Is this a reliable handle?

The photograph is of an approximation of a bow found by the River Gogops in the northern Caucasus, Russia. The original was not dated, but fits somewhere between the Hunnic period and the early 8th century "Magyar" style bows from the nearby Moshcheveya Balka site. It was constructed with the two limbs being joined with a mortice and tenon joint secured with a peg. The bone plates from the grip were missing, but from the shape it looks like three plates were fitted.

As this was only my third composite, I did not feel like replicating this scary joint. I adapted a technique I had used before, with a steam-bent continuous core with a grip back piece, and added a pair of filler pieces to square out the belly. This did not quite work as I did not get the angles right as the limbs fade into the grip. The horn objected to being bent round the slight angle and the glue joint failed with the horn at both sides of the grip. (The bow still worked as the sinew bindings kept it all together). When I re-glued it, the grip/limb reflex increased compared the the original. I have not had any problems with it since. If doing it again, I would probably splice the limbs to a handle piece.

Regards

Andrew

Wow, thanks for all the info Andrew. I really appreciate it. I will be working on a hunnic style bow, do you think you could help me out with angles of siyahs and lengths of siyahs?

Thanks,
SW

Alternatively, this grip corresponds to the grip of the Khotan bow. (http://www.atarn.org/chinese/khotan_bow.htm) The cross-section of the grip, as viewed from the side, is shown below. (Note in the article, I described two bows. In the two bows, the splice of the grip were in differing planes. The photos make it clear.)

Csaba Grozer offers Avar bows with this form of grip.

If you make one, it is worth noting that the angles can be rather sharp on the hand. It is best to round the profile as much as possible to make it comfortable to hold at full draw.

Andrew:

The photograph is of an approximation of a bow found by the River Gogops in the northern Caucasus, Russia.

Would that have been a take-down design? Or was the peg hidden under the bone plates?

SW,
there is already an article giving the measurements and angles of a Hunnic style bow on ATARN - "Reconstruction of the Niya Bow: Bede Dwyer's Observations" on the bow from Niya tomb M8 on http://www.atarn.org/magyar/niya_2.htm. To get an idea of what the bows looked like, there is a similar bow from Niya tomb M3 pictured on http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/3/5/21/c12989.htm. The two bows are fairly similar in overall measurements, but the M3 bow has wider, more tapering limbs of about 2 inches at their widest. The wider limbs are probably recommended with a fairly long 60-62 inch bow to reduce twisting. Note that Bede's measurements use the ends of the horn belly strips to define the grip - the bone side plates (and hence the non-working section) are substantially longer.

The river Gogops bow is a bit later than the Hunnic bows and shorter at about 54 inches round the curves. It has much shorter grip and shorter siyahs than the earlier bows.

As these bows are asymmetric, the longer limb needs to be slightly stiffer than the shorter limb to get the limbs balanced. I can't give much help with how much stiffer, as my calculations for the Gogops bow failed badly. I needed to scrape horn off the top limb and add extra sinew to the bottom limb to stop the bow unstringing itself. One advantage of an asymmetric bow is that a bit of limb imbalance is far less noticeable than on a symmetrical bow.

Stephen,
the peg on the Gogops bow was hidden under the bone and sinew. I assume it just kept the joint tightly together until the glue set.

Isn't that the grip on the Yingpan M30 bow (illustrated in "Archaeological Treasures of the Silk Road in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region" and described in your article "Reconstruction of the Niya Bow" )? I thought your Khotan bow had a pair of splices in the other plane.

Regards

Andrew

Thanks for the links and pictures, I now have one last question.
Would it be ok to reflex a 59" hunnic bow into a circle or sever C shape and still be able to draw it to 32" (that is my Korean style draw length)?

Isn't that the grip on the Yingpan M30 bow (illustrated in "Archaeological Treasures of the Silk Road in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region" and described in your article "Reconstruction of the Niya Bow" )? I thought your Khotan bow had a pair of splices in the other plane.

You are correct. I mislabelled the picture before I realized that I had got them muddled up. The grip illustrated is from the Gansu bow:

http://www.atarn.org/chinese/images/son ... ansu12.jpg

Would it be ok to reflex a 59" hunnic bow into a circle or sever C shape and still be able to draw it to 32" (that is my Korean style draw length)?

The 60-62 inch Niya M3 and M8 bows were found with 31.5-33" arrows, so a 32" draw length seems reasonable from a 59" bow. However, it is unlikely that these bows were reflexed anywhere near as much as the later Korean bows.