Bj?rn's Turkish bow and also some arrows

Welcome! You've started a fun journey :) I like the idea of making a short bow with moderate weight.

I've used oak for the handle without problems. It is a little more difficult to make the grooves in, but unless you are aming for matching grooves, it's not an issue I think. Beech should also be good, and I imagine apple and pear too. Something heavy with good grain and good elasticity, and not too oily should be good.

Thank you Kviljo, I'm trying to follow your footsteps!

Since this will hopefully turn out as 50-70#, I don't think I have to do matching grooves - from what I've read in the other threads. We'll get into that in time I guess.

I'll get me a few pieces of leftovers and see how the grooving goes and how they glue up. Beech sounds good too.

I think the key is glue preparation and proper glue sizing. I found 20 coats of 2% glue worked well, for the glue-up I used 25% glue. I did make matching grooves which may not have been needed, if they are not matching I would think all of the grooves will need to be filled with glue. On my first try I got lots of air bubbles from poor glue sizing and lots of air gaps in the grooves from probally not enough glue sizing coats.

As for the weight I worry enough about opening up a 70 pound bow, I cant imagine the fear of a 100+ pound bow exploding on me until I know what I am doing.

Good luck, Brad.

I got this glue here: http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product ... tm?lang=en

Does that look acceptable? It gels rather fast, which was unpleasant - but the result was quite impressive. Also, I got some fishbladder glue from Pazuzu. I was thinking about making my own sinew glue from scraps, but cooking that stuff for 20 hours is out of question in my appartment. My wife would object :)

70# is definitely more than enough. I had the string of a 50# bow slip empty from my thumbring while doing pulling excerices and let's just say that I don't want to repeat that experience.

So, things progress slowly here. I made the forms and finished the 2nd lath.

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Still a bit rough, but I'll reinforce the parts where the tips will get wedged in, sand the upper part smoothly and cut the openings for the clamps. The radius at the tip/kasan bend is 6cm, the other radius is 12cm. This is probably the last time that I'll cut boards for the forms with power tools. Sawing by hand was just so much more precise.

The laths are air dried wood. I'll put it in the water for a week and see if I can go without breakage at the small radius (This will get thinned down there in the usual way). I think Peter mentioned something about this small radius in Arry's thread. Hopefully this will work. If not, I got some green wood coming up.

Now for the grip.

Hi Bj?rn, the radii look all right to me (haha, big expert that I am). If the wood is air-dried acer platanoides (Spitzahorn), then I think it would be a good idea to put a metal strip on each lathe when bending. I had splinters and tearing fibres with such wood.
No such problems with green mountain maple (Bergahorn).

Thank you. It is Bergahorn. So hopefully everything will be fine.

So, the i got the form working today, and the wood was in the water for 11 days. I cooked it for 1 1/2 hours. This is what happened.

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The failure is quite obvious. The part that I thinned down is not big enough. 3cm long won't do it, it should also go down further I suppose. I filed it down from 1,9cm to 1,4cm. I was thinking about Kviljo's picture from his Mughal thread, and ofc impatience got the better of me, instead of going home and looking it up:

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So, the lesson of this loss is probably to make the thinned down part at least as long as the radius+2 cm on each side, and maybe even cook it a little longer. I got the strong feeling that the side facing away from the form also needs to me more round, alot more round.

Good news is, that the laths aren't completely lost, I got still 50cm of unharmed wood left on each, so they'll be recycled for a 5 part bow eventually, or whatever is needed.

Starting to work on the green wood then.

Ah, that's too bad. That bend is not too easy though, as I suppose it should be made as thick as possible, while also keeping the bend fairly short and sharp.

I think the stretching part should be flat, while the compressing part round. This means that the edges can be fairly thin. You don't need the thickness on the sides of the bend anyway. I've gone for 12mm thickness in most of my turkish cores, which allows for a rather sharp and short bend. Thicker sections should bend over a greater length with a gentler curve.

When bending it, go rather slow, spending perhaps 20 seconds doing the actual bending. That way, you can stop when you get the first small cracking sound.

Yes. A fallacy. I was trying to save as much material as possible, but you don't need alot of width up there. So next time, I'll make it more round like in your pricture. Those edges on the tension side always make me uneasy, I like them round. I definitely did the bend to fast, since I read that you had to work fast.

Also, the core was kind of thick at 2cm.

I have always have started with "green" wood that I first soaked for at least 7 days. From this I have bent several batches of hard maple with various amounts of luck. 5/8 inch thick seems to be the max thickness that works, rounding the belly side of the bend helps but what seems to provide me with the most positive results is to have a very full non stop rolling boil. In fact for the next batch I would like to build a pipe burner that runs the lenght of my boil tray.

Good luck, Brad.

For the rest of the world 5/8" = approx 16mm.

Not sure why we couldn't have switched to metric a long time ago, now I'm probably old enough to complain about making the switch, and so the cycle continues.

Thanks Brad, I will go for 1,2 or 1,4mm with the rounding spread evenly over a larger area, rolling boil and then bending it evenly within 20 seconds. This form isn't ideal. I had to get another person to pin it down by foot. I'll make some new forms soon, but meanwhile this will have to do.

Finding a vessel that was long enough to put the laths at least 4/5 in was tricky. I still have like 10cm standing out (where the grip would be), but that shouldn't matter, right?

I'm also worried that the piece of green that i have left might be a bit short at 1,28m for both limbs. It will have to do. I want to start with the new laths as soon as possible.

Note I typically lose about 1 mm in thickness due to sanding, often times I still end up with some small surface tension cracks that I try to sand off. As for the boil tray I first used some aluminium flashing that I bent into shape, note be careful not to get holes in the corners from bending. You should be able to find aluminium flashing on a roll at most any home improvement store in their roofing section. The nice part is that this is a very low cost solution, I also made a aluminium cover for the tray. Then I set the whole tray on two double burner camp stoves.

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In this picture you can see the two camp stoves that I use, also shown is the newer steel tray that I had made. Note I already have plans to make a newer one that is deeper. With a good rolling boil I lose a lot of water from it boiling over.
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I saw your setup in your turkish thread, sadly, I have some confinements. First, my stove works with induction, so I have to use steel. Second, I can't use open fire in my appartment (my kid just learned to get up and walk). That left me with this:

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Expensive, but I can re-use it to grill fish. heh.

Bj?rn, that fish Poacher (not griller) is a great idea for boiling short pieces.

Yes, poacher. I was struggling to find the right english word. First, I thought of one of these very high spaghetti pots, but they aren't high enough. Other pots that are 70cm or so are prohibitively expensive (+200?), and then I came across this piece.

I have never thought to use my stove, I like that idea. I wonder how well my steel welded boil tray would conduct heat from the burners.

An option that always thought would be more work and add more risk of failure would be to simply use a 5 piece construction core. Then there is no need to heat bend such a steep bend as it could be glued in.

Your stove should transfer heat to the boiling pan just fine. We professional chefs know these things. As long as any Significant Other doesn't mind you cluttering up the kitchen!

Personally I'm using my lady friend's 105F hot tub to soak 3mm x 30mm x 800mm laths of Osage Orange and Red Elm for a few days prior to bending them into my jig for an all-wood Scythian style bow.

The lid is an advantage, you just start boiling and watch tv or something. You don't need to add lots of water.

Is there a noticeable advantage if you keep the wood in warm water for a few days? From everything that I've learned in my chemistry classes, there should be?

"Is there a noticeable advantage if you keep the wood in warm water for a few days?"

That's the theory I'm working with, anyway. In part it depends on the species of wood. Some, like African Wenge bend readily into a 6" circle with only 20 minutes of hot tapwater. Others like Ash more or less bend after a wee in ambient temperature water. Red Elm and Osage are both noted for their ability to readily bend after hot water soak.

Anyway I have access to the hot tub, but don't have a long boiler or steam box assembly. "One does what one can with that which one has."

I've done cold water soak bending, and hot water soak bending, and soak and heat over a hot pipe bending when making complex curves for musical instruments, so I'm accustomed to bending 3mm thin wood.

The bow I'm going to make is "inspired" by the all-wood Scythian designs, and they used as many as 20+ pieces of wood glued together into three layers to create that gull-winged profile. But rather than 3 thick layers of wood, I'm using more, and thinner, layers to build up a roughly 1" square shape before rounding and other tillering.

Ken, that sounds really complicated!

Eventually, I want to build a steampipe/box, but at the moment, I don't even have a proper workbench, bandsaw, etc., so first things first.

Building a workshop is an expensive task. I really need to save for a bandsaw.

Workbench? I live aboard a 26 ft sailboat!

Complicated, not really. Tedious, perhaps. The construction will be similar to making a modern compound bow, just with more layers of thicker laminations. I'll have 9 strips of 3mm (1/8") thick wood 25mm (1") wide, each strip made out of 2 or 3 pieces scarfed together. Each strip is curved to the gull-wing shape of the bow. Those nine strips get stacked together and glued to form the "core" which is then rounded, sanded and tillered before being spiral wrapped from end to end with silk thread.

So how do you fix your bows with so little space? Do you have a bowyer's bench?

I have 2 jaw vices (not sure if that's the right word for it) that were specially made for fixing skis, clamped onto an old bureau desk. It's not ideal for using a plane, but worked very well so far for selfbows.

Rule #1 -- build short bows! :D

Some things I can do at the 1m square banquette table in the cabin. But when it's time to do serious amounts of wood removal, I move my tools and things onto the pier alongside my boat. I have a folding worktable that has a pair of slots to hold bar clamps which hold things while I work on them. Sawdust, sweat, and scrapings go out with the tide. :shock:

Back to topic, here are the new laths:

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The form that I made is lacking in my opinion. I fixed a few minor defects about it, but all in all, it doesn't please me. I'll make a template from thin cardboard or something and buy some new wood.

While we're waiting for the wood, I've started to cut the horns that I got from Highland Horn. Actually I also bought some at dictum to have a look if they'd work for bowmaking. Doesn't look so bad so far. According to the details, the horn is from indian water buffalos. The whole horn is quite straight, so I suppose the plates that you can buy there aren't heat treated?

So, for the twisted horn, how do you cut your hornstrips? I've tried a saw for bathtiles (slow, but works ok. follows the bend easily) and a frame saw (quite fast, but the blade wouldn't follow the bend sufficiently).

Bending went well today. The green wood and the slightly slower bending did the trick.

I found the form quite impractical for working in the kitchen. I'll operate with single forms in the future. There was also a slight problem where the tips got wedged in - the wood of the form was quite soft and the wedge dug in deep. Another small wedge did the trick and corrected the slight twist. Some hardwood or metal would be nice to have there.

Any progress to report with this bow?

I don't have Adam's book close by atm, but as far as i recall he wrote that you should let the green wood dry in the forms for at least 2 months (?). So the wood is just sitting there for another month or so.

I wanted to start on another core, but free time is precious and there are so many other things in this forum that I wanted to give a shot in the meantime. I got sucked into making arrows (which I wanted to show off soon), prepared to start some leatherworking and worked on a few selfbows to boost my rather humble bowyer skills.

Inbetween all that I try to shoot a bow every now and then. We'll make progress soon and I'm excited to continue to work on the bow when everything is good to go.

Here's the nocks of a little test batch of kind of korean arrows. I made them from ash. The sinew was applied yesterday, this picture is before sanding and cleaning the rest of the glue leftovers.

I was pondering about which way was the best to fix the nocks and ended up doing exactly the opposite of the way as it is visible here:

http://atarn.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2507

the nock is 3,5cm long, the part for the string goes down 1cm, and the konus that I drilled into it is about 2cm deep. The shafts were weigthed exactly to 0,1g by applying small nails to both ends in about the same depth. The part of the shaft that was to be matched with the konus of the nock was filled with a small piece of wooden shashlik. The arrows are now 72cm long

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After glueing the shafts were 19,8g, one being 19,5g. Strange, since I weigthed the sinew before applying it. I'll add some more sinew.

I was wondering what kind of tip I should take - I had in mind some t-tips or inserts or glueins for carbon arrown. Or maybe some normal heads, but I'd be happy for some good looking suggestions between 60 and 80 grains.

Some of the screw-in target points make good tanged arrowheads. The screw section holds the glue well. If you want to swap them around, You can glue in HIT inserts inside the bamboo. Putting a buffalo horn washer on the end of the bamboo shaft works too as does bone.

That's good to know! There are some screw-ins that already have a small rubber washer in place.

I've received my tanged heads, 7mm in diameter and 2,6cm long tang. I tried to fit one in a waste shaft and it looked quite good, but left me wondering about the stability without sinew wrapping

Work on the arrows is almost done. I had to make a few compromises, but they're my first arrow experiment anyway. Pheasant feathers would have been nice, but I'll check that out at a later point. While working on balancing the weigth on the other set of bamboo shafts, I found that quite a few of them were too carbonized and prone to splitting, so for good measures I opted against T-tips.

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Here the nocks with the feathers

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Needs some more painting and whipping thread

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So far, this was a very pleasing experience, slow and meditative work. I'm surprised that I managed to get all the arrows within +/- 0,1g and retain an even balance point in the set. One can never weigth them often enough through the worksteps I guess. So far they're 25g. A bit heavyer than I expected, but the method that I opted for with the nocks (as a female part) and filling the shaft foot and head with short shashlik pieces contributed to that. Another reason for this methods was, that I had the tools at hand to do the job with some precision.

The method with the nock as male part seen as here: http://atarn.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2507 is lighter by probably around 1g. Also the distance from nock to the feather will be shorter. But to use this method one needs a very slim and long konus drill.

If you want to move the feathers closer to the nock you can glue part of them directly to the sinew wrapping.

Thanks, I'll do that in the next set.

To keep things in a readable order, I'll seperate this from the previous post.

I've been preparing a jig to make turkish target arrows. These threads have been very informative so far:

http://atarn.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1475

http://atarn.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2273

So far the taper of the first 1/3 arrow to the foot down to 6mm seemed to work reasonably well on a test shaft. A taper plane would be preferable - I'll build one in time. I have prepared horn for the washers like Bede suggested. The thickness should be around 1mm. The center drilling is done very easily with the arrow fix tool. Actually it feels a bit like cheating.

There are a few questions left before I'll advance:

I intend to build Kiriş Endam

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First question: The taper to the head. I'm not sure from this picture, but aside from the taper at the foot to 6mm, is there a slight taper in the last 1/3 to the head? I'm aware that endam means barreled, and the picture in the link below seems to hint a slight taper? What this the average minimum thickness at the head close to the nock of historical arrows?

http://atarn.net/phpBB2/files/some_puta ... ws_661.jpg

Second question: The proportion of the thickest part of the arrow to the thickness of the nock. Common sense would suggest that they match, so that the nock is of the same thickness as the thickest part of the arrow so it doesn't get overly deflected by hitting the bow. From what I saw, this seems to be the case in war arrows? Is this also true for target arrows?

Third, the fletching. I intend to go for a more authentic approach this time and use feathers like on the original arrows. Adam Swoboda mentions in the chapter about arrows in his book that either hawk, eagle or vulture feathers were used. Obviously this is out of question (unless I'd somehow manage to open a source for such feathers from the zoo). I know that the original fletching also works with swallow feathers, but aside from that - is there any other common bird that supplies usable feathers? Goose or pheasant?

Most of the Turkish arrows I have measured had the nock diameter matching the largest diameter of the shaft, but I have a target arrow where the nock is smaller. Reed arrows often have nocks larger than the shaft. They shoot normally so I don't know what that indicates.
Endam just means shape. The type of endam refers to the class of shape.

The kiriş endam shape is good for target arrows from my experience. The biggest problem is breakage near the point when someone else pulls them out of the target.

Regarding feathers, the Turks were very eclectic. For flight arrows, cormorant and flamingo were sometimes used because of the angle of the tines of the feather. Swan and other feathers were also used. Raptor feathers were preferred for war arrows. The puta arrow I have has a white feather fletching, species unknown to me.

Don't know why I didn't look to the translation before: Gokmen stated in his blog that the feathers that he used were goosequills. That's quite convenient. (the literal translation to german is quite interesting)

When I get back from vacation, I'll think of a contraption to fix the feathers in this special fashion and position to the nock.

e: The bamboo arrows are done.

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The pieces are soon to be joined. Everything looks good as far I can tell.

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Fyi, baby bottle warmers are great for keeping glue at the right temperature. Just don't take one that you actually use to heat your baby's bottle. The wife might not approve.

I'm very pleased by the performance and feel of the bamboo arrows that I made. Actually, I'm working on a few other sets. I can recommend whole pheasant feathers.

Good luck! Looking forward to see your project progress.
Btw: I also use a baby-bottle heater :)
Cheers
Arry

I just learned that there is a collection of turkish arms at the "Wien Museum". After seeing the somewhat disappointing collection at the H?fische Jagd- und R?stkammer, this looks promising.

"Einige hervorragende Teile der Zeughausbest?nde ? wie die Prunkharnische oder die ?T?rkenbeute? ? sind heute im Wien Museum Karlsplatz ausgestellt. Die Gesamtsammlung kann aus Platzgr?nden nicht ?ffentlich gezeigt werden."

So, I visited the museum today. It's a weird mix of stuff from different periods of the city that are supposed to be of note. There is too little space and it's not good at presenting anything in a meaningful way.

There was one bow, a quiver, arrows and a bowquiver though. The light was low, this is as good as it gets.

Badly twisted:

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Tips, gilding and string visible, also note the wrapping on the limb:

http://i.imgur.com/bOUSb6w.jpg

The other tip, note the upper part in white. I just noticed, but might that be a glued on piece there? It seems to be gone clean on the other tip. It slipped my attention when I was there. The look at the string is good, and this is probably the best pic of the wrapping of the arrows. I couldn't make out if it's bark or something else.

http://i.imgur.com/BxcurVA.jpg

Arrowheads. I think the shafts are wood. Though, I think I'm also seeing nodules? (See next pic). Maybe just leftovers of paint, or the work of a woodworm.

http://i.imgur.com/8I5P1g4.jpg

The nocks. This doesn't seem to be a set, the nocks were different. Some very crude, some quite precisely worked

http://i.imgur.com/Vvcs1u3.jpg

Here the quiver:

http://i.imgur.com/QsA7Drw.jpg

Extreme size for the ones that might want to save them. The decoration on the bow is fine, so I guess you might want to see it up close. I really hope the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum has more, better light and let's people take pictures without flash. It's really sad to see a bow so twisted and strung for the last +200 years. The arrows seemed to be stuff made in bulk. Nothing special about it.

Today I was about to perfect the fit of the grip splice. The first one that I cut didn't turn out satisfying enough, so I boiled the pieces for a bit:

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Everything went nice until I took a step back and saw this:

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Hm. Due to the boiling the limb lost reflex, so I put it back on, boiled it again and put it back in the form. Which resulted in a breakage at the kasan/tip bend. I made a mistake with not clamping the limb to the form right before the sharp radius. Which is too obvious now that I think about it.

So, that limb is trash now. I think I'll glue up the other limb and the grip and just make a new one. I was about to make another core anyway.

The pictures are very interesting. The nock sizes suggest that not all the arrows match the string that is currently on the bow. This is not unusual in collections since arrows become detached from their origins, resorted and sometimes associated with other equipment.

In normal life we often have arrows with different nock sizes and different thicknesses of strings on different bows. As a sometime flight shooter, my flight strings are much thinner than my target strings for the same bow. However, on a war bow the chances of changing a string are remote. The bow was probably strung at the beginning of a campaign and unstrung at the end. If, as the Mongols were reported to do, you used light arrows for distance shooting and heavy arrows for close shooting, the nocks would all be the same size and the same string would be used. Even if you were to carry two bows, it would be not a good idea to have different string thicknesses because in an emergency you might have only one arrow left.

Ah Bj?rn, something very similar happened to me... For the future, I decided to abstain from cooking the splice ends. It really seems to mess up the curvature of the already formed limbs.

I had problems with my saw where the cuts meet. 4/5th of the cut were very precise, then I had to switch to another saw with no spine reinforcement. It was obviously the wrong tool for the job (but the only one that I had close I thought), as the blade was too long and wobbly. Impatience. When I held the grip and the limb together against the light, it was shining through at the said part.

Apparently I had thought about the problem with the saw about a year ago, but didn't put this saw that I bought back then on the rack in my improvised "workshop".

http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product ... tm?lang=en

I won't be glueing up the grip and the remaining limb, I have only enough material for 2 more limbs. While the 2nd cut went pretty well - I can stick the pieces together and they hold without clamps and no light shining through - it is slightly off center. I definitely need more experience cutting hard wood this way. It worked well to leave 1-2mm and then "rasp" with a very fine saw down the cut and sand the remains with a piece of bandsaw-paper that I glued into a piece of profile steel.

The new laths are already in the water.

Here are some puta arrows that I'm working on:

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These were 11/32 cedar shafts, the foot taper in the first 1/3rd runs down to 6mm, on the head it's about 7mm in the last 15cm

I used a sanding jig to make the taper. Not especially clean. After the 3rd arrow you will have to adjust the beltsander strip. It seems to wear down fast. On the other hand, sanding by hand works fine. I used another jig that I made to saw the nock pieces to judge the thickness and where I need to take material off. I recommend working by hand. A plate with differently sized holes would be very convenient to measure the shafts.

Note, those aren't like the original glue on nock pieces. I managed to work out a solution, but I had some ugly deformations from the drillpiece, although I used a thick piece of leather as protection for the shaft. So I had to saw that off and regain some length to match my drawlength. It seems that with this jig-sanding solution it's easy to deform the shafts if you're not very careful. It also seems to deform the shafts somewhat if you push too hard. If you go slowly back and forward with rather high speed, the results seem best.

One last thing. These were shafts that I took as a trial run, they were the ones with the largest variation of weigth in the whole bunch, ranging from 22-24g. After sanding to even size, they were only 0,5g apart. Is that just a coincidence?

I still have like 30 shafts left, so I'll try this method next:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDkZksC ... sFq5eM83Kw

Cool! Looks like it is going to be a fine set of arrows.

I've been doing some of the same work lately. My conclusion is also that a small plane probably is the best tool for the job. - although I roll them manually over a belt sander after planing, to give them a fully round cross section.

Yea, I think nothing beats working by hand. I tried to make a shaving jig, but that thing was rather annoying.

So, I've had little time to move things forward, mostly slowly continuing with my arrows.

Cherry bark, with and without varnish

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It is best to use fresh bark, just cut from the twig. I've made the mistake to use twigs of thicker diameter of about +3cm. Those have obviously thicker bark that will make the arrow look coarse. I'm somewhat discontend with my results, as I had problems finding a cherry that I could reach without a ladder and had to use inferior material.

On my last arrow I tried a young twig, thicker than the arrow itself. The kind that hasn't yet taken the typical dark greyish colour of older cherry bark. It is thin and prone to tearing, but also very easy to glue. I'd recommend those, and every arrow that I've seen after that experience seems to have been glued with this young bark.

The shape that you cut should look like a crescent, but not with acute ends. They should be cut off flat (4 or 5mm), not like the ones that I made. Those were very hard to glue with hideglue and needed additional care.

The ones that you see without varnish were glued easily with the better method that I mentioned.

I've also applied colour and varnish and glued the first feather on a few of them. This was done with a little adapter that I made for my fletching tool. They will be in the correct 12-4-8 configuration.

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The leading edge will be cut with a ruler once every feather is in place. I couldn't decide for the final shape yet, but it's probably going to look like a very low parabol.

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Cutting with a scalpel and a steel ruler didn't turn out so well although I tried to fix everything as tight as possible. The corrections were made with sharp scissors and by eye.

I will use a template of paper or some hard material for the other feathers and cut with scissors.

Awesome 8)

Thanks. They're done

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In retrospective, I'd say it's necessary to clamp the fletching carefully between 2 pieces of wood, where the piece facing you has the shape of the final cut. You just guide the scalpel or razor along the edge. This should turn out fine. Scissors and template were kind of wobbly and hard to hold, because the template is so small.

Stripping the feather from the keel takes practice. I just managed to get them right without the spongy part in the last 5 feathers or so. Sand the spongy part away. While stripping these goosefeathers, I also gave pheasant a try. Those were easier to separate.

Glueing the fletching was tricky, but I had prepared some kind of primitive adapter for my fletching tool to get the 12-4-8 and have the arrow in a stable position (It's actually so crude that I won't take any pictures).

I don't have a scale here atm, but the finished arrow should have around 21-23g I'd expect (weight follows soon). They're 28" long. The spine of the shaft before tapering was 50-55#. Taper is down to 7mm on the foot 1/3, and down to 7mm in the last 15cm of the head. The nock is the same diameter as the thickest part of the arrow.

Finally I shot them with a fairly light bow that I had close by. Despite the low fletching and the light bow (30#) the arrows were very stable and true. A pleasure to shoot.

I have 30 shafts left. The cherry bark is something that I'd leave out for target arrows, besides, I haven't seen a target arrow with such covering so far. I was tempted to do floral decoration, but let's not get too attached to these test pieces that are far from perfect.

While it's cold outside and free time being scarce, I moved my stuff for arrowmaking indoors.

Maybe not 100% relevant for being posted on atarn, here's 2 sets of bamboo arrows that I slowly finished in the last months.

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The red one was for a friend:

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Sorry for the carpet, that one was taken in a hurry.

I finished the sinew job on another set of 10 just today, these will look like these, with pheasant fletching:

http://www.ktarchery.com/sites/default/ ... arrows.jpg

Bede got me interested in quivers. I took some pictures at the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum and then got the materials and tools.

This is the template that I just finished.

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I's vegetable tanned bufallo leather, the kind used for beltmaking. About 4,5mm thick.

Bjorn,

Easiest way of cutting fletchings that I've found is with masking tape and sharp scissors. Apply masking tape to each side of the fletching, place a stencil on the tape and draw around it, cut with scissors and peel off the remaining tape. Very easy and accurate.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out soon.

Excellent work on your arrows. Will be following your quiver bild with interest. Markus. :D

So, I'm stitching the pieces together

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Actually I made 2 quivers. The stitches will be reversed once each side is done, so that it looks like it was made with a sewing machine.

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This is the first time that I've done this. The stitches on the left one are somewhat irregular. I used a marking wheel for cloth, so the distance between the holes was too close, it didn't turn out so well by hand. 5mm seems appropriate. I'll mark that with a template in the future.

I glued a piece of wood into the bottom, so that the arrows will rest on an even surface (it's shaped like a ship).

If I do a 3rd quiver, I'd make it larger. This one is probably closer to the size of the original.

Drilling the holes with a dremel was quite fast once you glue the sides. A 1,6mm drill will be fine.

The prototype quiver is now functional, though lacking a proper finish on the edges. I'll do a simple carving job once I get the tools and some practice. After that, I'll form it with warm water.

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I found that the outcuts for the straps needed some reinforcement.

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So, this was pretty enjoyable. Made me buy basic leatherworking tools that I didn't have for the job here

Looking Good. :D Markus

It does look good! But did you opt for a two-point suspension? Consider three points - it will be hanging much more stable from the belt.

I saw that the Elgur quivers have them, but I opted against it. I'm not very tall and the straps hang close to my belt. The shorter strap is in fact too long. There isn't much that could dangle around.

When I tried it on and moved with it, it was stable enough. But yea, I thought about a harness or something to fix a pouch and my pukko on and maybe a third strap on the 2nd quiver.

So, the 2nd quiver is nearing completion. There's a few things to do like stitching the straps together, forming the body with hot water, making seperate compartments and sanding the edges.

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The concho was a bit hard to fix. Actually I broke one. The rivets were to short and I had to use too much power with the rubber mallet.

I'm still lacking a groover and a swivel knife. For the finish, I'll most likely use just this:

http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product ... tm?lang=en

Btw, sunday I'll bend some laths, so wish me luck.

Bj?rn,
That leather dressing would make the leather very supple, but you actually need it to be fairly stiff to protect the arrows. A wax based finish would be better: it makes the leather look good and protects it from moisture.

Thanks Bede, you mean something like this?

http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-u ... 0-117.aspx

Or can I make something myself? Something with beeswax and linseed oil maybe?

That will work. Simple beeswax polished well into the surface will protect somewhat from moisture though it must be polished until the surface is no longer sticky otherwise it picks up dust. It must be rubbed until it is warm to the touch.

I wanted to continue on the fletching of my bamboo arrows tonight, somehow it was incredibly tricky to fix this:

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I was wondering if you could recommend a fletching tool and glue. It's incredibly hard to put these feathers with hardly any keel left on them into the tool and not glue them to the clamp. Going just by hand seems really an option, but the glue won't stick too well :s

The problem with all the fletching jiigs that I have seen, is that they do not allow for the fletchings to be placed close enough to the nock on these types of arrows. I think my solution will be to make a jiig...

Hide glue is perhaps not the easiest to work with, but it has the advantage of becoming a gel when it cools. Perhaps worth a try. "Back in the days" in the 1930s it was common to fletch with hide glue and using a needle to secure the feather at the front and back temporarily. This is of course difficult with bamboo arrows. Straightening the feathers out beforehand is also a very good idea. J.D. Duff, again from the 1930s, wrote that they kept the feathers in a damp towel while doing the fletching. Perhaps they become easier to handle if somewhat moist?

Anyway, it looks like it will be some interesting arrows! (I am working with something similar too at the moment. It's interesting to explore this :) )

Here is some information that might be useful.

Keeping feathers in a warm damp towel was used to make them flexible. This was important when using wing feathers that have a natural curve. Modern fletching jigs eliminate this problem.

Modern Japanese fletchers still use the temporary thread to tie the feathers down while the glue dries. They also use the extended base of the feather to form a platform to tie down each end. This binding is permanent ans a great advantage in damp climates. English fletchers used a similar system in the old days and some still do. For arrows that were to be used at sea, a thread was left spiralling around the feathers permanently to prevent lifting off. This suggests both groups of fletchers used animal glue of some type.

Some modern Korean fletchers use PVA glue that is partially dried on the feather, which allows them some leeway in adjusting the feather before the glue fully dries. This is all done by eye which requires practice. Undoubtedly this was originally done with fish or animal glue. In China, it has been reported that when feathers were applied with glue, a hot poker was used to heat the glue so the feather could be repositioned if it was not straight.

Of modern fletching jigs, the one that lends itself best to traditional fletching is the JoJan jig

http://www.jojan.net/products.php

It has two advantages: it can fletch close to the nock out of the box and, with a little work, the nock indexer can be moved back and forth to adjust the depth the arrow sits in the nock holder.

For the more adventurous, with some work, you can rotate the nock indexer 90 degrees for fletching in the Turkish and Persian manner. There are some other jigs that allow you to do this by adjusting the nock holder because the feature is useful when helically fletching as well.

For the turkish arrows, you'll definitely want a special jig. The ones that I did were made with a modified fletching jig, but they didn't turn out so perfect. I'd definitely build a dedicated jig for this if everything else fails. If you use glues that need pressure, you need a jig that's stable and accomodates the arrow perfectly. Mine wasn't able to do both.

One thing that I ponder of lately is what kind of glue you take. Glues like Fletchtite dissolved the PU sealant that I used (TrueOil seemed to work). Same goes for paint, some acryl laquer colors will dissolve, others stick, although smearing off slightly. The colors that you use for acryl paintings seem good and stable. Superglue kind of works (it feels like cheating), but doesn't stick so well to the keel of stripped feathers. The problem might be that you cannot exert alot of pressure.

I saw Peter Dekker's post on facebook about ironing the feathers, ofc I had to try that with some leftovers. It seems that the keel is sensible to heat and will adjust. One needs to be very careful not to flatten the keel indiscriminately. I wasn't able to get it straight that way. The feathers react well to ironing, but it's probably better to do it when the feather is already glued to the arrow. Be careful with the heat.

I'll try warm and damp towels, like Bede said, the twist in the keel is really annoying. Maybe another workable solution is to put the feather into one of these jojan metal clamps and gently hold them over steam and then let them cool off in the clamp?

Anyway, I'll get this fletcher. With PVA glue you mean something like normal carpenter glue?

i put the feather with the ready prepared keel in the clamp of the fletching jig and press it with the inside of the keel (gluing area) on a very hot iron (temp. for linnen) for about one minute. then let cool it in the clamp - the keel now is complete straight.

That sounds good! I'll get me an old iron to try it out.

Hah, lots of brilliant advice here! I have had the jo-jan fletchers for a while, but did not think of moving the nock reciever. It works perfectly!


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I consider the Bitzenburger the best fletching jig, I have four of them. The tip of the jaw is pointed(see photo) so it is no problem fletching feathers without keel. I have always rubbed a little paraffin or candle wax on the jaws to prevent the feathers from being glued to the clamp. The Bitzenburger will place a feather as far back as 1,5cm from the bottom of the nock. If you would like to modify a Bitzenburger clamp in order to place a feather all the way back to the nock, jus cut off about 1cm from the clamp's hind part.

Candle wax? Why didn't I think of that?

Kviljo, what kind of stain is that on your arrows? Cherry?

It's simply red paint on bamboo, and the nocks are bone 8)

Here's some full size candy for y'all

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Nice candy, where is it from? :D

Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna.

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I made an adapter for Bitzenburger jigs by gluing a nock to a piece of plastic rod and cutting out an indexer from the plastic. This allowed me to fletch right up to the groove of the nock. The Bitzenburger helical indexers can be used too since they have the nock locater rotated almost ninety degrees from the standard.

Wax on the clamp is always wise, but careful glue application is most important. On old arrows, except those repaired by curators, you hardly ever see any glue squeezed out from the base of the feather.

very nice pic. thx !

That is a Turkish quiver?

It's in the turkish section of the museum, with items from the turkish wars. So probably yes, but you'd have to ask Bede if you want to be sure.

The arrows are interesting too, maybe somebody of you guys with enough reputation to appeal to the curator will be able to examine them closely.

It might have been an honor to be shot at by such beautiful arrows (how ironic). They seemed to have taken much pride in the beauty of their weapons...even though they probably weren't going to get their arrows back.

The quiver looks late 17th century Turkish, though the Crimean Tatars could have easily bought them. There are accounts in the Topkapi Sarai records of the imperial workshops making bow case and quiver sets for eastern European princes and others. In the Caucasus in the 19th century, bow case and quiver sets were still being made and used in the local style which had some Tatar influence. There are even some photographs of them being worn by Adighe soldiers in the Tsarist armies. The parts of the arrows that protrude from the quiver were covered by a decorated cloth tube,

Rich archers often had beautifully decorated arrows. I wonder if it was to prove they had shot someone important too. It is said that the Japanese believed that if an important man was shot by a plain arrow it must have been an accident while if he was shot by a decorated arrow it was deliberate and honourable.

I think the Ghaznavid Sultan Mawdud was supposed to have used solid gold arrowheads so anyone shot by him could be accorded a proper burial.

I want to finish my 2nd quiver soon and I'm wondering if there's a recipe for a wax finish? I kinda thought of warming the quiver and then using beeswax on it?

Rubbing slightly warm wax into the leather will warm the leather too. Even leaving the quiver out in the sun for an hour will help. The same techniques used for polishing shoes, but substituting wax, are effective.

Continuing my arrows, that trick that Kyudohund recommended worked well. A minute might have been too much with my iron, I stopped when the keel showed signs of turning brown.

On the shafts I had to sand away the varnish and used carpenter's glue to fix the feathers. I put glue on a paper towel and applied it with a toothpick (giving the glue time to dry a bit before applying). That glue is very convenient, as it allows any excess glue to be removed easily with a clean toothpick when it's almost hard.

Btw, the jojan fletcher was also a great tip.

After forming the quiver in warm water, I let it dry for a few days. Today I put it in the oven at 90?C, while melting 2 plates of beeswax in a pot. The wax was applied with a brush and then the quiver returned to the oven. The leather drank all of it. More would have been better. The quiver could surely use alot more wax. It's amazing how much the material will accept.

I polished it a bit, but that's how it looks like now

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It's really hard now. Almost feels like plastic. The edges were rounded with an offcut of an arrowshaft

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It needs some kind of resilient finish. The wax makes it succeptible to scratches, so something would be nice.

Question about the Jojan, did you do the cock feather up for your arrows or to the side? Because I am figuring that with the jojan that I have, I would have to guess at the angle when fletching because the knobs do not "click" when I try to do traditional cock feather up fletchings.

For the bamboo arrows I do the normal way of fletching, as the feathers are 3 cm away from the nock. The turkish arrows can be done with a special nock receiver that they sell (Jojan F-71 Nock Receiver - (Cock Feather Down)). Or you make an adapter.

Quiver looks great, personally I would not mind a few scratches, it just shows that the quiver is being used. Markus.

Yesterday I came across these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyejbipavWw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdB59FWQpN8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Nbb7g9jTQ

That's some nice details.

Kviljo wrote:

It's simply red paint on bamboo, and the nocks are bone 8)

Where do you get your nocks from?

Some progress at last.

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The connection of the apex of the splice and the limb need to be more precise next time. It is acceptable though. The thin nail file of my wife proved to be a good tool for the job.

The core has a visible twist. One arm runs quite out of the center. There is a crack visible on the kasan/tip transition that I thought irrelevant, because the material there would have been removed anyway, but it seems that this also induced twist when I corrected the position in the form when I had it wedged in. Strange, I did not notice it when I checked the pieces before glueing.

I do not want to spend any more time on this failure.

On to the next core.

Sawing it apart and re-using the parts is not an option?

Yes, I thought of that. First idea was that it could live again as a 5-part, but the limb in question runs off at beginning of the kasan/tip bend. I was in a hurry when checking yesterday and will look into that option soon, but on the first look I'm critical.

While it's sad that I waited quite long for the wood to dry, it's not worth compensating for a fundamental flaw that might swallow even more time and ressources to no good end.

The conclusion is that the form was flawed.

I have bought quite alot of green wood, but need a way to make the most of it. Something like this

http://www.woodworking.de/cgi-bin/holzb ... bandsaege/

Leftovers from my very first broken laths for a 5 part

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A 2mm deep crack, still leaves enough material after the cleanup. We'll see if it's ok

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They were almost too short. Fixing them was very difficult

Hi Bj?rn, this does not look too bad. You can save it by heating the bend and applying hot glue into it, then clamping the splinters down, best using a metal sheet and sth that helps you distribute the pressure of the clamp over the whole area.

I think I can organise 1mm steel sheets. Otherwise, I think those flexible plastic cutting boards from ikea would do the job

Arry wrote:

Sawing it apart and re-using the parts is not an option?

After evaluating what's left after sawing off the tips, I'll make laminated ears from the limbs ? la Francesco. I have many leftovers that can be used perfectly for that.

The new forms for the 3 part bows that I made with the bandsaw and a jig for the beltsander look very promising, although I could use some more, considering how much wood I bought. I have green wood for +12 (!) cores and horn for 6 bows.

Now, if I had more free time...

Hehe! Yeah, the old dilemma. Looking forward to see your bows, even if it takes a while.

That might be alot faster than anticipated. Removing the cracks was successful.

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I lost a cm or so on both limbs, because of cracking at the ends. Now I sealed them to prevent that. Should be good. I kind of wonder if I should controll the drying process more, but I didn't give much thought to that until now. Maybe I should move my forms to the basement.

Something else: I don't know who came up with, but I saw it in Franceso's fotos, here and on FB. So I'll call them "Francesco's mice" (they remind me of mice)

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This bow will have a laminated grip. I don't have enough dry material left to make it out of one piece. Unless you'd make it out of a single piece of oak.

Ups and downs.

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Glueing the grip went well, and also the ears will follow soon.

What was a complete failure was the assumption that those flat hornstrips from dictum were any good. While sanding went promising, after cleaning them with water and letting them dry in the sun, one strip showed massive cracking the next day. Upon inspection, those cracks were very deep (more cracks were visible when you looked at the side of the strip). A little bending and the strip broke in two. The material was brittle.

The other strip had deep toolmarks that I was able to sand away, but it was too deep and would have left the horn about less than 3mm midlimb. So that's that.

I don't know how they process those strips, but it isn't good. At least not if you want to build bows with it.

The strips that I managed to make from the stuff from highland horn are superior in any way.

Bjorn this is beautiful work, you are meticulous and it shows in your work.

I really like Francesco's mice, a great idea !

This is an excellent thread to follow.

Thanks, Jake.

Today was hot, a good day to glue. I put a glass with dry hidegue on a metal table and it melted within a few minutes. Surprising.

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So there's the ears. Cutting and sanding was a bit more complicated as the belly isn't completely flush to the rest (correcting that in the next step). As you can see I had to correct a little twist on the right limb by hanging clamps on the splice where the glue started to gel.

The centerline was drawn before glueing, sighting along the tips looked ok when the glue was dryer. The grip was laminated after that.

Getting the belly perfect will be a challenge.

Somebody on FB (?or was it Reto here?) recommended the shinto saw file for the horn. Great tip btw.

How much more material will come off the ears on the belly side? If any? In the photo it looks thick. All in all it is looking really good.

Thats pretty hot for you folks there, your weather is usually more like ours here in Northern Michigan.

It's just surplus material for safety from the bending. The ear splice is 7,5cm x 1,6cm, and the ear is alot longer than finished. It will be about 6-7cm measured from the apex of the bend.

Thank you, its looking really good.

Nice work bench LOLOL!

It's bad, but not *that* bad :P

It's interesting following your progress. I would say though that on your last core the sals look very short? Maybe it's just my eyes!

The sal is 25,6 and Kasan is 14,4 after adjusting, before glueing.

While the core turned out good regarding the difficulty of making it of too thick, too short leftovers that required unreasonable effort to bend and then repair the cracks, I *do* fear that this core will be very difficult in the current configuration as I continue. Not only is it somewhat short, but the Sal/Kasan radius is too sharp at 12cm. It was a mistake I only realized after bending.

For my 3part core forms I have a much less ambitious shape in this area. Not only did I judge the proportions wrong from a picture of Francesco's forms (talked to him too late), but it also dawns on me more and more that I should match my design more according to my novice skills.

Doesn't matter. If it fails, I'll try to recycle what's left. I want to use the time that I have and want to get more experience for each step instead of waiting to no end.

So, I worked a little on that core and measured it. It's shorter than I thought, but the size will be ok for me. If I manage to tame the bow :)

5,5+22,5+17+7=52, so 104cm ntn

On the bright side, one horn strip is almost finished. I brought most of it down to even thickness and checked constantly if the strip doesn't have any stiff spots. Do you guys check for that when working the horn?

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I know, I said non matching grooves, but now they match more or less. It's not perfect, but they seem to fit ok. Actually not bad if you consider that I held the bow with my legs and the tip against the chest. I really need a real workbench.

Coating has begun. 20 x 5% hideglue. I can't do it all today, since it's not hot enough, but the next 2 days will be over 30?C. Perfect for applying the horn.

The Sal/Kasan bend is worrying me a little, I need a jig or something like that there, so that the horn sits tightly. 12cm radius is not good.

That was the last time that I fashion a bow like this out of leftovers. I needed almost the half day to get the surface at the bend in line with the Grip/Sal.

I have a quick question:

The Turkish arrows shown on page 6 have spiraling stringlike material around the arrow. What is the thread/substance made out of and what is its purpose?

My guess is that it's there to protect the colours. The string just covers the painted parts. There are 3 or 4 other sets that look like these, but with different colours. All self nocks, no sinew wrapping.

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There is no safe clues how long they are, but they are different than the arrows that are most likely turkish, like the ones here on the left.

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Maybe these are Tartar arrows? Who knows. The description says nothing about it, and all of them are in quivers, so you can't measure them.

No sinew wrapping? And I don't know whether the string would protect the colors.
But I think those arrows definitely look like Tatar arrows. They look pretty long.

Hard to say without measuring, but possible.

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The arrows that I talked about almost half a year ago:

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For some reason I have a problem taking a good photo of the nocks that does the eyepatches justice.

What did you use to cut the feathers?

I did it by hand. Orda Khan tells how it's done on p.4 of this thread:

Orda Khan wrote:

Bjorn,

Easiest way of cutting fletchings that I've found is with masking tape and sharp scissors. Apply masking tape to each side of the fletching, place a stencil on the tape and draw around it, cut with scissors and peel off the remaining tape. Very easy and accurate.

That is a perfect method for long and high feathers if you want to take up Manchu archery. The scissors have to be very sharp and kept sharpened because feathers will blunt them after time. Sometimes you have to tape the feather to a straight edge to keep the base straight.

To what extent you try things depends on how many arrows you want to make. I had a Chopper style feather cuter custom made for long low fletching. They take a few seconds to cut each feather and once you master it, you can make precise sets of feathers.

I made a whole set of turkey feathers cut in this method.
Not by putting masking tape on both sides of the feather on the arrow, but rather, putting the masking tape over the feather on a hard surface along the quill but not covering and, and then drawing the stencil. Then I pick up the taped feather and cut it by hand along the line.

It is an OK method, but very tedious. It took me HOURS to make 36 perfect Manchurian 7" target arrow feathers. But I am a perfectionist and it is not as uniform as I would like. Probably good for a hobbyist but not for someone that is taking it very seriously like I do with everything. I am thinking about buying a feather burner and/or thinking of another way to do it. I think using a method like the masking tape is OK for a set of arrows but not for a craftsman that wants to make equipment that rivals carbon arrows in perfection.

I put the tape on when the feather is already glued to the shaft. Including the cutting, an arrow takes less than 5 minutes. What *does* take long is straightening the keels and glueing on the feathers

The cutting is consistent and uniform. If you want to rival a machine in precision, you need to train more. People manage that freehand, without tape.

Besides, you did see on Peter's website what the cost of an arrow was at that time?

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Not exactly elegant, but the horn was not wide enough. What bugs me most is the straight shape of the grip.

No I didn't/don't see the prices of the arrows. What were they?

I had the same problem with my last horn bow at the handle. I contemplated gluing on some scrap pieces of horn to fill the gap but in the end I decided to leave it alone. When I came to round the belly most of it disappeared and then sinewing finally covered the 'problem'.

I'll cheat with sinew then ;)

Lukas, look here:

http://www.manchuarchery.org/bow-and-arrow-prices-1802

A regular worker makes about 0,04 taels a day in Zhili. A single arrow costs about that. If you consider that the cost of living was relatively higher than today, a worker is left with less disposable income. So all that is quite expensive.

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Looks good, eh? Well, it's flawed. There's bubbles in the gluelines on both limbs. Before you ask me now if I did this or that, I tell you that I did everything by the book. So, after talking to Cem yesterday, I found the flaw today when I was about to glue another core.

For my case it's fairly simple. The brush!

I use this one:

http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product ... r-8-mm.htm

The glue that I had ready was dictum hideglue at 30%. While I coated the splices with low % glue, I played with the 30% pot.

Here is what I observed: Every time that you dip the brush into the jar, it introduces air bubbles. Now, these bubbles stay for about 30 seconds. The more you dip, the more bubbles.

I also played around with possible ways not to pick these up, as the brush is relatively small and eg. if you glue wood to horn, you need alot of glue = alot of dips.

Wiping the brush on the wand of the jar gets rid of most of the bubbles, they slip back into the glue. So when you dip back, there's even more bubbles. Not good. I applied the glue on the new core with more pressure and in only one direction, we'll see how that turned out by tomorrow.

The most simple solution to the problem would be to use a lesser concentrated glue (I need to observe how 20% behaves). Or your fingers to apply the glue, as Kviljo suggested to me.

I want to try different sizes of brushes, also one with more fine hair and more coarse if I can find it. This one is relatively coarse. A wooden spatula would also come to mind. Fingers if you wear gloves.

I also just looked at the Duvernay video, in part one at 1:48:00 you can see that the bowyer uses a brush about as thick as a thumb for the wood/ horn glueup. First the wooden core is brushed with back and forth motions, then heated over an electric element (it's impossible to say if he already did it before, as the core is very glossy, but this could also come from the many many coats of low %). Then it is put aside, the horn is heated in the meantime by his wife and then brushed in the same manner and then heated again, and brushed with glue once more. The brush looks odd, with very long hair. He only dips once and spreads it evenly, as there is much glue in the long hair. What material could it be? Animal hair (which one?), or from a plant?

Finally, is there information what the old turkish bowyers used as a brush? Possibly in the Klopsteg book? I can recall something faintly, but don't have the book available.

The information about brushes is not in the Klopsteg book. My memory most likely plays tricks on me.

I was also partially wrong about my problem with the bubbles

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The grooves didn't match well enough. Although I thought that I used ALOT of glue, it wasn't enough it seems and when it dried and shrank, it left only bubbles. I was able to take off the horns without damaging the splices. Everything was cleaned and then the grooves recut, so that they should be ok now.

I will use gradually thicker glue with many layers from 2% on. The scene with the korean bowyer points to a few good things I think, my horse hair should arrive soon and I will make a brush out of it that can take alot of glue at once. :)

The horns are back on. I didn't make the brush yet, as the largest brush from dictum proved to be good. No more bubbles.

I switched back from Francesco's method of heating to an electric plate. It's many coats with low concentration airdried and finally 4 coats with ~10% with heating. The glue for the clamping now contains more fishbladderglue.

This type of table proved to be an ideal workplace:

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It also offers itself for the sinew job, so that the bow is fixed the other way around on a jig, while you sit in front of it. It's the perfect height for both tasks.

The next 5 part core will have it's horn in the next days. From now on, I will only use non-matching grooves for the next bows. After this, I have 2 more turkish cores that need to rest a month or more. I want to make these with convex bellies with the tencik.

Here is a hint what will also come up this year:

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I just learned a valuable lesson that could be useful for you. These clamps?

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Great. Just not for curved parts of the bow. They cover much surface and are fast, BUT once you have the felt&wood in place, they will not be able to follow the curvature like smaller clamps and thus not deliver enough pressure, so there will be a gap between wood an horn. I wasn't crazy enough to use them in the place that has a sharp curve, but they're pretty much useless if you have the slightest curvature in the limb.

Hehe, thanks!

I have not used that particular brand, but none of the ones I have used are really suitable for any bows, since they just do not produce enough pressure.

These are almost the largest ones and the description says they will produce 90kg (per what?) max. They seem to work for the grip, but since that screwup, I'd rather use them for something else. Fixing steambent laths maybe.

e: Fixing laths doesn't work to well with them. They're only good for holding the hornstrips then you make them flat.

I made some rings with leftovers. Hickory and Osage. Sealed with Tung & Linseed oil.

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Puta arrows in progress. Thanks to Murat ?zveri, they'll also be relatively authentic, although of somewhat uncommon size at 28"

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That is a good start. Don't worry too much about the length. From surviving arrows, it is clear that long arrows were also used for target shooting in later times. Due to a statistical anomaly among the arrows of the Stone Collection, a mythology grew about the uniformity of arrow size in Turkish archery. Perhaps at one time and in one place there was a contest restricted to arrows of one length, but there is no evidence yet. War arrows on the other hand, mass produced and issued by the government, probably were made in standard lengths and the archers adapted their technique to the average length.

Even with flight arrows, the taper was specified in twenty-four sections rather than absolute measurements. In that way the design could be transferred to any length arrows.

Thanks, that is good to know.

I based my arrows on the parameters in ?nsal Y?cel's "T?rk Ok?uluğu", p.293ff

https://ia801804.us.archive.org/14/item ... %259Fu.pdf

Now, I cannot speak or read turkish, but a friend was so kind and translated it for me. Of the 50 puta arrows that are left, only a fraction was as long as 28", most being something around 65cm.

You may be right about the statistics. These are just the ones that came down through the ages to us and we cannot make valid assumptions on such a small sample.

What bothered me more was the shape of the fletching, but I found a good lead in the JSAA issue 41, 1998, p.16.

It's rather short and not so high.

I think the drawing in the article is a little imprecise. Here is a picture of a puta arrow in my collection. It is an old style and has a bashpare nock of horn. The fletching has a long leading edge that is almost a straight line and it is rounded at the rear. It is higher than azmayish fletching and there are examples in the Grayson Collection where the fletching is larger.

That is alot lower and shorter than what I expected from your description. The gentleman who translated for me also pointed out that "The writer of the book says, puta arrow's fletching is just like heki arrows but a bit longer and higher. Heki arrows fletching starts just after the nock with 4.5 or 7 mm height and gradually lowers till it gets zero at 40.5 or 64.5 mm"

There's a few flight arrows in this pic here, but are the three on the right puta arrows?

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I was only able to organize a single picture that is guaranteed to show puta arrows, which is this one:

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The quality is poor, but if you safe it and zoom in, the remaining fletching seems to look like the sketch in the JSAA article. I supposed there's variation.

The first photograph is probably the best one to use. With a poorly focused picture like the second where the fletching is distressed, there is not much chance of getting a good sample. It is clear from some of the arrows in Dresden that some were fletched with feathers tapering symmetrically from the centre to both ends. This is the balance pan or banana fletch.

I have attached a photograph of some arrows in the Askeri Muzesi in Istanbul. There are labelled correctly as puta arrows and are full length.

The arrow on the left has a full feather surviving and it is the tapered shape, widest a little before the nock.

Ah, interesting. I think these could be the arrows that I have this picture of:

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Nigh impossible to judge the proportions without and orthophoto

Few more pics here

https://picasaweb.google.com/okculuk/MilitaryMuseum

I know they changed some of the the display when they started to update the catalogue. They are probably the same arrows. There is an interesting profile to the feathers, rounded at the back, straight for a while and then tapering to the tip. This is a practical shape and can be seen in a larger form on some of the arrows in the Dresden Turkish Collection.

Thx for the link Fusizoli. There's some good details in there.

Ah, I think I know which ones you mean. Either one of these?

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There are at least 3 sets of prestige arrows in Vienna that follow a very similar layout, with the same color-schemata red and blue with gold decoration in either floral form or geometric patterns, baspare nocks and similar form of fletching. Maybe somebody with enough reputation could look into it and measure and research if they came from the same source?

e: Now that I looked for these arrows, I found a number of (more or less) similar pieces in my archive, this one from the museum in Kassel:

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These are from an unkown source, saved from a FB post. A mughal quiver and some ottoman arrows in it that seem to follow the layout of the other red, blue and gold ones:

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I think that there are three main shapes for this style of fletching. I categorise them as long, medium and short. If you look at them as have three sections of the profile: the rounded rear edge near the nock, the parallel section next to this, and the taper down to the arrow shaft at front of the fletching. The Dresden arrows and those from Kassel have the middle parallel section extended to deal with the necessity of having a heavy war arrow straighten out quickly while still keeping a low profile. The puta arrows from the Askeri Museum are full length and have medium length feathers. Some of the azmayish arrows in the Grayson Collection have very low fletching with now parallel middle section. The major difference between the types of arrows and their fletching profiles is related to the distance at which they were meant to be used. War arrows have to work at short to medium range, long puta arrows have to act at medium range and short puta arrows have to act at long range. Azmayish arrows act at extreme range.

In the case of war arrows, shooting is done under extreme conditions. Drawing and aiming have to be done quickly and precisely, just as in hunting. In target shooting, there is a greater chance of a perfect release and less fletching can be used to obtain higher speed and a lower trajectory. More time is also possible for aiming. At greater ranges than the admittedly long Turkish target ranges, shooting is closer to flight shooting so that the fletching is reduced even further.

The ones from the Askeri Museum also seem to have longer fletching (something like 1:5 or 1:6 if we take the distortion into account) and the shaft is tapered at the foot.

While my other pic is not very sharp, it's closer to 90? and allows to judge ratios. In these arrows, the ratio of fletching to shaft is 1:10, which would match the description from the book. ~ 6,5cm fletching for 65cm arrows. The shafts also have no or at least a very small taper at the foot.

I'm a bit puzzled. Maybe the sets are from different periods and I'm wrong to assume that everything was standardized.

I would not be surprised if individual designs were adjusted to particular pieces of wood. As well, skilled archers could find that certain profiles were more suited to their techniques.

As to the lack of taper at the foot in some arrows, think that this is almost entirely a perspective effect for the photographs. War arrows definitely are thicker at the foot to prevent splitting on impact. Pishrev and azmayish arrows are exceptionally narrow in the last section of the foot. Puta arrows are less so.

I think we sometimes underestimate the difficulty of maintaining a constant size for something like arrows or bows over a large area like the Ottoman state. The methods of disseminating a pattern for a standard size and profile are restricted in societies where printing and centralisation are not widespread. For the army, contractors were undoubtedly supplied with a standard requirement and this would have influenced other production. The physical requirements of competition and the prestige of the capital would also encourage uniformity, but we don't have samples from every workshop to make statistical comparisons. Instead we have groups of arrows randomly surviving and that is all we have to go on. If a set of arrows from a particular individual survive together, this would skew any assessment of standardisation because of their uniformity.

Final layer done, this is already 2 weeks into drying. The ugly surplus bunch of sinew that I had to leave on the grip will be filed down soon and there's some minor other work that needs to be adressed.

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The right limb seems to have a weak spot near the grip. I took off 0,1mm thickness too much in the shaping I think.

Long backstrap wasn't ideal for this type of core, it proved very hard to control as it reached the kasan. It literally flowed over the edges and crossed fibers underneath that seemed to rise strangely from this section, so that I had to hold it down on both sections until it was gelled firmly.

I tried the korean method with the gelled strips on another bow, and it was quite the contrary. Very easy and reliable. No crossed fibers or problems at all. Everything kept completely straight as you comb it out. Although it's hard to judge if the bundles are saturated enough. This method might be more beginner friendly with long sinew bundles like I used (+50cm). It's really extremely hard to transfer the long and slippery bundes to the core without anything dodgy happening, if they're gelled on the other hand...

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I've started to open the bow. It had a little propeller twist, but that was fixed with light heat.

I'm going slow. Too much other stuff to do. The worst twist was fixed. It's still not completely aligned, but we'll get there.

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I also cooked some glue from Tiger's yellow croaker bladders.

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We'll see how it works.

Tell us what you think of the croaker bladder glue and how you are preparing it.

The bladders are from the Small yellow croaker (Larimichthys polyactis), or 小黄鱼

The first batch was soaked for 24h, cut to small pieces with scissors, run through a blender and then "cooked" in a bain maire setup for at least 12 hours at around 45-50?C. I added more water than the recommended 5x the dry weight. The result was 50g glue from 100g dry bladders. It took about 4-6 days to dry completely

The 2nd batch that's currently drying was soaked for 48h and I'd recommend paying attention to hygiene, like when cooking jam. There was some slight odor after the 48h. The bladders were cut with scissors, but then I heated them in a pot with 5x the dry weight water up to 60?C for at least 10mins. Blending afterwards was alot easier. The rest of the process was like above. I suspect a higher yield in this one, but we'll see in the next days.

The current temperature isn't good for drying this glue as I found out (28?C peak outside a few days ago, inside about 20). If it would be hotter, the glue would have problems gelling and most likely start to foul. It seems that it's melting temperature is somewhat lower than hideglue. At around 21?C it had trouble gelling, which you can read below.

Which leads to the "test" that I prepared. Like Markus wrote in his thread about cooking glue from sturgeon bladders, I glued up some maple leftovers from bow laths with hideglue and yellow croaker glue each. After a week I'll try to break them apart by hammer and see if the glueline fails.

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Temperature in the room was 21,7?C at 34% relative humidity. I took 2g glue with 6g water each and melted each in a pot that was placed in the same bain marie.

Melting the glue, the croaker glue dissolved faster, it was completely liquid 10mins before the granulated hideglue.

The hideglue was visibly more viscose than the croaker glue (which also seemed to strangely trap bubbles of air quite easily) at the same concentration and temperature.

Both glues were applied to the wood with 2 wooden applicators.

After that I put 2 drops each on plastic foil to see how fast they gel. Not exactly visible on the pics, but the drops are about the same size.

Hideglue:

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Yellow croaker glue:

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The hideglue took about 1m50s to gel and was completely gelled, so that it wouldn't stick to the toothpick anymore, at around 2m40s

The yellow croaker glue had problems gelling at all at this temperature. It was a solid gel that wouldn't stick to the toothpick at around 5m20s.

The gel strenght was also noticably different. The hideglue was quite solid, but it seems the yellow croaker glue had problems gelling at this temperature.

I put the foil and the glasses with the glue into the fridge (~4?C) for about 15mins and the cold seems to have helped gelling. After taking them out and prodding both with a toothpick, I couldn't detect any differences. Mind you, those are all the results that I could get without any special equipment and are somewhat improvised.

Reason for comparing hideglue with yellow croaker glue was, that some people have told me that they couldn't detect any differences, especially concerning the time that the YC glue took to gel. Maybe you guys worked with lower temperatures in your room or you didn't notice that the temperature was lower on one day when you used YC.

We'll see about the quality of my glue when I'll try to break the test pieces apart, but so far it seems that YC glue gels slower at the temperature that I had in the room. If you consider working with it, you need to take it out in the cold afterwards, or it won't gel properly and the bond will most likely be poor. I have read quite a few times that the old bowyers did their sinew jobs in the cold season, which makes perfect sense.

You can read more precise info in "Schellmann (2007): Animal glues: a review of their key properties relevant to conservation."

Kviljo asked me to check how the flexibility of both glues compares, I'll try to figure out a way of how to make a slip of dry glue of about the same thickness.

It would also be interesting to compare it to sturgeon bladder glue, maybe I can do that if I find time. Anyway, Adam already wrote about it in his book and I don't think I have much to add.

Interesting sidenote: I spoke to Wen Cheh Huang about it, and he told me that he uses bladders from Miichthys miiuy for his bows. For us in Europe, it wouldn't make much sense, as they're more expensive (70$ per 100g) than sturgeon bladders. Bladders from the large yellow croaker also come to mind, but they're equally expensive. It seems that sturgeon is the best and cheapest material, unless you use hideglue and a super hot and humid room.

oh man! If you know you want to do experiments, I sent you an extra amount of glue. I hope next time. thanks for sharing.

That's nice. I always asked myself what kind of form you use to dry the glue in?

• if I prepare larger amounts of glue use this form - like sticks

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• if I cook small amounts of dry glue in the form of a thin film.

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• This form is very good in case you need to thicken rarely glue. just add a few pieces of dry glue directly into a hot rare glue

Ah great. That's a good idea. My glue was always too thin.

Most interesting and thanks for sharing. Have you tried to break apart the test pieces yet? Markus.

Yes. The first ones that I prepared weren't sized with thin glue and thus the glueline broke clean in both. It looked like the glue was too thick, there wasn't enough in the scoring to hold properly. Kind of obvious from the start

I need some more containers and time to try the experiment with sizing the pieces thoroughly.

In the meantime, here's the sturgeon air bladder glue that I made from Pazuzu's bladders.

Soaked and pounded to dough

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The whole process of extraction took about an hour at 50?C

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Filtered and put in the fridge for 20mins

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The gel was strong and it was easy to cut it up. Note to self, smaller strips next time.

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The yield was 95,1g dry glue from 114,3g dry bladders. The solid residue in the fabric was about 2g. Most of the difference that was lost was indeed glue that got lost in the fabric or on my hands. Given the right equipment to filter, I'd suppose yield over 95% is no problem to archieve.

If we look at the extraction time and yield, I'm not sure if there's anything better than these sturgeon bladders.

you did excellent!

The work on the bow is slowly going forward. After some more tillering, I think I'll be able to brace it. The little mistake that happened while shaping shows, also the problem with the first layer of sinew.

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When you heated the pounded dough from the Sturgeon bladder did you add any water? 95 grams of dry glue from 115 grams dried bladders seems like a very good result. :)

No, just pounded it as it was from soaking. Actually I just made another batch with the rest of the bladders, which came out 183,3g from 200g dry bladders.

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I used 300g water per 100g dry bladders this time

A friend made some convex/concave scrapers for me. Specifications by Cem. 1.6mm thick spring steel. About the same hardness as french cabinet scrapers that you can buy over at dictum.

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Meanwhile, the first one of a series of new bows

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This one is going to be interesting. A rather light core at 193,8g, 24mm wide @ sal. 72g sinew added.