neck sinew glue

Cattle leg sinew is used often for bows, I expect the neck sinew would be the upper end of the backstrap sinew, I have never used any back sinew but I have read of it being used for bows, anyhow I wouldnt hesitate to use it for making glue, after cooking the keratin should be easy to separate away.

Good luck, let us know how it turns out, use the same consistency as other keratin glues.

don't see why it shouldn't work. If it is sinew it has collagen and you can make glue out of it.

Never heard of neck sinew. How long is it?

I got a bag of this stuff too some years ago. I dried them but eventually threw them away. Its consistency when fresh is similar to rubber, and is very different in visual structure from back or leg sinew. When dry they fracture quite easily.

Of course, it would be interesting if you chopped up one of them, put it in the blender, and made glue from it. Perhaps it works well. They are really elastic when fresh at least.

Jake Levi wrote:

Cattle leg sinew is used often for bows, I expect the neck sinew would be the upper end of the backstrap sinew, I have never used any back sinew but I have read of it being used for bows, anyhow I wouldnt hesitate to use it for making glue, after cooking the keratin should be easy to separate away.

Good luck, let us know how it turns out, use the same consistency as other keratin glues.

Keratin?

Test them on a piece of bamboo , or other wood.
I think, you can use .

Hi Pat

yup, my bad, collagen. Three stripes with a wet piece.

from the biological aspect the neck sinew (ligamentum nuchae) is the ligament with the largest amount of Elastin protein (in addition to Collagen). thats why there is the elastic "rubber" effect.
other sources of Elastin are ear and nose cartilage for example.

Now thats interesting, come deer season I will see if I can save some and give it a try.

Lukas Novotny has mentioned that some Turkish and Persian sources refer to using neck sinew exclusively for their bowmaking. But he hasn't been able to make it work as far as I know. Next time I talk to him I'll ask if he's found a method yet.

Lucas is that as sinew or also glue?

I am going to have to buy more sinew, my deer sinew from last fall isnt going to be enough. Not nearly.

I have a lot of projects going right now that will need it including some selfbows that I want to add sinew to, an osage orange and a black walnut. Plus some shorter Plains Indian horse bows, 3 of them.

I did , maybe, find a supply of hide glue, I am testing some of that this weekend on splices.

I don't have the exact texts. But the reference was that Lukas said 'they used neck sinew' and that was even confirmed by a person that called Lukas saying that his Turkish father taught him about making horn bows and that neck sinew was used.

Perhaps someone ought to try it out.

Did Lukas say in which form it was used? As glue or as sinew? I would expect it to work well either form.

The major source for the concept of using neck sinew in Turkish and Persian bow making was Payne-Gallwey in in his article on Turkish bows. He came to the conclusion that it was neck sinew from soaking a bow in hot water and collecting the sinew.

When the sinew which comprises the back, or outside when it is strung, of a Turkish bow -- however old it be -- is dissolved it hot water, it disintegrates into hundreds of short pieces of from 2 to 3 in. long and about 1/8 in. in diameter, each as ductile as indiarubber and almost unbreakable by hand.

This result was explained by Adam Karpowicz in his book on Ottoman bows as the effect of the hot water on standard leg tendon; it becomes denatured by the heat.
The neck tendon from my experience never breaks down into fibres and a dried slab of it does not look at all like sinews dried on a bow. If it could be used for glue, it might have interesting properties. It is certainly an experiment worth trying.

Thank you Bede


JJ if you don't want to make glue out of it, please sent it to me :)

I'll put it on a bow

When I asked for the first time in a butchers shop if they could give me sinew (decades ago) they gave me neck sinew. They are like big rubber chunks. I cleaned it and dried it.

It looked like yellow glass. When i pounded it it broke like glass, too. It doesn?t have fibers in it and is absolutely of no use in bowmaking. Except, well,maybe for glue making. i will try it;-)

I find it absolutely astonishing that nobody here tried that before because I think everybody who asks the butcher for sinew will receive this first. They normally use it for dogs.

Alex simply ask your butcher if you want some ;-)

JJ

To see a bow made with this kind of sinew would be very interesting for me. And perhaps, as was said before, it is used as a glue rather than the actual backing of the bow. Only experimentation can tell.

Neck sinew was what Ishi used for bowstrings.

mikekeswick wrote:

Neck sinew was what Ishi used for bowstrings.

Not according to Pope.

JJ is correct. When pounding dried neck sinew it breaks into pieces, not fibers. I have tried it. Quite useless for bow backing. For making glue I don't know, never tried it. Markus.

Sounds like we have a potential glue on our hands.

I actually used a piece of neck tendon for glue. The glue turned out OK, but I can not comment on its worth as pure neck, since it was mixed together with leg tendons. If the glue gels properly as the tendon glue should, it will be Ok to use.

Adam

mikekeswick wrote:

Neck sinew was what Ishi used for bowstrings.

Think some missunderstanding here. Native americans used backstripp sinew for strings.

Just think what the neck sinew means in this case. That will blow for pieces if try to bend it whan dry (as mentioned before). It is a very strange material!
It not working phisically like sinew, just looking like that.

fusizoli wrote:

mikekeswick wrote:

Neck sinew was what Ishi used for bowstrings.

Think some missunderstanding here. Native americans used backstripp sinew for strings.

Just think what the neck sinew means in this case. That will blow for pieces if try to bend it whan dry (as mentioned before). It is a very strange material!
It not working phisically like sinew, just looking like that.

Pope specifically mentioned that Ishi used the finer tendons from the deer shank. That is the leg. Possibly even the extensor tendons on the front of the shin. Most people don't even seem to be aware that there is tendon on both sides of the shin bones.
The neck tendon is obviously a very specialized tendon that is only elastic when in living form.

We cannot mark it off so easily because some texts (according to Novotny) mention the use of neck sinews in bows almost exclusively. Don't ask me where because he said that not me.

Pat Menzies wrote:

mikekeswick wrote:

Neck sinew was what Ishi used for bowstrings.

Not according to Pope.

I bow to your superior knowledge ;)

you have to make a distinction between -neck- and -back- sinew too

the nuchal ligament is the elastic one,
the rest of the supraspinal ligament (i.e. below the neck along the back of the vertebral column) has less elastin fibers so should be more like tendons.

:?

Haha that emoticon you put is the face I had when reading your description. I reminded me of a back surgery I watched where I remember seeing the tendons along the spinal column...ugh.

Some days ago I tried to make some neck sinew glue. After half an hour of boiling there was a slightly milky fluid. But it did neither gel nor have any sticky properties at all. My conclusion is: cattle neck sinew is absolutely unusable for gluemaking. I threw it all away ;-)

JJ

Probably want to heat it for a bit longer before coming to that conclusion.

Half an hour isn't long enough. At least 3 - 4 hours would have been better. My sinew glue get heated for more like 8 - 10 hours. After all it has to be composed of collagen surely?

My experience is different. After some minutes boiling of fish bladders they have nearly completely dissolved and the glue is sticking heavily between the fingers. I only boil it longer to thicken it.
Maybe sinew glue making is different, but I would expect at least a little stickiness after half an hour, there was absolutely nothing...

JJ

JJ wrote:

My experience is different. After some minutes boiling of fish bladders they have nearly completely dissolved and the glue is sticking heavily between the fingers. I only boil it longer to thicken it.
Maybe sinew glue making is different, but I would expect at least a little stickiness after half an hour, there was absolutely nothing...

JJ

Yes indeed the bladders dissolve very quickly but sinew doesn't.

Just sturgeon bladder do that. Those kind of fish bladders are fantastic and different from any other.
Carp or other sweetwater fishbladder have to "boil" for hours as any other kind of glue like skin, sinew etc.
So if you like to make glue than have to boil tham more for better results.

Like a good meet-bone soup :) Long and low heat boiling.

Not only sturgeon, as I use croaker bladders ... ;-)

Tried to make glue from backstrap sinew yesterday and after half an hour it gave at least a little sticky feeling, rubbing between fingers, but was much too thin to use.

So I boiled it for 4 hours and the resulting glue seems to be good. What astonishes me is that it gels very slowly. I had expected it to gel fast...

JJ

Ok
..most of the bladders ... :)

I don't know it. Thats a sea fish?

It?s a sea fish, yes. The type of bladder used by Korean bowmakers.

I made another try on my scrap sinew leftovers (cow backstrap), which I cooked for nearly 6 hours on low heat. The bonding capacity of the glue seems as good as that of my fish bladder glue, and some commercial hide glues I tested (including rabbit glue). For testing I used two square hickory sticks about 10 cm long, diameter about 12mm, glued together longitudinally. I wasn?t able to break the resulting glue bond on all samples with my hands. Interesting result: When the gluing surface was smooth it could be broken (this happened on the first samples with the sinew glue). A little scratching and the glue bond is strengthened considerably...

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My test samples

Hello JJ! About neck sinew! You can use it for glue it is for shure only material is very hard to desolve . I cook my glues in low temperatures and using this stuff is very time consuming but however it produces pretty strong glue . For me this stuff is most hard desolving material. I use only deer or moose. I tried to cook it from wild boar (becouse I have lots of them here as most popular hunting game) but it can take much more time than from moos or dear or roe buck - day and somethimes more. Frankly everything has made from wild boar (male at list 3 years old) are abnormally resistant I recommend using backstraps .
About fish glue! Good source of raw material is Pike bladder - it is a comon fish in europe so thats the reason why I use them ( they have long type of bladders) . I dont know why but the sinew glue mixed with pike bladders I found very elastic and strong - but it is only my experience and observations.