Steam Bending Success

It works. But I'm not sure how long it will last. I suspect that time and changes of temperature/humidity may cause the steamed siyahs to change over time.

Siyahs don't really involve very much wood, even in large bows. The traditional, recommended method is to go out into the forest and seek out a piece of wood that has a natural bend to the angle that you want for your siyahs.

I should add this here as I have said in Thomas' Forum,
The piece lost some reflex and recurve when I took it out of the form. To begin with the form wasn't curved enough for Korean bows, so I am going to make an new form and 2 new siyahs. Stephen, I would prefer to do this as there are few good trees around, and it is what has usually been done in Korea.

I have seen photographs in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible where they had put a strip of thin steel over the outside of the curve. Would that help to keep the splinters down?

I haven't done it myself.

This is the consturction of Chinese bows,from a piece of antique,the real thing. If a piece of wood is just too thick to bend,it is the way to go..
Actually a crab bow shares the same design...

Jang,yuhua

Bede it will help, especially if your wood isn't chased to one growth ring on the belly side. I don't have steel, but the work I have done, The small splinters will be rasped away, the key most people tell you, is that you should have the wood a little larger than final shape so you can rasp away splinters if you get them. Yokhua that is very interesting, I didn't know that the siyahs there were made of 2 pieces of wood, Do you know if that is how Qing Dynasty bows are made? Can we get another picture showing the front splices on them please?

Ash is too elastic than mullberry. Whan you bent mull... it say bendetd forever. In my sea town we used mull... for boat making.
Mull... leafs are food for silk bugs.

Stephen Selby wrote:

Siyahs don't really involve very much wood, even in large bows. The traditional, recommended method is to go out into the forest and seek out a piece of wood that has a natural bend to the angle that you want for your siyahs.

Going for that method, do the naturally bent pieces of wood for sthe siyahs have to be seasoned? Or can I cut and use them fresh from the tree?

hello,

I would never use ash for lasting siyahs.It will loose its steambend.I use natural grown black locust or mulberry at first,second choice is to steambend black locust or mulberry.This works 100% if correctly done:I bend wood with running through growthrings on the back and the belly,for my scythian reconstructions I bend these woods into a semi circle with a shape made of wood,no steel, no splinters.They keep their shape 100%.It is not at all a big job to do!

Samuraiworrier

please find attached part one of a short storyline ("The making of siyahs") how I steam and bend the wood/billets for siyahs. The most important thing to me is how you cut them to avoid any cracks while bending

R

Hi Reto

What I would like to know, you said that normaly you would go for
Kornel Kirsche (Cornus mas). Do you have a source of that wood?
Its very difficult to find where I live. The wood that is commonly
known in German as "Gelber Hartriegel".
There are sometimes small pieces found with turnery wood supplyers but so far there was nothing usable for bowmaking purpose......
Salaam


(please send private message)

Adnan,

this kind of wood is very difficult to get. I live close to the border of Germany. Cornus mas - Kornelkirsche does not grow in the top North of Switzerland or near black forest or even in Germany. I contacted many forest officials to find out the sources.

The "homeland" for Cornus mas is France. Luckily I could managed to get enough wood/billets from a tree for about 30 bows.

Reto

Cornus mas actually does grow in some parts of germany. At the Saale there is a small town famous for its cornell trees, because students used to carry traditional walking- and fencing sticks from that wood.

Regards,
Andrew

Cornus mas (Cornelian cherry) is indeed a very dense and strong wood, but too heavy for siyahs, unless you make a 200lb bow. It was used however for grips in some Turkish bows.

Adam

Hi from turkiye(sorry for my english)
I read your method abouth siyahs (
http://198.66.52.119/phpBB2/viewtopic.p ... ight=#1533 ). Its very usefull and i maked a bow with this technique. But this laminated method(3 billets) is not traditional for turkish bow. Old masters maked their siyahs(in turkish=kasan) with only one piece which its thicknes abouth 14 mm. This is very hard to steam bending. I broke about half dozen during bending. Do you know a method how İ bend a 14-15 mm thickness. Sincerally

arsilan


Dear arsilan

Thank you very much for your comment. It is correct the old master used naturally grown branches, but they also steamed wood (billets) by watering them for a couple of days (Kloppsteg says for 3 days) in cold water and then by steaming or boiling it. I tried out and it worked well but, I also broke the nicest billets. Everything depends on the heat and the duration of this process in the hot water/steam. For yew it took me about 1,5 hours to make it softer and then to bend it with the jig (a billet of 1.3 cm).

Please have a look of the picture and measurments I took. This is an old turkish bow, where you can see, the bowyer used 5 billets of about 4 mm each to trim the syiah down to the right shape. I simply think this was also a question of available ressources in the region.

Any other comments from the pros?

Best regards
Reto

hi,

if you want to steam-bend your siyahs you have to choose your wood very carefully: take a piece of straight, untwisted piece of black locust, yew, sitka spruce, mulberry......with at least 40cm in length and no knots. This is longer than the siyah but you need it for to have enough power to bend it into the jig. Thickness could be from 12-20mm, width 30mm, so you will have enough to correct what?s out of the alignment. The point is to prepare your wood with a complete growthring on the back and the belly of the wood.
Such a prepared wood has to be steam-bent for half an hour and you will have a perfect siyah.So I did the really sharp recurves of the scythian bows I did last winter. It works perfect.

Michael

redhawk, do you think some small pin knots in yew will make it unusable for siyahs? I have a piece, 36x2x1" that I want to make some siyahs out of, but I don't know how the knots will react to being bent.
Should I get a strip of steel to put on the belly while i put it in the form?

Samuraiwarrior,

I really try to avoid any knot in the wood I?ll use for such a bending, sometimes in my past I didn?t take care of small knots, sometimes it worked, sometimes not.
The endangered side is the belly-side, but if you have made a complete growthring there, this growthring worked as a "steel-strip". Maybe some fibres will split up, I prepare the wood a bit thicker and wider, so I have material enough to adjust the steam-bend.
Maybe you have a piece of wood for to try this kind of steam-bending siyahs and recurves.
If you want I?ll post some pics of my next steam-bending, so you could have a look at my jig too.

i would love to have a look at what your jig and process looks like. Thanks in advance.
Do you think yew is a very good wood to use in composite bows?

Dear all

Attached please find some pictures how I made my siyahs for the very first time. It worked pretty well - have a look of the pictures. I used yew and two pieces of hardwood to reinforce the two sides of the siyahs. For me they look good.

What I am still lack of is, how and by which stage of the bow-making (or siyahs-making) the old master bowyers made the horn inserts for the strings. May have somebody any suggestions-?

Reto


Part 1 http://198.66.52.119/phpBB2/viewtopic.p ... sc&start=0

Hi Reto
Thank you very much for photos. Its very interesting.This bow looks like a turkish bow. But It has a laminated siyah(kasan) and master used sinew under the knock for not been delaminated. Thats why ıts actually laminated. Woow. I'm very happy. But I think that this is an uncommon method. I'll try to bending an 2 cm siyah for my new bow. Regards.

Hi again Reto
What a wonderful conception this.

hi,

next week I?ll post these pics.

I?ve used yew for siyahs with success, but this was oregon-yew, every other kind of yew I don?t trust. My experience is that yew doesn?t work so well in short bows, I?ve had bad experiences with yew and I have seen great performancing bows made by other bowyers breaking suddenly in the handle after hundreds of succesful shots, sometimes I hate yew.
I?ve used a really great piece of oregon-yew (10 growthrings/cm, no knots) as a core for one of my scythian reconstructions.

Michael

hi Samuraiwarrior, here are the pics of my steam-bending with the jig made of some pieces of wood left from some wood-working.

This is the most extreme bending of siyahs or recurves in archery, I did it yesterday for another bow-reconstruction.

The curve has a radius of 4cm, keep in mind the growthrings run completely along the back and the belly of this piece of black locust.

After steaming the prepared wood for 30 min. I bend it into the jig by myself and fixed it for cooling for 10 min.. The result is to be seen on the 2nd pic. The dimensions are 3.5cm in width and 1.3cm in thickness. As I?ve still posted you can do it with bigger cross-sections, maybe 2x3cm.....

This work could be done in 1 hour, with 30min.steaming-time.
The result is a raw-recurve or siyah, join it to the bow and then shape it .
Michael

picture 1

Picture 2, but in the text it is the 1st pic.........

I just want to add, the old bowyers did not fuss about the bending as we are. Most Turkish bows were of 3-piece construction with the tip-kasan bend done at the ends of entire limb pieces. The tips were made hugely oversize (I can not post a picture of an unfinished bow due to copyright, but I am sure many have seen it). The tip/kasan section was made thinner for easier bending, the rest of the tip left thick. The limbs would then be soaked in water for several days (Cem Donmez found even for 10 days), boiled, then bend by inserting the tips into a hole in a workbench and pressure.

I found some old bows had splinters on the belly of the bend, in one case the weakened spot was reinforced with a wooden insert. If the tips did not have enough reflex, then a wedge could be added to the back side of the tip's end. Or a piece of bone/horn for decoration, but no horn inserts, spliced into the wood, were used on Turkish bows.

Of course air dried or green wood was used which makes succesful bending much easier. I use a form to bend, otherwise the method is the same. The grain of wood, as Redhawk says, should better be parallel, but one can get away with a lot using green wood.

Craftsmen were, and most still are, practical people, who avoid unnecessary work, for example fancy laminating etc.

Adam

Andrew asked above about the proper preparation when using naturally curved wood taken from a tree. I didn't see a response.

If you take wood from a tree, do you need to season the wood at all before using it? If you otherwise add moisture through soaking and boiling, one would think that not a lot of curing would be required.

I'm in the process of gathering materials to make my first composit bow. I have the horn and sinew, but I'm not sure about what options I have for core wood or siyahs. Thanks.

Aidan

hi, I air-dry every wood I use for bowery for at least 2 years.

Steam-bending doesn?t wets the wood to much, after having joined the siyahs to the bow, a hornbow has to be sinew-backed and it has to dry for several months, so the siyahs will be dry too.

For the wooden core of a hornbow take mountain-maple and for the siyahs black locust or mulberry.

Michael

Michael,

Thanks. So, since I'm all but ready to go, what do I do for siyah and core wood? Do I use kiln dried lumber and steam bend or laminate? Is there someone who sells seasoned wood for core and siyahs? I suppose I could use a drying box for white woods for the core, but I'm not sure that would be good for mulberry for the siyahs. Thanks.

Aidan