ATARNarchive

Tendon Glue from Cattle

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radius
Adam Karpowicz writes that the turkish bowyers used the forked ends of tendon to make glue right there in the shop, the way we do. So yesterday i obtained a bunch of cut-off ends from a chinese butcher shop, soaked them in a few changes of water overnight, and this morning cut away all the fat.

i cut them into bits, simmered for a few hours at about 85 degrees Celsius, then pureed everything.

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See how well it conforms to the shape of the plastic container? The glue had solidified that firmly after only about 10 minutes in the fridge. I had the puree at a near boil for about 9 or 10 hours before straining it out. There was alot of slop left over, and i am sending it through again.
radius
after a few days under a fan, the cubes have shrunk and dried. they are very hard. it should be enough for several bows' worth of complete assembly and sinewing. I used it last night to apply sinew and it seems to be good stuff.

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in this picture also is the fish bladder glue i made a few weeks ago, shown for comparison.

I'm still new at all this make glue/apply sinew stuff, but i think the deal is that hide glue is good for the core but not as good for sinew, insofar as it is less flexible. The fish glue supposedly takes longer to cure (and so far that seems true: i mixed straight fish glue the other day and then let it cool to see how long it would take to solidify, and i found it took much longer than straight hide glue. And i think, that sinew glue such as i made here from the achilles tendon of cows, is the medium between the two, good for core, horn, and sinewing.

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