All things come round to him who will but wait

Here are the pictures

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All ready for sinew

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After third layer (SEASONING)

BR
Christopher

nice. good luck :)

Thanks Uli :-)
Now, I have a question for the more experienced researchers.
I of course want to keep constructing these amazing bows, but since it is such a time consuming hobby, my girlfriend isn't too keen on me continuing. But then, she is from Afhganistan, and to make her more accepting I would like my next project to be a hornbow from her home region.
So... Which bow design should I choose if i want it to be from the Afghan region in Asia?

Thanks for the help :-)
Chris

hehe good plan..

I d suggest a Sindh-like bow.
See Grayson Collection:
http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/grayso ... arrow.shtm

There is also an article about central asian archery in the current Journal of the Society of Archer Antiquaries.

Somebody here (Yokhua? I am not sure) once wrote the "Tatar" bow design originated in Afghanistan (i.e. like turkish but with reflexed grip and string bridges, which is very similar to the Sindh bow). But I cannot confirm that any further. There was likely a mix of ethnicities and bow designs.

Hey all, and thanks again Uli.

I think I will look into that Tatar-type bow. It seems that is the one with most info here on ATARN, so it might be easier to aproach. Also my girlfriend confirms that the tartars are still a minority population in Afghanistan. And maybe I will have a look at the Crab-bows too, they look sooo nice!

Now, for those who are interested, a few more specifications on my turkish style bow:

Core: one piece, bamboo

Siyahs: spliced in, cherry

Handle: glued on, cherry

All gluing is done with matching grooves.
The glue used is hide-glue, as I'm having a hard time finding palate-glue (and its SO expensive!!)

Horn: Water-buffalo

Sinew: Red-deer achilles


Size of bow:

110cm ntn

mid sal:
thick - 1,25cm
wide - 3,5cm
(all subject to change when i start the tillering)

length of kasan: 6,5 inches
lenght of sal: 8,5 inches

current weight: 387grams (still loosing weight do to evaporation, though its slowed down significantly)


And now some more pictures of the process:





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Best Regards

Chris

Sooo... Tonight I tried to brace my bow for the first time, and this is what happend....


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Believe me when I tell you that my heart stopped for a second or two...
Anyways, I guess I will be making two new tepeliks of some more durable wood in the next week and then try again. Somehow bracing the bow both seem to be the worst and best part of the construction. ADRENALINE RUSH!

Best Regards

Christopher

:shock: :D

its hard to estimate from pictures, but your bow looks quite beasty.

! DO NOT BRACE IT AT ONCE !

better stepwise over 3 to 7 days.

you can also heat it for first brace
(at the possible risk of loosing some drawweight)

It looks great! What tool did you use to shape the core?

Thanks for the advice and compliment.

Yeah, I think the bow is quite heavy. I actually havent made one before, so I have no way of estimating the draw weight. I did though, have to put a lot of wait on to bend the limb over the tepelik, and actually did succeed in doing so and was about to tie it down when the tepelik broke. I will now consider heating the whole thing prior to bracing.

A problem i have had with this bow is that it has been really hard to open it up more. This I think is due to the thin bamboo core that i used. When I glued the horn on the core it caused an amount of reflex really close to the grip. This means that I have been able to reduce reflex in the sal kasan transaktion, but the total reflex of the bow is still a fair bit, because of the reflex at the grip. Another problem was caused when one of the horn strips was thicker then the other, and therefor caused more reflex in one limp. An imballance that I havent been able to correct, and now have chosen to ignore, close my eyes and hope for the best i guess.

Anyhow, these things, and the fact that I'm not completely satisfied with my first gluings (handle and kasan reinforcement)(which I only realised after having later made some proper gluings) made me choose to reinforce the grip-sal and sal-kasan transactions with senew wrappings. Better a working "ugly" bow then a broken aestetic one, I'm thinking.

All this you might be able to see in this picture:

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And now for the tools.
Since I dont really have a workshop and I have a students budget I have been using the tools I could find at my dads house and get cheap at the local hardware store. This has severily prolonged the construction, though the shaping of the core I guess is pretty much the same for everybody.
So here is a picture of the tools I used for the core shaping: (of course I also used sandpaper :-p)

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Best Regards

Christopher

It looks like the tepelik broke along the grain. If you cut the tepelik with the grain it should be less likely to break.

.. regarding the imbalance:

if the bow is not pre-tillered this will end up in the stronger limb destroying the weaker one.

you can either tiller down the stronger horn or use heat to weaken the stronger limb when braced (carefully !) - that will however not cause exaltation among experienced bowyers ;-)

Thanks again for the advice, it is much appreciated.

But the limp has already been tillered to a degree where I think that both limbs are equal in thickness and strength. The problem, I believe, lie now in the gluing of the horn to the core, and the sinewing which was done on top of the already unequal reflex. So the limb is simply glued in a more reflexed position. Kind of stupid on my part, especially since it makes it hard to determine the tillering and the consequences of not taking care of this. It may be that the best chioce is, as you say, correcting it with heat since this will affect the gluing.

And conserning the tepeliks you are quite right. I used some leftover wood from a kitchen table. Next time I will use one piece wood, with no glue lines.