draw weight performance bows is very interesting. I am starting a new bow with plans for a 4? handle, 10? sal (measured just after the handle narrows), 7? kasan, and 3? tips for a total length of 44?. Do these dimensions fit the sal/kasan ration or should I increase the sal?

I have not seen the Koppedrayers' bow, but I understand it is low draw weight, below 45lb. In this situation, the mass of arrow in relation to the draw weight is higher, because the wooden arrows can not be made that light. For a 100lb bow and a 200grain arrow, the grains/lb ratio will be 2. The same 200 grain arrow with a 40lb bow give the ratio of 5. It means the light weight bow has to do more work per its mass and one solution is the longer/wider/heavier working sections of bow - in this case the sals. At this point, I am not convinced it is the only solution, but it seems to work for Jaap.

Adam

(in flight shooting, the archer's skill is as important as the bow, so the long shots by hand should be re-tested with a machine to provide more reliable statisctics before making a judgement on bow designs)

Interesting stuff :)


Anyway, now I have started bending my third attempt at a Turkish flightbow. I think it is coming along quite well. What I plan to do tonight is to heat the sal/kasan bend a little, to straighten them out. I hope it doesn't delaminate :x


Any advice?



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Can it be that the Kasan eye region is way too reflexed? I would put special care into opening this part. For me, kasan and ears look too long compared to the very short sal.

Again, I think turkish flight bows had a special design which has less steep angles but more a generally round, regularly reflexed shape (crescent moon shape)? Cem could explain this better...

I?m curious about how this bow comes out when it?s braced.

JJ

JJ:

My coment:
Tillering stick looking good but it is not long enough. Please use another long one and wait for min. a day,do not heat it. Now kasan/sal angle is very high and snew will be under stress. I suggest wrap the kasan/sal with snew for safety, take off the wrapping after the tillering.
Sal is very stressed( over than others) in flight bow ,and kasan is longer as yours. Actually essential thingis sal angle more reflexed and kasan/sal angle has lower angle(crescent shape). Snew backing may different , kasan should be lighter. This type bows are not regular.I think your bow is not flight type.

Cem

Yes, I agree. I was aming for a short warbow-design with more abrupt sal/kasan bend, but I think the bend radius is a too small. It's opened up quite well now, but I am very afraid of the sal/kasan bend.

I will do as you suggest Cem, and wrap the sal/kasan areas with sinew before I try to open them up more.


This is how it has been resting since yesterday:

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By the way, it is only 39 inches long from nock to nock, measured on the outer curve. It is 12mm thick and 33mm wide at the sal.

I think it will be too heavy 8)

I remember reading in Klopsteg's book that Mahmud Effendi had to weaken nearly all the bows he made in England for the local archers. Don't feel left out if you have to do the same thing.

Cool :)

I am progressing very slowly now, but I think the bow is getting easier to handle. I'm working away from my workshop these days, and forgot to bring with me some extra sinews... So I haven't been able to secure the kasan-eyes with wrappings. It would definitely have been a bit less scary having them wrapped before opening them up, but the bow seems to hold together quite well anyway. I've heated the areas over an electric element, while the sal and kasans were wrapped with aluminium foil to prevent them from getting too heated. I've had it up to nearly too hot to touch-temperature, with the elongated tillering stick placed between the tips.

This is what it looks like now:

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SWEEET!

Woho! Now I have strung the bow. It had quite a few problems. One sal has somehow managed to get about 2mm sideways bend. It doesn't seen to be a big problem to correct stability-wise though. Maybe the core and horns needed longer drying time before glue-up, or maybe it's a problem with my sinew-job... The sals also need some thickness-adjustments to get them to bend evenly, but I think I have sorted most of that out now.

Question: In a well made, heavy, short original-type turkish bow, do you expect the horn to get small compression-marks at the sals?

Pictures to follow soon.

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:D

I have seen it on old bows, but sometimes I wonder if some of the marks are actually from bending the bow the wrong way or having the string break. I think the individual horns may have a tendency to this, but I don't know if sometimes the treatment they have received predispose them to problems.

Some of the bowyers here will have individual explanations for the things that can go wrong with horn.

Ivar; You are on your way. Best of luck. -j-

Hello Kviljo,nice work.It seems to me that there is a "hinge" at the beginning of the right limb:I suggest to take care of that before going any further.Are the compression marks on the horn in that area?This bow is similar to the ones I'm making now,with kasan almost straight.
Bye

Francesco

Thanks guys :)

You're quite right, Alessi, it has hinged a bit at the right sal close to the handle. That's where the compression marks are. It's got a bit of the same problem at the other sal too, but I think I have stabilized that side now. It has followed the string quite much there, and it didn't seem to want to go away with heat and a day of rest either. The damage seems to be pemanent. It has also got a lot of string follow now, but I think that may be due to fairly high moisture content, as I've kept it in the car for some weeks now, in rather humid weather.

It seems plausible that kasans that are straight at full draw is the most efficient.

wow :? that looks beasty.. wish you good luck
did you use a tepelik ?

I tied the tepeliks to it for a day or two, to open it up a little, but I just spanned it over the knees with a helper putting on the string. It has followed the string quite substantially now, so it is fairly easy to string, even though I think it may be very close to 100 pounds at perhaps 26 inches draw. I will probably sand it down a little, so that I will be able to draw it fully.

Hoping to flight-shoot it at the Norwegian Championship at the 21st of August.

If you use something to hold the limbs in the right relationship to the string, you could leave it strung for a week or more to weaken it. It depends on how long the bow has been drying and the glue setting. If the bow is too young, leaving it strung too long may be bad for it.

Hmm, how will that affect the steepness of the draw/force-curve? I was thinking that leaving the bow strung over time to recuce it's draw weight would affect the brace tension mostly, and perhaps not as much the full draw weight?

Oh, I see so much I need to do better for the next bow...


By the way, how much do you guys sand the final sinew layer after it has dried? Do you sand it at all, or do you sand it completely evenly? - or somewhere inbetween?

Alright, I think this is going to work 8)

Five days till the flight-championship, and the bow seems to hold together quite well. I think I have also managed to tweak it enough to make it look fairly OK. It is now about 11mm thick at the sal, and although I have not been drawing it fully yet, I think I will be able to draw it 24-25 inches a couple of times 8)
If so, I am hoping for at least 300 meters! I have my other 271meter personal hornbow-record from last year to beat, and I think that will be fairly easy with this bow 8)

Any further suggestions?



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Haha, I'm so happy that I managed to wrap it all the way around without it cracking :mrgreen: Although it has lost quite a bit of reflex - which is probably because of too high moisture content (having been stored in a humid car for the last 7 weeks, and now having more than 5 months curing time) and perhaps a little short sals which were not that well tillered at first, it does seem to have a much much better draw-force cruve than my first "turkish".

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Dude Awesome! good luck beating your record!

Thanks!


Question: Will I likely have problems with such low brace height? It does seem stable enough to be shot a couple of shots witout being corrected inbetween. - but I have no real experience on this matter. I don't want to rise it, but perhaps it will be good for the bows dry loose-speed? After all, I am going to shoot 200-300 grain arrows with it. What brace height could be recommended for this short-overstressed little bow?

I think you need to grip that bow slightly differently. The centre of pressure should be between the base of the index finger and the thumb with the wrist turned down. Turkish bows like this have such small grips that the chelik has to be almost under the web of skin between those fingers rather than in the centre of the palm of the hand. Most people can do this without a mushamma though that would be necessary if you wan to use a siper.

I made this comment because when you shoot the bow you might experience a downward thrust on the hand from the departing arrows. That could result in cuts to the skin and a wobbling arrow.

Ah, brilliant! I will need to practise this a bit.

I think I will try to use a thumb ring at the flight range too, but I have not found the time to make a siper yet. I guess that takes some thorough training to do safely, though. Maybe next year.

Good luck, wish you long distance.

Cem

Dont forget, most old Otoman rekords was done vithaut siper ! :lol:

very nice!

Best of luck my friend!

good luck !!

It seems to bend nicely,more evenly.Congrats and good luck.Draw weight and mass?

Bye

Francesco

Great effort to have tamed that beast! All the best for a new flight record.

I would like to see a pic of it strung, however (and perhaps drawn, too?);-))

JJ



edit: OK, I have seen the strung/drawn pics. Somehow my firefox seems to block them...

Thanks guys! I appreciate it!

If it survives the weekend shooting 6 flight arrows, I will measure the draw weight and it's mass and let you know.

I think its weight was around 340 grammes during building at some stage. Fairly normal for a short bow I think. I have a hard time estimating it's draw weight because I think it feels very different to draw than the regular longbows I am used to make. Of course it also depends on how far I decide to draw it, which I am not quite sure of yet. I guess I should try at least 25 inches if I want to get a proper distance out of it. A very uncertain guestimate would be perhaps 80 pounds at 24-25 inches.

GO GO GO good luck! :D

It remebers me a bit the bow on the right

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Let us know the results on PP forum too.

God i cant stop looking at this bow! I just love how like seriously half the bow is kasan!

Woho :D The bow survived the weekend! It did however gain a fair amount of string follow, keeping only perhaps 4-5 inches reflex. As it may appear on the pictures, it was raining during the flight shoot, and there was a fair amount of head wind. The bow was also not as heavy as I had expected - I had to reduce the thickness some to make it bend reasonably. With the same arrows as I used last year with the first "turkish" bow shooting 271 meters, this one shot only 213 meters. The best result of the day was 253 meters, with a wood-laminate that I'm convinced would easily have done 300-350 meters if the wind and rain was not there.

As it is now, I believe it is only 60-70 pounds at 25-26 inches. I will measure it when it has dried fully again.

I shot the second round with a thumb ring, and I must say it really makes sense to shoot it with the thumb and having the arrow on the thumb-side of the bow too. The arrows seemed to leave the bow much cleaner with the thumb-shooting.


We're going to arrange another flight-shoot in about a month. Hoping to shoot it again then.


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Just like to ask the results few hours ago, but didn't.

Now take a look before going in bed and .....


Anyway congrats and wish better weather next time!

The bow is simmetrical? Than could turn it to give it a try that way. May it doesn't need to weaken the top limb.

The pictures are tricky, but the nocking point looking high to me.

Cheers Z

Thanks! Hopefully the weather will be better next saturday (not tomorrow). Maybe then it will shoot properly.

The bow is as symmetrical as I managed to make it. The upper limb is however slightly weaker than the lower, but I think this is okay as it evens out at full draw.

The nocking point does look a bit high. What does the other experts say? I think it is possible to make lower with the thumb-technique.

My next bow will have longer sals, hehe, and not such an abrupt kasan eye bend 8)

The bow looks good. I would be interested to see if it can stand a longer draw.

I had some problems with my bow in Utah because of its strength and my weakness. When I had reduced its weight to 66 pound at 29 inches, I could draw it fully, but the cunning device gained weight overnight in the dry air and air-conditioning and started to collapse my elbow. It seemed to have gained more than 10 pounds. The point of this story is that you should draw a bow that you can control. I am interested in how the draw felt to you. If you can feel the bow stacking and it is not comfortable to draw, don't push it too far. I have had a Turkish bow break into three pieces at full draw and I do not recommend the experience.

Thanks! I am not sure if it will survive a longer draw, because it had some sinew fibers lifting on the sal of the upper limb before and under the last championship. I have glued them down with some cyanoacrylate glue tonight, and my fingers are crossed that they will stay down through the coming weekend. - we are going to have a small flight-shoot on saturday, if the weather permits it.

The reason for the fibers lifting is that I needed to sand down the final sinew layer to make it bend properly. - leaving some faded out sinew strands in the middle of the sal.

Other than that I am sure it would like to be drawn quite a bit further. I too would like to draw it fully, perhaps even 28 inches? My thumb is not really used to drawing bows though, so it is my weakest link at the moment, just barely being able to shoot it comfortably. On a good day I manage to pull a 100# @ 32" longbow, so I was hoping the bow would have ended at a somewhat higher draw weight. It certainly was far more smooth to draw than my pervious "turkish", and I can not remember feeling any stacking at all.

I weighed it last weekend when it had dried for three weeks after the rather wet championship. It weighs 309 grammes. The kasans are probably a bit sinew-heavy, but I think it should cope with much more stress than what it is under now - if the back fibers were OK. Tomorrow, or on saturday, I will measure it's draw weight and perhaps plot a draw/force-curve.


Were you able to shoot your bow at all? - or, my memory tells me that I've read somewhere that you had a lighter backup-bow at hand? I'd be interested in hearing some stats on the bow(s) and arrow(s), and how they did.

The sub-43 inch bows do stack unfortunately, when drawn to 27-28 inches. These are very short bows and once the string "lift-off"passes (somewhere betw. 18 to 22in of draw), there is an upturn in the f-d curve. The last couple inches become a near-wall experience in some bows. The stacking is worse than in a longbow at a similar draw and the archer should expect it and train accordingly. However, there are still performance gains when the bows are drawm that far and there is no danger of limb breakage. It is almost impossible to over-stress the sinew or horn. The first to go is glue, but then the first event is the delamination between the layers, not breakage.

The straight breakage can happen (I know the beginning bowyer who experienced this), but the bow was severely dessicated (over a fire) and poorly tillered.

I had the bows break many times, but never from a catastrophic overstrassing in the straight pull. The breaks were caused either by limb twist or when the limbs are violently reversed in shedding the string. The twist may not be noticed by the archer, since the breakage happens so suddenly.

Some bows develop a progressive weakness in the sinew layer or in horn, when the fibres are cut through by excessive sanding or filing. The affected limb begins to show string follow, which may eventually end in failure, but the problem should be easily seen by the archer before that happens.

Adam

Superb, I'm learning :) This bow did by the way shed the string once already, hehe. It reversed when I was trying to make it behave before being drawn. Since then I have kept the string height somewhat higher, although the bow did not seem to be damaged from it.

Hmm, maybe some of this bows string follow is due to the cut sinew fibres. I can see how that would work. The fact that they want to lift from the back should be evidence enough for it I think. I guess a simple rawhide-covering would not do much in preventing string follow from this kind of manufacture-mistake? From what I have read here in other threads, it seems that it may not easy to make an extra sinew layer stick to an old sinew layer?

Woho :D Looks like my superglue-fix of the lifting sinew worked. The bow is still intact after some 20-30 shots.

Today, with calm air and no rain, the bow shot a 24 inch long flight arrow 269 meters. - two meters shorter than my pervious "record". It was shot with a thumb ring, and a 22 inch draw measured from the belly of the bow. At this draw length, the bow has a pull of 65 pounds.

So, it looks like the bow is slightly heavier than I first thought. I did not have any longer flight arrows, so I was not able to draw it further though... This short draw length may also account for my impression that it did not stack, hehe.

I am not used to shooting with the thumb ring, and especially not with fragile-nocked flight arrows that has no snap-op effect. Are there any accounts of how this should be done - drawing the string while holding the flight arrow onto the string at the same time? What is the technique?

Very beautiful bow ah

Snap on nocks are not necessary with a thumb ring. In flight shooting if you start drawing at an elevated angle, you only need to lightly rest the side of the index finger against the side of the nock for the first few inches of the draw. At full draw, you can slightly turn your wrist so that the is no lateral pressure on the nock. This is true even if you start your draw horizontally and then elevate by bending at the waist. You need some more pressure if you start the draw with the arrow pointing down. This is not a good draw for flight unless you are shooting a compound bow.

I even had problems with a lighter bow I was shooting in Utah, kindly lent to me by Jaap Koppedrayer. Several of the bows we weighed had increased in poundage in the heat and low humidity. Either that, or I decreased in strength which is quite possible too. This is one of the characteristics in shooting in 10% humidity. I think when I shoot the bows in Sydney, the humidity rarely gets below 35% on the driest days.

Superb, Bede. This is also something I need to practise more. I need to make a set of target arrows for the bow and start shooting more regularly.

Yesterday I shot some 20 arrows with the bow, and when it had settled down a little and acting more stable, I dared to pull it all the way to full draw. I am not yet sure how long the full draw is, but I am 100% sure it was it's full draw, hehe. I'm amazed by how this little bow does not seem to stack much almost all the way to full draw, and then at the last few inches it suddenly starts stacking like mad! "Stopping" would probably be a better word than stacking :mrgreen:

But, I think this feature will be very useful when flight-shooting, as there is little danger of drawing the arrows over the knuckle or beyond the siper, as long as the bows responds with this much stacking at full draw.

It sounds like sealing the bows and bow-strings in plastic bags before leaving for Utah may be a good idea, hehe. 10% is way low! :shock:

10% humidity....
It never got below 50 % all summer here, with 65% more like the average...

Winter time and time for hornbowyery. I've finally found time to restart making hornbows. Currently I'm working on two crabs, a magyar, an angular, and a turkish bow. I've just glued the horn to the magyar and turkish, and I hope they will be ready for summer and the flight championship. The pictures does not show it well, but I think this turkish will have a much better shape than the last one. Also, there will be much more wood in the kasans, which I hope will do something with its dry-loose speed. Also, I hope to make this one at least 80 pounds. There seems to be good competition from the wooden bows this year, so it had better perform better than my last few attempts, hehe. 8)


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Hey Kviljo!

Love this topic! And good luck on your upcomming bows.

A question:
Since you're expecting them to be ready for competition already this summer, how long do you have in mind for the seasoning period?
I just finished the last layer of sinew on my own turkish bow, and I am currently wondering how long I can keep my mind still and hands at ease before I jump my poor unexpecting bow...

BR

Christopher

The competition will be at the end of August, but I guess this is too little time for the bows to be cured properly. I think for the first few bows there is no need to wait the full proper curing time, as they probably will not be fully optimalized in any case. I think I have seen turkish bows here on atarn being strung and shot under a month after sinewing, but I think I would worry a little stringing a fully curled up turkish in anything less than two months after sinewing.

Hope to hear and see more of your project. Nice to know there is hornbows being made in Denmark too :)

Hahah! I will try and keep my hands of it then :)
By the way. I noted that Adam in his book, on page 107-108 under seasoning mentions, that the back is filed flat. Does this mean that it is actually okay to remove some of the topmost layer of sinew and glue? In the same section he mentions, that turkish bowyers use a heavy coat of glue poured onto the bow after the shaping, to form a thick outer layer. Is this something you have experience with or have you seen others mentioning it here on the forum?

Thanks,
Chris

I haven't read the text in a while, but I think the filing of the back is only to make the back flat and smooth as it is difficult to lay the sinew so that it is completely flat. If there are too many cut fibres in the sinew layer it may lead to sinew fibres lifting on the back, which I experienced on my last finished bow. I also put a thick coat of glue on the same bow after sinewing, but this layer cracked a lot and wants to flake off. There might not have been any problem if I put the glue layer on just after sinewing - I don't remember exactly but I think I waited too long with putting it on and there were probably some fat on the sinew layer before I put on the glue. Anyway, I am now hesitating with putting on the final thick layer of glue being afraid that it might crack and flake off... If anyone else has experience with this, there seems to be two of us now who would like to listen :)

I find sanding the sinew layer for smoothness to have merit but I finish with several thin coats of glue which does not present any problems. Not to refute the old masters.

Several thin coats seems to be a good idea.

So, I'll just continue with random pictures from my hornbow making in this thread. I've finished glueing up the core for one of the mughal bows. I hope to turn it into a true replica as I have documented an original. The horn will be only 3cm wide in the middle of the sal, while the total limb width will be 4,5cm.


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It might not be the most interesting picture, but this Herdim glue pot is really brilliant. With this there is no need for worrying about overheating the glue.

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For my second egyptian I thought I would try the rubber bands for clamping. The core is consisting of three pieces of maple - one back and one belly with an extra grip lamination inbetween. (thanks again for the information, Jack!) As the core is fairly thin I thought it would be a good idea to glue the horns while having the core secured to the form. I've inspected the glue-up it today and it looks alright.

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Hehe, me and my wife went to the zoo a couple of days ago, and we found these guys (Ibex) chilling in the sun. Those horns would surely yield a full length egyptian bow 8) Wonder if these could be tamed enough to have them as farm animals, hehe.

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one of mi new horns , friend :lol:

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Kviljo:ask the administrators of the zoo,when a ibex die they are cut horn for you,maybe sinew and skin you can use, so maybe you can pay a few money buy them,

Well, so much to see and comment on. Nice horns Dusan; I hope they were reasonable. Ivar, congrats to you and your new domestic situation. every happiness.

The thing to do is to convince the zoo of your important position as a living historian in the field of archery and have them notify you in case of the untimely demise of one of the ibexs. They do not live to be all that old. It did my heart good to see your glue up. You have to admit that a bunch of inner tube strips beats all those heavy and expensive clamps. It is just another thing.

Your glue up clearly shows how closely the shape of the horns is to the shape of the angular bow. Who knows, maybe this was the genesis of the design?

Whoops, Jiao beat me to it! -j-

wow that mughal bow looks awesome. keep us updated !
which is the original you refer to ?

Very nice horns, Dusan! Do you have any plans for them?

I will send an email to the zoo. If they otherwise just throw it away... :)

Thanks Jack! Yes, I was quite happy with the rubber bands. All of those bands cost me the same as one clamp. They also seem to be easy to clean. And, they are quicker to put on. The only thing I did not like is that they cover some part of the glue line, so that it is not possible to check for squeeze-out or add extra glue. I am considering using a strip of wood to keep the bands out of the way, but I haven't looked into it yet.


The original Mughal bow is one I came across in a museum magazine while looking for bows for an exhibition. Within some years I hope to write a short article on it. It is quite "standard" looking, but it is nice to be able to shape it exactly as the original, even though I don't know it's internal construction.

If i have a plans ? :lol: ouch ! Thousands! I need minbimum 3 or more another like this horns...- old Temudzhin , Skitas,Old Turcic , Egyptian bows was based in Ibex horns originaly...
But stll fight vith flyght turkic bow vith seriouz quality.Ibex is future work.

Ivar; Just a point. It would not be necessary to tie the ends. You could make a long strip and wind it back and forth again and again with the second or third layer directly on top of the first limiting the covered area. The inner tube technique is also faster than the clamp technique, would you say?

Hehe, good to hear, Dusan 8)

Jack: Hehehe... I guess I should have thought about that myself :oops: Having a long strip and winding it back and forth must be a lot easier. My index finger found it a little tiresome to snap on all of those single straps, hehe. Even so, I definitely agree that they are a lot quicker to use than the clamps. Also, I like that they don't "hold up" so many clamps, so that it is economically possible to glue up several bows at the same time. Alright, I need to find another inner tube to cut up!

Okay, so this is not a horn composite, but it has somewhat the same construction. Birch back, compression pine belly, birch siyahs and a hemp string. It is a Bryggen in Bergen (Norway) / Ostjak replica. It's cross section and width is from the a find in Bergen, while the length and siyahs are from the Ostjaks. 40# @ 26" and 75" long overall.


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Now that is a nice bow! It is basically a longbow with siyas!
It looks like Legolas' bow from Lord of the Rings!

So, I've been trying to tune this last turkish a little. It's got a new extra sinew layer with full length sinew that I won't file through :lol: And I've adjusted the tiller slightly. Yesterday I let the bow lay braced with tepeliks clamped to it - like in the picture - to stress and straighten the kasan eye of one limb a little more, while trying not to load the sal of the same limb too much. After a couple of hours it really made a difference, and I am quite optimistic for the bow this time.

To sum up, it is a 39 inch long bow, with 11,5mm thick sals that are quite rectangular in cross section - only slightly convex horn. It has got more sinew than horn. The kasans are waaay too long, and the grip should also have been shorter, while the sals should be longer. It has now got a ~16-strand dacron endless loop sting with linnen wrappings.

Last year it was drawing about 60 pounds at some draw length, and shot 269 meters with a ~20 gram ~23 inch arrow. This year it had better be drawing a little more with the extra sinew layer, and I have made a 27 inch spruce arrow in the turkish style weighing 13 grammes. If my thumb can take it, I will draw it as far as I can within the 27 inch arrow, and hope for something exciting to happen.

I'll be back with the results next monday 8)

Good luck :)! Waiting to see the results!

Regards Kevin

Will wait it unpatiently!!!
That will shoot 300m or more! Good Luck!

All the best from me as well! Keep us posted!

Soo, the bow, or rather I did not perform as I hoped. After adding the extra layer of sinew, and not shooting much this last year, I was not able to draw it fully. The bow also seems to be stacking a bit, hehe.

I managed 260 meters with it, with a 27-inch turkish flight arrow weighing about 13 grammes. This was with a slight head wind, but we later shot the other way on the field, with maybe 7 meters per second wind in our backs, which ended in only about 270 meters.

This was very similar to my previous distance shots with this bow, even though the arrows was quite different. It seems this bow will not shoot much further, so now I will start making a new and hopefully more efficient flight bow.

Well, if we dont talk about bow quality, dont forget , that osmans training relaze technik for years... Another problem is good balanced arrow. I think good bow ws only first step... :lol: :shock: terrible...

Anyway good luck !

Yes, definitely! I don't expect to be shooting 800 meters anytime soon, hehehe. But I must say I'm a little disappointed in the bow, as it is surely stressed enough - it's got compression marks along most of it's sals, hehe. However, I see many ways to improve the bow. In fact, that's just about everything about it, hehe 8) Longer sals, shorter handle, less sinew and narrower kasans, narrower tips, better side-profile with less reflex in the kasan eye, more reflex in the sals, and a little longer bow overall.

... thats that problems what i still fight .Its no problem "glued one shooting turk". This details is problem. If you /and i/ drem about record, isnt it ? :lol:

Is the picture of the actual distance shot? the angle is far below the 45deg (or rather the required 43deg) for the maximum distance. The bow should be doing better than that.

Adam

Kviljo wrote:

Longer sals, shorter handle, less sinew and narrower kasans, narrower tips, better side-profile with less reflex in the kasan eye, more reflex in the sals, and a little longer bow overall.

A beginner's question: Will you also try to make the kassan eye a bit less stiff next time, so it will bend slightly at full draw?

Best regards,
Arry

Dusan, yeah, it seems that all these details are pretty important. It sees composites are not automatically better than wooden bows. Let's hope we manage to tune into the important details sooner or later. I'm curious to hear how your projects are going. It's been some time since we've heard from you I think. :)

Adam, yep, the picture is from the flight shoot last sunday. You might be on to something, but the angle can't be all, because I shot 12 arrows, and they were all quite consistent in how far they went - between 240 and 270. I always take care to shoot about 45 degrees, and feel pretty confident that my flight shooting technique is not too far off, even though it has still got to adapt a lot to the turkish equipment.

The arrow in the picture is 27 inches long, and according to my friends at the shoot I was not able to draw it much further than in the picture - which means the 260 meters was shot with a ~24 inch draw. That's pretty much the same as I was able to draw last year, when it shot nine meters longer with an arrow that was almost twize as heavy, even though it was a few inches shorter. So, I think this bow has reached it's dry-loose-speed. I'd probably be better off shooting 20 gram arrows than these 12 gram arrows with this bow. After all, the kasans are huge and pretty heavy, plus I guess the tips are dimentioned for a 120 pound bow.

Arry, I do think the kasan eyes in this bow is bending a bit, but it might not show well in the pictures as they are so reflexed. I hope that this part on my next bow will straighten almost fully out at full draw.


The coolest thing I learned at this flight shoot, is that arrows that are only 5mm thick just in front of the fletchings, can in fact stand being shot from such a bow. The arrows I shot was all made with similar dimentions as some original turkish arrows, so I should have known it would not be a problem, but 5mm looks incredibly thin for a wooden arrow to be shot out of a "heavy" bow.


This bow and the arrow in the picture did by the way win the "laminated bow of the year" and "arrow of the year" titles. "all show, no go" :lol:

:lol: you forgot fiend.I am that guy , who dont show his work before best results.
You are one of that guys who show all his work. :lol:

I dont think its bad or good . Its our way. Anyvay , you are one of mi favorites "showmans" ! :D

you are shoot the dark sky,cool bow !cool pics!

very nice bow !

why wonder about distance if you "only" draw mediterranean style and 24 inches ? - at 30 inch and with a thumb ring it will go further.

With flight shooting, the arrow and the string are important too. The diameter of the arrow at its maximum has an important effect on its drag. If you make a slightly thinner arrow, it should fly farther than a thicker lighter arrow.

The string has to be as light as possible consistent with strength. This means that they break sometimes. The serving should be a short and light as reasonable with your drawing style, even if it means replacing it with every twenty shots.

The variation of the angle of the bow is dependent on the following wind and the nature of the air currents. Sometimes it is best to shoot higher to catch a wind at an altitude of a few hundred feet. At other times a lower angle will minimize the effect of head winds. This is within the 40-46 degree bandwidth.

I bet you are right, there is still a huge list of things to do better.

I have now put some sinew on my fourth attempt at the turkish design. I was considering not sinewing it, because I know I did a terrible job with glueing the horn. The glue joint is probably pretty dry, but I figured the bow was looking good, and that I might be able to make it work, even if I have to re-glue the horn.

If it survives, I suspect it will not be a heavy bow. The core+horn thickness of the sal is 10mm, but it is fairly narrow. In any case, I feel like I'm getting closer to a proper turkish design. Reto hinted to me that the kasans could be only 13cm long (if my memory is correct), so these are quite a bit shorter than my previous bow. I really like the change, and think it might make a nice difference to the dry-loose-speed of the limbs. - which will hopefully make it an OK flight bow too, even if the draw weight will be less than I was planning for.

Feel free to comment :)

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Now this bow only needs the last sinew layer, before I try to forget about it for some months 8) In fact it turns out that it will probably be quite heavy after all, as the sals are closing in on 29x13mm overall.

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Ivar all this curves are so beautiful ! What kind of wood did you used for grip?
Good Luck!

Nice work!

Thanks :) I really hope this one stays in one piece. I think it might become my first proper Turkish composite, although I would like to have a little more reflex near the kasan eye. For the next core I bend, I would like the kasans too to be a little more curved, so it would be a little closer to the flight bows.

I used oak for the handle.

Ta-daa! Last sinew layer done. Now the sals are 30x14mm. In total 90 grammes of sinew. I should probably have stopped at less sinew to keep the draw weight at a manageable number... I just checked the dimentions-table on page 41 of "The book", and it seems it could turn out at 110 pounds plus... Well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it.

I gave the core + horn about 1mm taper in the sals, but in spite of that it seems like it did not get much extra reflex at the kasan eye. I wonder if the last heating of the bow and pulling the tips closer to the grip could be some of the reason for the extra reflex in that area seen on the original old bow in the pretzel shape shown on page 108 of Adams book. Of course, the kasans is more curved on that bow too.

That's also something that my mind tries to work out - why did the turkish masters make the kasans so reflexed? Were the kasans in these bows really so flexible that they straightenes almost completely out at full draw? I thought that the optimal was straight kasans at full draw.

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The old bows had less wood in the kasans and the ridge was build-up mostly in sinew. It can be seen in the sections of bows. This makes the kasans more flexible and more amenable to corrections with heat.

Now, if a bow like that had the thinnest spot in sals right below the kasan eye, then, when heated whole (I do not recommend it) and bent into the pretzel shape, it would look the same as the old bow on the picture.

In your bow the transition betw. the kasan and sal is more gradual and the kasans are stiffer, so the reflex-bending affects mostly the sals. It can be a really fast bow if everything goes well.

Adam

Thanks, Adam. That makes sense.

I really hope it will be fast. I've started making some formula-1 equipment for it, so it had better behave, hehe. Hopefully this will not end up with a painful hand...

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I take it that you are going to mount that on a small block otherwise you may not have enough material to carve an eshik.

Using a siper should be started with a very light bow to develop the correct technique. The really difficult part with a heavy bow is to keep the wrist in the right position at full draw. This is why the Turks invented the mushamma. The whole process of using a siper is more difficult than it first appears. Since the arrow has to pass the arrow pass of the bow, the hand has to be lower on the grip to get the correct height so the pressure point is just above the chelik.

Most modern sipers are made with the rear of the eshik too high to accommodate a contemporary low wrist hand position. The old versions of the tasma (the leather wrist strap) are also small, not like the modern ones which cover much of the wrist and look like they are designed for protection rather than to hold the siper in place.

The shape of the groove you have made looks good. Remember for practice arrows the groove is plain, but for arrows with points it is normally lined with very thin leather

Cool stuff Bede :)

The eshik is the grooved piece that takes the extra underlying plate, like in this next photo?

I don't think I have seen such a modern version that you describe. Sounds a little more comfortable to use though - with a normal grip. I can see how if could become a problem for me to build up enough strenght in the wrist to shoot a heavy bow with the forward tilted grip. But first I will try to use equipment that is as close to the orignial as possible. - although I might make some extra protection for the arm.

Please don't hesitate to comment on the shape of the rest of the siper. I think it is getting close to the orginals, but I might well have missed some feature of it or shaped it wrong.

Interesting what you say about the leather. I noticed some had it. I will use this one to practise painting with gold, but I might just make one more for general practise. I bet some leather in the groove will make it less noisy.

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Your design for the eshik is good and easier to make than fitting a curved groove into a block as was often done. There was a beautiful ivory siper sold on Sothebys that was somewhat like yours.

The tasma needs its silk ribbon and a lining. You will probably find that you do not need quite so many holes for the strap since the silk ribbon partially tightens the whole thing. The tasma in particular is very individual for each user since it has to conform to the size and shape of your hand. They say that you should temporarily glue the eshik to the tasma for a test shooting to make sure you have the angle right before you finally glue it permanently. The angle that the eshik sits on the triangular part of the tasma depends on the shape of your hand in the clench and the length of the metacarpal bone at the base of the thumb. Try it out on a weak bow so you know you have the grip right and then practise with heavier bows until you can maintain the same shape of fist and keep the trough of the siper level.

Cool, I think I found it. Very good photos at that auction site. Now I have something to look at when decorating the sides of it. Thanks!

I'm very happy to read that "they say" one should temporarily glue it to the eshik to the tasma to get the proper angle. I was wondering if the originals were adjustable in some way, but concluded that I'd better just fit it temporarily to try it out a little before securing it properly.

Last night I stitched a "silk ribbon" made of goat leather to the tasma, hehe. I guess I might consider changing it for silk later. ...unless I find one that has one made out of leather 8)


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Strangely, silk ribbon makes a better harness. It is not as stretchy as leather like goat. I just glue it on between the leather upper surface of the tasma and the cloth lining. some sipers have a little slot cut in the strap just before the buckle on the tasma. The ribbon is tied through that. Many had the ribbon stitched over the strap in the same place permanently once the right size was found by experiment.

The "they say" is Mustafa Kani through Hein and Klopsteg. Now that I have a Turkish copy of Kani, I am gradually working through the translations checking the parts I regards as odd. Adam Karpowicz did the same kind of thing when he rediscovered that the tiller as described by Hein and Klopsteg was a misunderstanding of the asa gezi. Some things are clear in these days because of recent research and it can be worthwhile to recheck older translations.

Cool stuff, Bede!

From reading the sources, do you remember if there is a mention of how the mushamma was generally made? - or was it just any kind of waxed textile strip made as wide and long as needed?

First attempt eh? ;)

It looking great!!! My fingers crossed too :)

Yes, this is my first siper, although my mind have been playing with the idea of making one for a few years. I'm hoping it will look even better once it is finished, although I do see that I may have to lower the front of the groove a little. Seems like mine is a bit too high, which will probably demand an even lower grip on the bow.

This is the original that I've been kind of working after, although the dimentions are "generic" with 3cm wide and 12cm long groove.

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I have an original mushamma. It is a coarse silk tube saturated in beeswax. Despite what Kani wrote about how it was sewn, I believe that they were sewn as a tube inside out, then had the edges of the seam ironed out flat. The whole thing could then be carefully turned right side out and the seam ironed flat down the middle of the strip Subsequently, you can soak it in molten wax and pull it through your fingers or between two dowels to squeeze out the excess wax. I apply it hot to the grip and then form the grasp and press it into place. There is a slight taper in the width from one end to the other. I believe the length and width have to be individually worked out for your hand. I made several copies and found it quite hard to get them to work with very heavy bows. I am still experimenting to get the right size for me.

Nice! What's the approximate width and length of the original? - so I get it about right. 3-4cm wide and 60cm long?

Some days ago I soaked a strip of linnen in beeswax, but did not squeeze out the excess. It became unusably stiff, hehe.

I would think that if some of the wax mixture used for replenishing oilskin cloth were available that it might be a better choice than pure wax.

This has kind of become my "all round" thread, where I post anything regarding my hornbows, so I thought I'd share a little experience I had with glue today.

About a week ago I prepared some different glue solutions. Regular hide glue, home made fish bladder glue from northern Norway cod, and one batch of fish skin gelatine. I poured all three onto a sheet of plastic and let them gel and dry. My home made fish bladder glue is pretty slow gelling, although it gells in 18 degrees room temperature in about 10 minutes. The other two gel quite rapidly.

My goal was to check how brittle the three glues are, and I was quite surpriced. I had heard that the fish skin glue (in this case I used gelatine) is very brittle, and I suspected that the fish bladder glue would be fairly non-brittle. The tree samples were quite thin, so they were thoroughly dry. My fantastic test was to simply bend the glue sheets and see when they broke. To my astonishment both the hide glue and the fish bladder glue shattered. The fish bladder glue shattered pretty early in bending, while the hide glue needed a lot more force to bend altough it also shattered before folding over. The fish skin gelatine stayed however in one piece even though I folded it 180 degrees. It only half-shattered when I bent it very rapidy with a lot of force.

So... I am not sure what I am to believe now. The fish bladder glue is brilliant because it gels really slowly and helps along the building process. However, the fish skin gelatine that I tried seems a lot more elastic.

What this leads me to think is that there really is a proportional relationship between the speed of which the glue gels, and its brittleness pretty much regardless of what type of material it is made from. Please prove me wrong :)

To make the comparisons like this meaningful, you need to be sure all your dry glue sheets were of exactly the same thickness. Thinner film = less strain/stress in bending = more flex needed to break. Since you mentioned the hide glue was so much harder to bend, I think it had to be thicker than the other samples, so perhaps the thicknesses were not the same in your test.

Is the fish skin gelatine made by you or store bought? If the glue bends so much with no breakage, it is very possible some kind of a plasticiser was added to it. Probably a humectant to retain moisture. I am also surprised it gels at all, although it may be the case if the skins came from fresh water fish. It can be the sample was a bit thicker as well, so the moisture to plasticize did not have enough time to dry out.

I do not mean to discourage you from experimenting. It would be great to have another flexible, but strong glue for bows. Normally a plasticizer weakens the glues, but perhaps not enough in this case.

The speed of gelling has no relation to the brittleness. Brittle = breakage under less strain. Fast gelling on the other hand = strong intermolecular hydrogen) bonds = high modulus of glue (stiffness) = more stress required to break. But it does not always mean less strain to break. Also, the speed of gelling is much dependent on the concentration of glue and temperature. More concentrated solutions gel faster and in higher temperature.

It is very difficult to test the glues taking into account all of the above. On top of that, the properties are not hugely different among the glues we use for bows and the differences are not easy to notice.

Adam

Yes, the samples were probably of different thickness. Also, they curled up a little so the different force needed to break them was also a result of this. In fact, the fish bladder glue was the flattest sample - which would explain the small force needed to break it.

However, the fish bladder glue was also the thinnest sample. It had more time to float out on the plastic and it was also a little less concentrated than the other two samples.

The fish skin gelatine is store bought as a food gelatine. I will ask the producer if they add some plasticiser. In fact it gels at a very similar temperature as the hide glue that I have, maybe a few degrees less. At 20% solution it gelled at about 28 degrees. It has a bloom rate of 200.

I have another similar dried sample of the fish skin gelatine, which have now dried for (I think) about two weeks in 60% relative air humidity. It is also near impossible to break, even if folded over.

With regards to my fish bladder glue, I might have over-cooked it and made it extra brittle. The very low gelling temperature of it probably also gives it a little extra brittleness, but I didn't think it would be as brittle as the sample.

So this makes me wonder what brittleness should be expected from normal good fish bladder glue. I have a little sturgeon bladder glue that I think I will make a small break sample from.

Also, this makes me wonder what the relationship between bonding strengh and brittleness is. As far as my logic tells me, it should be pretty much proportional? A brittle glue = low bonding strenght, while more elastic glue means higher bonding strength. At least if good wetting of the surfaces is secured to the same degree. But I may well be wrong.

This is my fifth attempt at the turkish design. This time I think I have been closing in on the flight bow design. No abrupt reflex at the kasan eye, and kasans that will hopefully be a little more flexible and light than my previous attempts. The grip is fairly long, like one of the original flight bows in Adams book. It will be about 41 inches nock to nock, and hopefully 80-100 pound somewhere along the draw. That's my aim anyway. On the pictures it has recieved its first sinew layer, and tonight it got its second. Hope to lay the third and last layer next weekend, and then it will cure untill the beginning of august, when I will try to brace it and get ready for the annual flight championship - this time with a thumb draw, mushamma and siper! 8)


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Sorry,
I didn't reply to the question about the mushamma. I was away for a while. My mushamma was about 90 cm long and about 2 cm wide at its widest point. I will steam the old one to soften it and lay it out flat to get an exact measurement. When I made my first mushamma, I estimated the length with a flexible tape measure fitted in between the layers of the rolled up tape.

When using a mushamma on a modern bow, I dip it in hot water to make it flexible and wipe it down to dry it, then quickly wrap it around the grip. While it is still hot, I form the grasp and squeeze tightly until it is cool. For a composite bow, I either steam it or leave it in the sun until it is soft.

Thanks - cool! I'll make one. Do you fold it up extra on the belly, or do you simply wrap it around the grip like a ball?

seasoning only two months??

I now try to make it narrow on the back of the grip since the fingers go either side of it. On the belly, I spread it out so it fits into the hollow of the palm between the thenar and hypothenar eminences. This is the hard part: to find the best distribution in the palm.

Thanks, Bede.

Pazuzu, sure, hehe... Depending a little on how good it looks, and how well the one in the background shoots, if it shoots at all, I might schedule the bow for the 2014 championship instead so it gets a year of curing. But I'm sure it will shoot ok even with just two months curing time.

This bow looks very promising. Regarding glues, I recently discovered that in Italy, the glue called "fish glue" (food grade and normal) is no longer made from fish tissues, but it's obtained from pig or cow hide, like regular hide glue, probably more refined. In my simple tests, it gels slower than the other hide glue I use (which is probably around 300 Bloom grams).

Francesco

Looking back at the bow I shot during the last championship, I am not surprised it did not shoot very well. It's got huge wide and thick kasans, compared to my two last bows, and the bending section is of course too small. Hopefully there will be a 400-meter shot in one of these new ones.

Interesting stuff, Francesco. I've tried some gelatine made from fish, but I could not find any difference in gelling temperature, compared to hide glue from dictum. Both gels at about 28-30 degrees at 20-25% solution. Is the difference bigger in the glue you have tried?

Alright, here's a lesson:


Don't ever keep your head in front of a composite bow when bending it!
Bending the bow downwards over the knees, leaning over it with the eye in the potensial path of the tips. Putting too much pressure on the outer tips without nock wrapping. Snap - the broken tip chewing its way to the scull. Blood squirting everywhere. 3 stitches.

I've known it was a bad idea for a long time, but somehow I must have trusted the bow too much. Won't do it again. Thank Chance for letting me keep both eyes.

Turkish war bow vs. me: 1-0.


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OUCH! Thank Whoever you've still got both eyes and only a shallow hole in the head!!!!!!!!

Glad that it didn't hit your eye. See, there is definitely an advantage to be a four-eye like me. Flesh and bone will heal easily. Go back to working soon, don't let yourself be intimidated by this accident.

Yeah, I'm fairly pleased that the tip trying to penetrate my head was not sharp and full of splinters, hehe...

Luckily this kind of accident won't happen if one use a little common sense. Bending the bow like I did, is of course not a good idea, and it will not happen again. I guess I was just trusting the sinew layer too much, and forgetting about the unsinewed tip that could easily break.

Anyway, the re-glueing of the tip seems to be fine, and I will continue opening up the bow today.

Oh boy, this must have been a scary moment! Good to see you all right - well, almost all right. Get well soon!

I lived same problem, I almost broke my chin .

Here a treat for you from a local museum, so that healing might be quicker:

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I'm probably a bad person, because I used the flash.

Thanks guys. It's getting better, and the bow is also getting closer to shootable I think. Last night the tips was shortened and wrapped with sinew.

Cem, ouch! No loose teeth?

Bj?rn, that's a very cool looking bow! I want to make one with the sinew molded like that. Fully flat back with sharp corners, round belly and a sharp kasan ridge. Looks like a very heavy bow. Thanks for the photo!

Oh my gosh! Thats the real evidence of the legend !
Thats the awareness for beginners hornbowmakers. Will brace my future bow in helmet & protective glasses

Please post some pics when you do that :D

Uffda!

Thanks for picture, work of art.
Kviljo: I did not loose the teeth but I still have a problem with my chin.

Cem

Ouch! Hope it gets better with time. I think I survived without lasting damage, although it is still somewhat painful to open the mouth.

Anyway, here's the bastard that wanted to blind me. I put the string on it a little too early, which led to compression marks on the horn belly on one limb. I see that I have made this one too with long kasans and somewhat too short sals I think. Having some stability-issues, some lifting sinew and some slippage of the horn in places, I decided to bring the weight down a bit, from the 14mm thick sals, to about 11,5mm. It might be 60-70 pounds now.


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Pretty little devil!

Congrats on having saved it! Form looks good. Is the upper sal more bent, though?

My congratulations Ivar! What kind of glue did you used ti repair the broken tips?

Quite right, Arry, the upper sal is weaker than the lower. There is still some tillering to do, but at this stage there is not so much twist at brace, and I have started to draw it a few inches. The upper sal is also somewhat uneven, as I have left more material around the compression marks in the horn. It will also get another string that is a little longer.

Vonegelut, I used titebond 3 for the tip. It's a fairly good regular wood glue, although I would have been more comfortable if I used hide glue.

I've been shooting the first few flight arrows with "Turk4" today. The bow is 39 inches between the nocks, measured along the side of the bow. It draws about 60 pounds at 23 inches draw, and stops at about 27 inches.

I shot a 17 gram 25 inch barrelled arrow from it, and got about 270 meters with a 23 inch draw and thumb release. Without the siper.

As you might see, the string is very thick at 3+mm, so there should be something to gain there by making a lighter string. Also, have reduced the horn on the kasans a little, as they feel a little oversized. They are also a bit long, but that I won't be able to cure. There should of course also be some meters to add by practising more and also drawing the bow fully with the siper.

I will have to adjust the angle of the siper, to allow for less angle of the wrist, and I will also have to make a thicker mushamma, as this one is too small to support my hand properly. This is something I do not understand: what size and shape of the hands could such a small mushamma work with? - although I think the size of it is fairly authentic?


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Thats extreme short bow! I like it! What is the lenght & width of kasan & sal areas?

Thanks :) I did not measure the lengths of the sections, but I do remember that the sals are about 28x12mm at the middle. My next bows will have longer sals and shorter kasans. I think this one has quite a lot of unused mass in the kasans. They would probably be ok for a longer and heavier bow.

hi Kviljo,

fantastic bow! i think the proportions are quite good.
the Mushamma should cover the whole grip even up to arrowpass. like on your pictures it makes no sense. too the shooting technique is important to reach longer distances.
and please be carefull with the Siper!

Peter

I do not agree with the comment about the position of the mushamma. It should not be under fork between the thumb and index finger, but instead support the palm below the hypothenar eminence. It should be narrower on the back of the grip and broader on the left side of the belly. It should not be tucked into itself because when it is gripped tightly it would dig into the hand. Incidentally, all the fingers of the bow hand should be clenched hard. The grip with a siper does not require the relaxation of the thumb and index finger.

The tasma should be thinner leather and the ribbon should be adjustable. Those sipers that have the ribbons sewn in place are the result of trial and error by the archers. It only takes a week or two of practice to find the best fit. The head of the siper should be close to the base of the proximal knuckle of the thumb and not lifting from it.

I realise the picture was not meant to be a detailed example of how to use the siper, but I thought you might be able to use the information.

Thanks Peter. I think I agree. Looking back at this picture, the general shape is probably quite ok - for a very short target bow, hehe.

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Awesome stuff, Bede! That's the type of response I was hoping for when posting the picture of the siper. Now I have quite a few issues I need to adjust. This is productive :)

Thank you Bede! That?s interesting for me too!
I am target-shooter and wrap my grip with a soft deerleather strip, bit like a Yumi grip; mostly to avoid abrasion and to bring max. power in the thumbroot of my bowhand.....
There is a lot to learn about correct shooting an ottoman bow :D

That is a very good picture of the initial position. Until I saw it I was not quite sure of the position of the mushamma on the back of the grip between the fingers. the translations of Kani's descriptions were ambiguous. One of my Turkish friends sent me a copy some years ago and description suddenly made sense.

Ah, I did not notice that they were all wearing sipers untill now! Ha, what a brilliant photo :) Looks like their wrists are not that tilted in fact.

Is there avaliable a bigger version of this picture?

If you look at the positions of the little and ring fingers, you will see that the hand is turned down to bring the thumb's metacarpal bone parallel to the arrow. Because it is an early part of the draw, the arm is pointing upwards slightly.

I also gave it a try, following the Okspor pictures in a newspaper article from the 30s:

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It night not be the most aesthetic wrapping, but it fills out the palm and makes it much easier to hold a straight wrist. I will continue to use it for now, although I practice target shooting.

If you look at the photograph you will seen the thumb is starting to point down which makes the metacarpal of the thumb even more horizontal. If you are not using a siper, it is probably best to fold the index finger behind the back of the grip.

Thanks Bede, I'll give it a try.

nice bow Ivar! Hope you shoot it far...

The Norwegian championship in historical archery was held this weekend, with the flight competition earlier today. The results from this bow was not impressive, but it was fun shooting it with mushamma, siper and thumb ring. I got only about 251 meters out of it, with a 3,5mm thick dacron string, some old 25" flight arrows and a approximately 24" draw length. There was a little side and head wind. As the photos shows, keeping the siper at the correct angle at the end of the draw was not always easy, and I did not take the risk of drawing the arrow behind the bow. Maybe next year. I'll come back with more data on the equipment later.

The best result during the championship was 349 meters, shot from a small hornbow, shown among the pictures here:

http://forum.bueforum.no/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2220

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This looks like alot of fun. Do I see your magyar bow there on the table with all the other bows?

It was! Lots of shooting, and as I think you'll see from more pictures, it was a stunning place with great weather. My birch bark covered angular bow and base-painted mongolian is in the front of the picture. Lars (Lurz here on Atarn) made the birch bark covered hungarian that is in the middle of the picture. This bow also won the "Laminated bow of the year"-award :)

Yesterday I cleaned up the fifth turkish bow after its last sinew layer. It has been curing for about half a year now, so I am slowly going to open it up over the next weeks. I think it looks really promising, and this time I was even happy with the glue up of the horn. The sals are 13mm thick, but will probably be reduced a little during tillering I would suspect. With this bow I made the belly more round, and the back more flat than my previous bows, although the horn/core glue line is still flat...

Also, I modified my thumb ring slightly. Made a wider edge for the string to sit on it, and narrowed it down a little. I wonder if there still exist some original specialized turkish thumb rings... Would be cool to make one.

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looks amazing, good luck

Very sexy. The job with the sinew looks like the stuff that Cem showed.

Man, sinewing is great done, like fiberglass. Double thumbs up!

The bow is slowly getting there. It is 41 inches between the nocks, and now it weighs 306 grammes. On the lower picture it is shown after having been tied down to the tepeliks for 30 minutes.

Even though the sinewing was pretty good, one limb got a few lifting fibres while bending it over the tepelik. I wonder what the correct way is to solve this problem. Should I finish the sinewing with a thicker glue layer and make sure not to sand it away fully? And what to do when they have already lifted? Does really thin hide glue penetrate enough to fully hold down these? I have used backstrap sinew.


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İf I were you I do not glued the seperated snew at once. Wet the snew and wait , then heat it a little . Do it many times while it becomes sticky. Use very hot glue and heat it again with electric oven. After cooling wait for about 6 hour and wrap it ( not too much) with snew. Snew will shrink it. After a month take off the wrapping and check again.

Cem

Thanks Cem! This seems like a very good way of fixing it. I guess it is really like re-activating the old glue in the sinew layer to make it bond properly. I will keep this in mind when I stumble across similar problems later :)

I was bending the bow over the knees several times, hoping to put a string on it tonight. As far as I could see, it was bending fairly well, although a little more towards the grip, which I was happy with. However the glue-line between the horn and core were not too happy with the situation. "Pop!" I suppose the extra reflex just out of the grip was too much for the strength of my lamination. I was really happy with this glue-up...

Both the core and the horn were reasonably ok, so I made an attempt at glueing it back on. It is resting with clamps now.

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shame :( I work only with fish glue. I have used all kind : gelatine, hide, rabbit and many others and fish glue is best in my opinion. We have in Poland fish glue distributor. It is no pure Karuk but work very well and is no expensive. I can send you sample if you want. I think bow can be fixed , good luck.

I will send you a PM, Lukas :)

I'm not sure, but I think the problem was too little glue. For the next ones I will size the parts much more. I used non-matching grooves, and probably did not fill them up enough before clamping the parts together. It looked like there had been some air in the joint. With only glossy surfaces, 30% glue seems perhaps not to be able to fill the joint properly with glue. - leaving 70% of the gap to be filled with air?

Question: with non-matching grooves, how much should one size the parts with glue before the final glue-up and clamping? Is it enough to make the surfaces glossy, or should one use so much glue that the grooves are filled up untill the surface of the pieces are almost flat?

This is exactly the thing that I am also asking myself about non-matching groves. How did they do it?

Back in business:

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Strung! :D

Now the sals are about 11,5 mm at the middle.

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Congrats! too to your very fine recover 8)

Peter

Nice! Well done!

Perfect tiller, I love it. Congrats.
Cem

Have you shot already? What is draw weight?

Thanks friends! I shot six arrows from about half draw last weekend, and it seemed fine. I would estimate the weight to about 60-70 pounds. Looking forward to continue next weekend :)

interesting curves. congrats !

Beautiful shape, great tiller.

It looking great! Nice save! Congrats

After the last championship in August, I started working on a new set of flight arrows. These are heat treated pine, and mostly follow measurements of original turkish flight arrows. Not sure if I will be very comfortable shooting these arrows, as the area in front of the nock is somewhat thinner than I have been used to. However, the turkish bows also have higher brace heights than wooden flight bows, so they will probably be ok.

Going to fletch some with feathers and some with parchment, and the nocks will be bound with sinew. Don't think I will bother with putting horn/bone points on them. They'll probably break hitting rocks anyway...

This year I am also not going to shoot with a 3,5mm thick string... :) Seems like the original flight bows could be equipped with strings which were about 2mm thick, which I will use too - however in Dacron.

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How deep are the nocks?

About 7 or 8 millimeters I would estimate. They became a little too deep, so I might reduce them a little once they are wrapped with sinew.

They all weigh about 13 gram by the way. Guess they could be made even lighter, as I am not going to shoot them off a very heavy bow.

I wonder what the average flight-bow weight could have been for the 25" long 12,7g heavy arrows.

I have an original Turkish string so I can look up the measurements for you.
Neck dimensions of arrows of about 6-6.5 mm are not unusual and I have shot arrows like that from 60 and 80 lb bows without breakage. However, some caution is necessary because each person's release varies and the smoothness of the release affects the buckling of the arrow.

7 mm is not an unusual depth either and it is a mistake to make the nocks too shallow. In the old books, they sometimes refer to flight arrows where the nock's depth is one third of the circumference of the string. This makes the nock only about as deep as the string is in diameter. In flight shooting in particular, you do not want to worry about whether your arrow will stay on the string at full draw while you are also worrying about will it stay in the siper and will it hit the belly of the bow. Even in regular flight shooting, I have seen so many mis-draws because of badly designed nocks.

Here are some measurements.
Original silk Turkish bowstring: 2.90 mm over serving
Small original flight arrow: nock slot 2.50 mm at slot base, 7.5 mm deep,
nock max. dia 6.5 mm, dia at neck 5 mm, max shft dia 7 mm, dia at base of point 3.55 mm.

This arrow is too small for the string but it is close enough to suggest a range of sizes. It is possible that the arrow has shrunk over the years. 0.4 mm is not very much. The string could be larger because the centuries without tension have let it expand.

Cool, Bede! The thinnest of these have necks which are 5,5mm thick. :) I wonder, do some of the flight arrows have sinew wrapping over/beyond the neck area? The measurements you list are pretty similar to my shafts.

Do you think the turkish string of yours could be from a flight bow? I want to use a string that is as thin as the original strings, but of modern materials to "skip" some problems untill the rest of the equipment works properly.

Interesting what you say about the circumference/nock depth. I'm sure it would be better with a shorter nock, but that short does sound somewhat unsafe.

I base my comments on nock depth on some serious near accidents I have seen. Flight shooting is not an inherently safe pursuit since you are pushing the equipment to its limit.

I have seen flight arrows with a fine sinew wrapping going up under the feathers. The fibres were so small you could only see them under magnification. To the naked eye it looked like a transparent coating of thin glue. It was too thin to provide additional strength. I think it might have been to produce a better surface for gluing.

My string was similar to the flight strings I saw in Turkey. The bow it came with was late 17th century and the loops (tunc) were the right length for the bow and the core centre serving was the right diameter for some of the larger flight arrows. Since the bow was leather covered and flat backed, it may have been an azmayish bow rather than a pishrev bow.

Things have been going slow this winter, but a week ago I found time to string and shoot my latest turkish bow. It is 41 inches between the nocks, and draws 73 pounds at 26 inches. See the plotted force/draw-curve. I hope to draw it to 27-28 inches once my technique gets better and stronger.

I shot two 25" medicore flight arrows from the bow at a 23 inch draw, which resulted in 268 meters with some slight wind from the side. The bow has still got horn all the way up to the tip, so there is still some tuning to do. I wonder what kind of performance I could expect from this bow if the arrow were drawn 28 inches, as compared to the 23inch-268meters.

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Beautiful! Congrats.

Thanks :)

Last winter I boiled and bent a lot of cores. Recently I found some time to splice them together at the grip. Some of them are a little too open than I would like today, but I have another four with more reflexed shapes. I'm also looking forward to trying the crimean tartar design. This one got a naturally grown piece of maple for the grip. I might have to build it up with another piece on the back however.

eager to see the CT
:D

tatar core looks perfect.Intresting turkish core. Smaller angle on tip give worse energy accumulation and stacking but better energy distribution. Such design have good flight bow potential on very light arrows.

What is up with the scooped out area on the inside of the bent portion? I can see how that would make the bend easier to attain but what about the strength?

The scooped out area is only on the sides. There is full thickness in the middle, where the tip will be. I bent the tips over a too short radius, which forced me to weaken the inside of the curve. That way I did not have to use a metal strap to prevent cracking.

As I have seen that the tips of my bows are ending up having an unusually short and sharp bend, I will redesign the forms for my next batch with a larger radius. That will probably eliminate the need for this kind of scooping.

I straighened one of these bends by force on a bad limb, and was quite impressed by how stiff it was compared to just a few monts after boiling. In any case, the sinew will make it stay bent in the finished bows.

By the way, it's good to see that you've caught up interest in flight archery, Lukasz! I hope some of these turkish ones will at least help me understand how much the kasans can be lightened. I think that is the key to flight shooting with turkish bows.

I have read through your whole thread with a great deal of interest watching your progression, you have done some beautiful work and I really appreciate your sharing the process. You have also had some great input. The Turkish flight bows arenot my main interest in composite bows but I appreciate what you and others have written here. These last bows are really great on the eyes to look at.

Thanks for sharing it all.

Thanks, Jake :)

Nothing much have happened here lately, at least not with regard to the horn bows. I did however find time to re-wrap an egyptian composite with birch bark, and then I used some scraps to cover some of this turkish too. It seems like the bark stuck well to it.

Next sunday there is the annual Norwegian flight championship, and I hope to shoot this bow with siper and all. It's been about 1 and a half year since I put on the sinew layer now, and I've made a "thin" 2,7mm thick dacron string for it. I've also got a couple of good pishrev flight arrows with parchment fletchings, so I think it is going to be interesting to see what it will do. No big hopes though.

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"No high hopes." Yes, yes. Sweet understatements and then you outshoot the other competitors by 100m.

Ivar, that looks marvelous. Very interesting to see a Turkish bow covered in birch bark in a way that makes it possible to recognize how it was done.
All the best for the competition!

Hehe, thanks guys. If it shoots past 300 meters I will be happy. It has still got some extra mass in the kasans which could be removed. The horn is going all the way up, and I'm sure the tips could be made more delicate for its weight too. Anyway, I want to shoot it like it is, to see how much some light trimming of the tips will do to the results.

The bark is pretty patchy, but it's good to play around with the material to learn. I still need to experiment with alcohol vapour and a hot iron.

Ivar thats a beautiful bow ! Take a bow !

Pun intended :-)

And good luck on the competition. I am really interested in how this little rocket launcher does.

I got curious too, so I left the bow strung overnight to take out some reflex and reduce the stress level in it. This morning I tested it through the chronograph. After the testing I weighed it to 65 punds at 26 inches.

I set my shooting machine to shoot at 26 inches (measured from the belly of the bow), and shot two lightweight carbon arrows and one spruce arrow. They weighed and got the following speeds:

236 grain 252 fps
323 grain 216 fps
545 grain 174 fps


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Thats a real life hunting bow !

Very impressive Ivar.

First shooting machine I have seen, I have led a sheltered life.

I'd say that your bow is a shooting machine by itself!

Ivar, this is not bad for 26in draw, but the bow should be pulled farther than that, at least 27in. I am no expert and still learning to use the siper but what I see people are afraid to draw far within the groove and hesitate at the worst moment of draw, when the string must be jerked back as fast as possible. Come what may, conquer the fear, put your goggles on and make certain the angle is close to 45deg.

I made two shots recently with a 70lb@27-8in bow - one 375 meters, the second 430m. The arrow was 13.5g for the better shot. Luck was for sure a good part of it (plus the FF string!), but I could clearly see the difference in my effort between the two shots.

Good luck

Adam

Thanks, Jake. Bowhunting is sadly not legal here, but luckily flight shooting is :)

That is very cool to read, Adam. I suspect your bow is quite a bit faster than mine, but the draw weight should be pretty much the same then. I have been hoping to practise more with the siper, but time has been too limited this season to do much other than what needs to be done.

I will probably only dare draw it 25 inches as all my arrows are that lenght. - unless i feel very brave in the moment... But it will be interesting none the less, and it is very cool to hear that proper results can be had from bows with reasonable draw weights :)

But, if the bow survives that flight shoot, I will see if I can test shoot it again at 27 or 28 inches. It's stacking an awful lot, however. It feels like the tips are going to be pulled off, hehe.

Don't hesitate to report more on your shots. I'm sure there are more than me that would find it quite interesting. Were these shots done in calm wind conditions?

:shock:
great bow Ivar, and great results. congrats.

Ivar keep tweaking it and let us know how its going. This is a great thread! I got a lot out of it. Thands Adam too for your book, its been a guide all the way through on my own efforts. Hopefully by spring I'll have several shootable horm bows.

Ivar, I think I will copy the shape of your crimean tatar. Does it consist of two specially bent arms, or did you join two arms for a Turkish, just in another angle?

That's good to hear, Jake. I hope I have not brought too much misinformation to the table. It's been good to share the progress. Now my first one looks so silly :lol:

The tatar have its own bending forms. They are quite a bit longer than the forms for my short turkish ones. It would probably be possible to just modify a turkish form a little. Longer kasan and more recurve for the tips would do it I guess.

Nice job !

Ivar you have brought a lot of good info here, anyone who reads one thing and jumps in brings their own woes on themselves. Its a learning curve, the only real way is to do it, reading all we can and continuing to as we work and learn.

Adams book is a treasure that can save a lot of angst and money on preventable failures. Reading Atarn is what helps put it all together but the one thing we all have to do is to do it, and learning as we go.

Thanks for your input ! It really helps.

Thanks Jake and Dusan.

Just a quick update on the results: 392 meters 8)

I finally got the mushamma to work reasonably well. It just needed some extra wax to stick properly to the grip and to itself. Drawing with the specialized grip is putting a lot of pressure between the thumb and index finger, and 12 arrows drawn to 65 pounds is about what my hand will take at the moment. Need more practice.

Anyway, this is what the equipment looked like at the range. Thumb ring, siper with new leather/silk parts, mushamma, pishrew arrows, flightarrow-box and the bow. 65# @ 26".

A friend of mine who watched the siper during the shots said the arrows were drawn about an inch behind the grip. - which mean they were drawn to about 26 inches, and the speed probably around 250 fps. Out of 12 shots, the two best arrows went 392 and 391 meters. There was about 5m/s wind at a slight angle from the back. Added over 100 meters to my personal best, and also added one meter to the current Norwegian flight record.

So now that the bow has done its duty, I will see if I can tune it a little. It has still got horn all the way up the kasans, and I feel confident the tips can be reduced somewhat as well. Also, there's still two more inches to be drawn within the siper.

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Nice bow, nice pictures, congrats, great distances.

Very good result Ivar, way to go! I am convinced that the archer's skill is more important than the bow's performance. Selfbow archer have it easy with the those centershot grips.

Adam

Congratulations. Very impressive.....now get it back to 28 and watch those arrows fly :shock:
Would you mind giving some details about the arrow please.

thank you for pics &
congrats Ivar !

İmpressive, congrats.

Cem

I feel pretty confident there is quite a bit extra meters in the equipment. The string kept hitting my elbow, so the majority of the 12 arrows were not as good as they should have been. My technique is probably pretty bad, at least when it comes to using the siper. I need to get my elbow out of the way while still keeping the arm straight. Maybe it can be done by twisting it in the proper manner.

Anyway, I weighed the arrows today, and they all came in at between 220 and 230 grains. - which is quite high for this bow I think. They are about 7-8mm thick, and all 25 inches long. The overall shape is based on some pishrew arrows which there are measurements of. The fletchings are thin rawhide, and the surface is highly polished. All of good quality pine, without points, and sinew wrapped nocks.

Lukasz:
The place where the arrows landed were perhaps 6 meters lower than from where we shot.

I too used to think that the weather conditions needed to be all equal to be ok. Having realized that the Turkish records probably were shot with a good wind in the back, I am more relaxed with this now. Different conditions will affect the distances a lot, so it is not always useful to compare distances, but it is all just part of the game. I think it makes it even more challenging.

Good shots.
Here are some technical comments that might be of use.

• The angle of the arrow appears to be less than 30 degrees. This will make a considerable difference to your range. Your figures are already good, but they could be better with the same equipment.
  
  With the fingers of the drawing hand partly open you cannot get the really strong draw you need and the smooth release. Closing the three lower fingers tightly and bearing down on the middle finger with the thumb will make the draw seem less arduous and the release will be quicker.
  
  To get the best clearance of the bow arm, the bow has to be truly vertical and the fist has to be turned slightly to the left. This has to be done at the start of the draw and the string has to be drawn straight back to its full draw position with any deviation towards the face. The axis of the groove of the siper must be the same as the arrow.
  
  Were you getting enough support from the mushamma? This is where there can be a problem which restricts how far you can turn down the bow hand. Normally you would try to have the mushamma a little lower on the bow grip so that the arrow travelled off the siper exactly on level with the arrow pass.

When I make comments on the basis of photographs, I can be misled by the angle and other features of the pictures so I apologise if I have misjudged the actual event.

Thanks! I'm taking note of this :)

I thought my angle was fairly good, but I do agree that the pictures tell a different story. It seems I'm lowering the bow arm at the end of the draw. What technique do you use to check the angle?

To be honest, I don't know if the mushamma is proper to my hand and technique. Now that I figured out how to wrap it properly it grips the bow well, but taking the pressure from the bow was the main problem. I guess I need to practice more - since last year I have shot with the siper perhaps two times. I wonder where the pressure of the mushamma is intended to go. I could make a huge mushamma, and get the pressure in the middle of my palm, but I don't think they used such large wrappings?

I have one original mushamma and I made several copies of it. My experience is that the mushamma should be supporting the hypothenar eminence. To get this to work properly you have to tighten the grasp of the bow considerably and, unlike shooting bare handed (without a siper), you tighten the thumb too. The mushamma should be wrapped layer on layer on the back of the bow, but more spread out on the belly.

Regarding the angle, the Turks practiced with the torba on an elevated stand and would have had a coach to help them maintain the proper angle. Nowadays, most flight rules permit the archer to have one coach standing as close as one metre to help get the correct angle. This second person may hold something like a right angle to indicate the the angle. In practice, for the best shot, the angle should be established at the beginning of the draw and a fast smooth draw executed. The longer the arrow is at full draw, the more chance of loss of distance so getting the angle correct after you are at full draw is not efficient.

Bravo! :shock:

Peter

Hmm, so I'm using the mushamma in a wrong way. I have tucked it below the web between the index finger and thumb. I think it is too small or made of too thin fabric to build up enough to get the right angle if put to support the hypothenar area. It does make more sense to use it that way though. That should eliminate the strenght-issues of my wrist. How thick is your original mushamma? I will have to experiment more with this.

Kviljo dont get me wrong, I like your bows and style. But I was sportsmen all my life in many kind of sports and I know for sure that any sport need regulations to make equal chance for all competitors, in other way is just fun not serious contest. Im sure that old turkish records was established with strong wind but in old times only turkish archers was flight archery big fans. No limit in weather was for all and chances was equal. Flight archery is now fun for dozen people but I hope in future it will be change. We have huge progres in last 15 years in traditional archery - bow boulding and knowlege transfer - thanks Internet. So I hope flight archery be evolve too in regular international sport.

The mushamma is 76 cm long by 22 mm to 23 mm wide. The cloth is sewn into a tube with the raw edges inside and flattened out so it is roughly three thicknesses of cloth deep. It had been sewn inside out, then the seam was flattened with an iron so the edges lay on either side of the stitching and then the whole thing was turned inside out without disturbing the position of the folded edges. Then it was soaked in hot beeswax.

I duplicated the process and it produced a similar mushamma. I have made them in silk and in cotton and I cannot see any difference in behaviour.

Shooting with the wind was traditional in flight shooting, but it did not always give an advantage because the arrow rises high enough to get caught in a breeze going in different direction. the Turks tested for this with a small smoky fire to see if the upper air was disturbed. It was still a gamble.

Still not sure why you would want to flatter the arrow flight with wind.
Why not just shoot in calm conditions instead of lying to yourself?

Thanks, Bede. So I think my mushamma is about the proper size. I need to play some more with it.

The wind issue is a bit difficult. I agree that it would be better if we could all have the same conditions all the time. It would be easier to compare records from different shoots. In reality it is impossible to control the conditions, and one would have to measure the wind speeds for every event, and have different records lists for different wind conditions. In the end it is probably better to give up, and hope for good conditions. After all, it is a sport of shooting as far as possible. On the other hand it would perhaps be good to take approximate notes of the wind conditions for record shots.

I agree that we can't control the weather but I don't think people should smugly claim a spectacular record when they were aided by a hurricane tailwind.
We could just have maximal allowable tailwind like they do in Track and Field.
Sending up a helium balloon could give you a good idea of what's going on at the typical flight apex.

I have friends who shoots flights in Greece, Slovakia and few other countries. They have often very good equipment and skills but results are not impressive. Last time on archery tournament I have spoken with my friend Adam Swoboda, thumb ring master. He is happy owner Adams Karpowicz bow. Best turkish bow I ever seen, about 65 lb. He said that on last flight tournament in Mongolia shot about 300 metres. Bow and archer on highest level but without good weather and landscape condition no good results. Here I see problem. If it is part of game - strong wind, downhill shooting, deserts Its ok , I accepted. But in this option bow, arrows and archer are not most important and this is sad for me.

Pat, I agree. It would be reasonable to not save records shot in say 20m/s winds. There is a line in there somewhere. But who knows, perhaps the sultans shot the records in such winds? If so, I want to do the same.

Lukasz, don't forget the importance of the flight arrow, and also keep in mind that Adam K. reported of 430 meters from a 70# @ 27" turkish bow. I think these distances are to be expexted of such equipment. But don't worry, I will shoot my bow again in calm weather and report back :-)

And on flat field ! :) . You have right, I dont saw arrows. I belive that is possible shot 400 m with 70 lb turkish in neutral conditions but arrows must be very good.

Sure :-) In 2009 I shot an ~80#@27" laminated wooden bow 370 meters. Finger release and turkey fletchings. With that in mind, it should not surprise us that a small hornbow shot with thumbring, overdraw and parchment fletchings would do something similar.

The latest information I have is that Monus Joszef has shot 393.22 metres in Utah with Turkish style equipment, all original materials. He also shot 361.29 metres with a primitive self bow.

Regarding the wind, I think that while there is a clear disadvantage shooting against the wind the advantage of shooting with the wind is not as clear cut as Pat suggests. On the flight range in Bonneville Flats, which is level almost to the horizon on three sides, the wind is clearly different at different heights. We even had a wind that appeared to blow straight down one year judging by a set of streamers we had deployed on poles. The idea of using a helium balloon is a good one, but I would expand it by having several at different heights. Upper air turbulence is a disaster for flight arrows since they can be deflected in several directions unpredictably.

Flight shooters traditionally have preferred still conditions. A following wind is the best choice if the conditions are not calm. A strong following wind is often accompanied by turbulence higher up which makes shooting not worthwhile. In the best conditions of a following wind, it cannot impart more than its own velocity to the arrows. In general, only a fraction of that velocity is captured by the arrow since the wind creates vortices and the pressure is not consistent in one direction. The best following wind is one that is very gentle so its effect is not very great. When we get to the point of shooting 900 metres with traditional bows and the competitors are only a few metres apart, we should worry about whether the wind was a contributor. The Turks arranged the ranges on the Ok Meidan based on the prevailing winds. It is my guess this was done to minimise wind-based interference rather than maximise distance since they were aware of different wind directions at different heights above the ground.

Well said Bede.
I don't think anyone was fooling themselves or smugly claiming records....

Jozsef told me there was a strong head wind and after rain.
It is not ideal for flight. He could shot only one with that bow with natural string. All his strings was broken.

Anyway it is a new record. Here at home he shoot much longer with that turkish bow.

Next time... :)


Kviljo, congrats! Your bow looking great and thats a fine distance there at north. Think it schould be more, so go for 400m ;).

I was told the weather was very unusual for the area. Yokhua said that all his bows had increased in weight from Taiwan. This has to be the low humidity. Even with rain, the air dries out quickly and this kills linen strings.

I am hoping my plans come together and I make it to the Salt Flats next year....it would be great to see the bows/arrows that others are using. Bede do you have any ideas what string material would be best for the low humidity?

The most successful is silk and the most robust is gut. Silk is successful because it is light and strong. Linen has greater strength and less stretch, but it is affected by the low humidity and production runs vary in their strength. The self bow shooters have success with linen, but they still break strings. Hemp might work, but I don't know where good industrial hemp can be obtained. I think the thread they use for hemp fabrics is not as strong and the thread they used for ropes in the days of sailing ships.

If you use silk, it must be filament silk. That is silk that is unreeled from cocoons in one piece and twisted into thread. Spun silk is made from short pieces torn from cocoons and spun into thread. It stretches more and breaks more easily.

A flight bow string is a fragile entity. They often break just after the arrow leaves and this is dangerous for the bow. However, if they are too thick the arrow travels slower than with the thinner string. Reflexed composite bows put a lot of stress on their strings. Heavier tips seem to put more stress on strings too.

Mike, I don't mean any current shooters are smugly claiming records.
You still have to wonder how things have slipped so much though. I mean the arrows are only going basically a third of the distance and there's only 30 odd yards between self and Turkish?

I can see that many people using composite bows are using arrows that are too heavy for safety reasons and strings that are not optimised either. Only Jaap Koppedrayer has the same disregard for bow survival as the self bow users. Steve Gardner quite happily breaks bows by using light arrows and thin strings. He told me he could make a new bow in four hours so why should he worry. Composite bowyers are more cautious because of the greater investment in time. Also, there has been much more intensive work done with self bows because several can be made and tested in a week. The self bows being shot today are much superior to those of twenty years ago. Composite bows in contemporary times are still in the process of being rediscovered.

The selfbows of today may be better than those from 20 years ago but they aren't as good as those from the 30s.
The old selfbow records and sinew backed wood records are way farther than the "new" records.

Sorry Pat - I misunderstood your meaning.
The last three posts raise some pertinent points.
Every part of the 'shooting system' needs to be fully optimised and then strained to within an inch of it's life! Of course this approach is risky if you want everything to stay in one piece...I'm sure a lot of equipment was broken getting to the stage where the record shots could be made.
Still you have got to wonder exactly why the old records are so much further than the distances we are reaching today.

Part of the problem seems to lie in the fact that people absolutely refuse to make bows on the proven design from that era.
All the recommendations and documented gear show a bow type that I have only seen one replica of. ( Apart from those I make myself.)
The mantra of deflex to minimize stress and keeping wood fresh doesn't actually hold up to comparison with the short reflexed static tipped bows from that era.

Do you make replica turkish flight bows, Pat?

I shot 13 arrows today, two lost, three lost one of the fletchings in the shot, three lined up at exactly 350 meters, and the rest some meters past 300 meters. The conditions were 2-3m/s wind 45 degrees from the side/back. The arrows landed approximately 2-3 meters uphill from where they were shot. I suspect there is not much more to be had from it, unless I tune it a little and make some thinner and lighter arrows.

Fusizoli, do you know what distances Monus have achieved with the same equipment in other conditions? - and what is the draw weight of the bow?

No. I make 30s style flight bows with wood, laminated wood and sinew.
I figure if they could get over 500 yards with those then that is the first step to duplicating the records.
I wish you would re-do your Ipe bamboo bow in shorter length and put some short static tips on it.
I bet you could go over 500 with one of those.

Aha, yeah, there is a lot of interesting stuff to be made there also. I never came across solid information on that theme. If I had more spare time I would like to pursue the wood bows too, but for now the horn bows keep me busy. If I get the opportunity to go to Utah, I will probably bring a copy of the 370-ipe/boo. I bet you are right in that it can be made even better though.

I tested the same 65# @ 26" bow in the chronograph tonight with a 193 grain arrow and got 299 fps. This is still only at a 26" draw, measured from the belly of the bow. It seems the bow is quite willing to shoot lighter arrows. :shock:

That's a very good result. You should be very pleased.

Couldn't crack 300, eh? :P

Have you got any pictures of this bow Kviljo?

Sure, go back to page 27 and previous pages. Lots of pictures :-)

Anyone got recommendations on very solid and lightweight carbon arrows for chronograph testing?

The real advantages of carbon arrows are their small diameters for the same stiffness. This is important for distance shooting but since the chronograph is a metre in front of the bow the low friction profile is less significant. I am assuming you want ot get the best reading of your initial velocity.

Most flight arrows of carbon are just made from solid carbon rod. You can order that from any composite supplier.
I think there is a Barry Groves article detailing that.
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/flight ... BGeW-kg_IU

I'd go for an Aurel Agil or Uhyre.
Hey, the Uhyre is even named Norwegian ... it's a sign ;) ;) ;)

Carbontech Cheetah is pretty light, too.


And ... thak you a lot for sharing these pictures and data. I really like your bows and presentations.

Yes, the carbon arrows are only for measuring the initial arrow speed. In other words, shooting them into the target at a distance of 3-4 meters. I had some that were light enough, but they broke in the target... I wonder if the solid rods could become as lightweight as 200 grains at 25 inches long. I will have to check these brands.

Carbon rods used in flight shooting are for arrows about 14 inches long and less than 5 mm in diameter. They usually have aluminium nocks and points and razor blade fletching. They are not suitable for shooting from other than centre-shot bows with special rests. Regular carbon arrows can be had down to about 5.5 mm in diameter which is smaller than regular Turkish flight arrows. By using light points, like aluminium, the dynamic stiffness can be increased. Fletching is unnecessary at short distances. If the arrows are hitting the target at an angle, two things are happening. They are not flying through the chronograph straight and they are probably not getting an efficient transfer of the energy of the bow. It would take very large fletching to straighten them out in such a short distance which would dramatically slow them down defeating the purpose of the test.

If your carbon arrows are between 6 and 7 mm in diameter, they will be a good analogue of Turkish arrows for initial velocity. If you move your backstop back you may reduce the damage to the arrows. Only do this if it is safe and the arrows are travelling in a predictable direction.

Back to the mushamma-issue:

For the last practise round I folded some cotton tissue and taped it to the grip. This is how much volume of the mushamma I need to support the metacarpal area, and also the middle of the palm. What type of hand could allow for combining an original-size mushamma with the angle of the hand?

I really don't get this. Should the siper be angled higher up from my wrist, to allow for a more moderate wrist angle? Should the grip be different altogether?

Perhaps others would share pictures of how they use this kind of equipment?

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Your mushamma looks more like a Korean traditional bow handle. The mushamma is made from a thin tube of silk or cotton about 20 mm wide when sewn up. On the back of the bow, the mushamma is wound on evenly while on the belly and sides of the bow it is more spread out to support the hand. It is put one while the wax is still warm and the hand is put onto he bow and squeezed to get the right shape before the wax cools. The index and middle fingers are above the mushamma on the back of the grip and the ring and little fingers are below it so you can seen the mushamma between the fingers from then back of the bow.

The fletching on the arrow should be cock feather down. This reduces the drag since with the cock feather up two feathers contact the siper. The combination of the barrelling of the arrow and the way it leaves the siper generally mean the cock feather does not hit the base of the groove as it leaves.

The metacarpal bone of the thumb should be at right angles to the belly of the bow, not facing up or down. The eshik of most original sipers is only a little higher at the rear because under pressure of the draw the base of the thumb moves a few millimetres upward. However, the archer concentrates on the angle of the siper, keeping the head and the centre of the groove at about the same height as each other while the tail is slightly lower. This way the arrow only contacts the siper at one point. These descriptions are based on the bow being level. When flight shooting with the bow elevated, I am talking about the relative positions of the hand, bow and siper.

Okay, so I'm starting to be more confident the mushamma simply needs to be made bigger. Murat ?zveri commented on the same issue on Facebook, and he mentioned that he had studied all the mushammas in the Topkapi palace museum. They were all apparently so different in sizes that he concluded there was no standard mushamma. This makes sense, and if so, I bet the one I made would have been consideren quite unusually small.

Anyway, I took some more pictures:


Here is the problem. The mushamma is supporting the palm, but there is far from enough volume to give the correct angle of the siper.

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This is the size of it. It is simply wrapped around; spread out a little on the belly and stacked on the back.

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Here is what I managed to do after your description, Bede. The mushamma is far to small to support anything.

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This is how I used it at the last championship, supporting just the area below the thumb and index finger.

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I will see if I can find someone to take pictures of the mushamma in use. It helps sometimes to practise with the mushamma, but without the siper, to get the angle of the wrist correct. All the fingers need to be closed to get the correct grasp. This is clear from the surviving photos from Turkey and the written instructions.

Murat is right because the mushamma's size must be related to the hand and the bow.

Sometimes the bow grip is too large. After all, the mushamma is meant to help with a grip that is smaller than usual.

A friend of mine [Lurz here on atarn] sent me some footage from the last flight shoot we had here. It shows me shooting three arrows from the last turkish bow. I think the video works now: http://youtu.be/saNHvlWrpj8

As you might notice, the siper was really not lined up for the first shot. I'm only a beginner with this kind of equipment, but it is good fun :)

You seem to be folding the index finger of the bow hand over the thumb. This is not a good technique because, in case of the arrow failing pieces, can be driven into the softer parts of the finger. Usually the thumb would cover the nails of the index and middle finger when using a siper. In the ordinary changal-e baz grasp without a siper the finger is folded behind the back of the bow, but with a siper you can cover the index finger tip with the thumb since the arrows travel above them.

Having the arrow cross the groove at an angle must have been common problem since I have seen diagonal wear of the leather liners on old sipers.