Importance of horn length

hi Eppo,there are some kinds of hornbows with the horn backing the bows?belly from nock to nock.Usually if a hornbow has siyahs the horn don?t covers the siyahs?belly.This would provocate to much weight at the bows tips.

Hello Redhawk
Redhawk, are you sure we are talking about the same area? I meant covering the splice area,not the tip or ears.The horn in the splice area will be thinned out to 1mm or less, it's an area about 6 inches long on this bow
I understand lighter is better , that's what I strive for in my selfbows.
Eppo

hi again Eppo,to cover only the splices with the thinned horn is usual.

My other question was , can this area be covered by a separate piece. My main concern is useing up the shorter horn pieces that are fine in thickness but only about 15inches long.These would go over the arm area
Thank you for your replies.Redhawk

Eppo,you can use these shorter pieces of horn for to cover the splice.
Make just an exact blunt joint.
These reminds me the times 15 years ago when there was no www.,almost no written word to find on traditional bowery,nobody to advise you and I even made the splices of the horn on the bows belly with a long V-splice.

Eppo:

There are several issues here.

If your bow is the Korean style, the horn must cover the limbs all the way up to the tips. It is because the siyahs flex in this style of bow, so the horn is needed.

I rigid-siyah bows, the bows may flex up to th transition between the ridged (Turkish "kasan") part and the bending limb, so the horn is needed there, but may end 2-3 inches beyond toward the tips to taper down to nothing. However, the core thickness must be such that the kasan is not thinner where the horn ends.

The butt jointed horn will work, and the joints can be everywhere on the limb. This method requires sinew wraps at thie joints. It is because with use the vibrations will eventually cause delamination of the splice. Also, if the bow sheds its string, or the string snaps, the violent flexing in the opposite direction will delaminate the horn there for sure. This problems may explain why old bow did not have such joints (at least the better ones). In my opinion, the wraps put a bow in the "primitive" category anyway, where the composites do not belong.

Adam

Hello All
Thanks Redhawk and Adam. Both of you answered it all for me(for the moment).Actually,it's a Turkish replica of Adams replica from the museum in Turkey.Now ready for the horn to be glued on.Do you both use a stringwalker or c clamps? I've made a stringwalker last week.
Not too bad to do with a bandsaw and drillpress.
Yes it's great, the information pool on this site.Thanks again.

Adam; I am intrigued by your statement about bow wrappings degrading a bow to a "primitive" status. Could you explain more clearly your meaning?

hi,yesterday I must have confused the topics(see "What to do with this stuff.......).......

Usually fish-or hideglue need 24hours for the setting,that is what the producers will tell you.
But I think it depends on the humidity,if there is a dry weather I let it set 2 days,in rainy weather 4 days.I don?t use a heat box.

Jack, I was only talking about this specific situation: hiding a faulty construction with wraps for that "old/traditional" look- a B-movie effect and much abused.

Adam

Adam, Yes, it would seem that splicing the horn along the length should be avoided.

As long as we are on the subject; Some years ago my friend and I translated that "Buryat" archery article of the Siberian man, Taras; published here on atarn. I do not know what the sources of information he had that made up the origional article, but he seemed well informed.

Now, one of the statements made was that on some occasions Buryats pieced together the horn layer into a kind of moasic pattern of horn. We thrashed about all the possible words to use for the many technical terms in the origional, and , as I remember, mosaic seemed the most correct for the purpose.

I included translations for many terms that did not really make sense to keep the accuracy of the origional text.

Have you or anyone else ever heard of piecing the horn for a pattern? Jack

Jack:

I saw drawings, made from originals, of the construction of crossbow prods with the horn core put together in a regular pattern as you describe. The drawing was "idealized" by (I suppose) a curator, to look like a mosaic made of romboidal pieces of horn. The assembled horn core was then covered with wood on the belly side.

Could it be the article confused the construction of crossbows with bows? I suspect a small fragment of exposed belly might indeed look like made of many smaller pieces, but in truth there are only several laths of horn side by side a la Indo-Persian method, possibly spliced in a few random places.

Adam

The only other thing that I know about Taras is that he owned a Buryat bow and Thomas published a working drawing of its componets on his site. Davidov also translated that for me.

Does anyone know of Taras? -j-

Hello Jack,

you can try this site ( something like Taras home page ):

http://archeryring.nm.ru/index.html

Jano

Jano; Thanks for that site address. Has been so long that I had forgotten. A good site. -j-