here are the promised x-rays after much coaxing and playing around all thanx to my vet who did the x-rays and to the curator of the ulm museum who allowed to take those bows out of the musem.
I had to retrace most of the joint lines since they were too weak.
you can see also two drawings which I traced from two of these bows.
Stefan; You have done a brilliant job! congrats, Jack.
stefandemeter
to the x-rays.
in fact the original pictures are more clear but is really hard to see details of construction. and even harder to keep the quality if you have to reduce the image size.
my friend did a test to see which settings work better. I guess you have to make the same. it was a simple x-ray machine and I believe not the newest technology. so you have to play aroung a bit.
yes I have drawings of the chinese bow. give me a day or two.
I don't have fotos of these bows because my old digital camera was on strike and I have just got a new one. these bows are in the museum of ulm and they are older even than the karlsruhe collection by about a 100 years. they belonged to a private curiousity cabinet.
I'm glad you like and can use these images.
thanx for your feed-back,
stefan
Alam ed Din, Adnan
Thanks.Are those bows on the permanent exhibition?
Bede
Stefan,
Since some of the Karlsruhe bows are dated in the late 1600s (the last quarter), does this mean the Ulm bows are from the second half of the 1500s?
Are they dated and signed or do you mean they entered the collection a hundred years earlier than the Karlsruhe collection was put together?
stefandemeter
if I know well these bows were collected in the late 16hundreds. the bows from karlsruhe were captured at the end of the 17hundreds but they might be older. I don't know.
I'm not sure if they are on display at the moment since I begged the curator to take them down for me. but he might have put them back. anyway he wanted to make a better display for them.
but normally they should be in the permanent collection.
as soon as I'm back from my vacation (in two weeks) I will see if I can take some pictures.
here are the tracings of the chinese bow and I'm not sure about the other one if it's chinese too or korean. I leave that to the experts. the file sizes are big especially the two full size bows about 1 megabite because I wanted to give you good pictures.
the "korean" one is broken near the grip. and the chinese looks like it was fixed with sinew wrappings.
[quote="Bede"]Stefan,
Since some of the Karlsruhe bows are dated in the late 1600s (the last quarter), does this mean the Ulm bows are from the second half of the 1500s?
Are they dated and signed or do you mean they entered the collection a hundred years earlier than the Karlsruhe collection was put together?[/quote]
hi Bede,
according to my information the bows entered the collection in the late 1600s. I can't recall seeing any signature on the turkish ones but on the chinese one are some charakters which you will be able to see after I make some fotos.
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h63/s ... _siyah.jpg
Thank you so much, for doing and posting all this. Very good drawings!!!!!
Only one question: On the second set of pictures it say's "Korean",
but the bow looks very Chinese. Can this be my mistake?
Rapsod
I trace few months ago chinese child bow and send copy to Stephan to write dimension on it but... he didn't do that :? It is 1/3 of adult bow or that was 2/3. :roll:
Stephen Selby
The bow marked 'Korean' is in fact Chinese. Mid 19th Century, northern style.
Stephen Selby
Rapsod wrote:
I trace few months ago chinese child bow and send copy to Stephan to write dimension on it but... he didn't do that :? It is 1/3 of adult bow or that was 2/3. :roll:
It's true, I havent provided the measurement. :( The bow is in a sealed glass case in a musem, so it's difficult to get my hands on it.
arsilan
Hi
I wanted to contribute something when I saw x ray films. I could get Computerized Tomography slices from a Turkish war bow . This bow is 120 cm long and birch baked. As you see handle is a different wood and wooden cor is one piece. Kasans(siyahs) was curved from single wood. So it's a third pieces bow unlike the bow which has x rays. we dont know that how percent turkish bow was made 3 pieces and 5 pieces. In Turkey there is no radiologic investigation on this topic till today. But it may be within a few years. You can also see there is no deeply tasin grooves on horn and wood. And horn is extremely thick. I think draw weight must be more then 40 kg.
Rapsod
Sorry Stephen, I understand that bow was your. :oops: I need only one dimesion to draw it in 1:1.
Adam Karpowicz
Arsilan, the majority of bows I have seen had the 3-piece construction. Simple is always better, although there were cracks from bending at the tip/kasan bend on some of the bows.
Adam
Bede
Adam,
You might be surprised to know that there is one Turkish bow in the Grayson collection that has a reverse splice between the tip and the kasan. By that I mean, the tip extended twice its superficial length and there was a deep "V" splice cut into it. The kasan was cut into a wedge to fit in the tip. At least a third of the kasan was used for the splice.
It was the only time I have ever seen this done. It seems inefficient and a lot of work.
arsilan
Hi Bede
can you send a diagram about kasan and tip fit which you mentioned. I couldnt understand exactly. Thanks.
Adam Karpowicz
Bede, I believe these type of things were done to avoid defects in the wood. Possibly the kasan section had knots or bad grain which could be avoided by cutting the outside into the male V splice.
Adam
Bede
Adam,
Your explanation makes sense. There must have been many variations based on dealing with the individual materials. Incidentally, I don't think this was a flight bow. I will check my notes, but I think it was a bow with a curved shape above the string nock.
I have attached a simplified diagram of what I meant.
Samuraiwarrior
Can someone help me out? I'm working on an angular turkish bow. I need help with the thickness of the wooden part of the kasan in various places. And i want to know the thickness/width of the very tip.
As well, what is the thickness and width of the handle area, just general ideas I don't want to replicate an old bow, but I just want some guidelines for my own.
Thanks,
SW
Kviljo
Jano Nagy recently made me aware of this valuable thread, and since I have not seen this before I thought there would be more people who would enjoy it. These scannings are very helpful in understanding the shape of these bows.
I also found it interesting that the turkish bows could have such an high age.
alex27
As I understand these bows are in the museum in Ulm?
Very likely I will be going to Ulm in December. I will pay that museum a visit then to see my first real turkish bows. And take some pictures if they allow it!
alex27
I visited the museum in Ulm yesterday and made some pictures of the bows in this museum
There are 5 hornbows. 2 turkish bows and 2 chinese bows. The 5th bow I can't define
alex27
The more detailed photos can be seen under this link:
Yes, I was glad to see these bows in the museum, first time ever to see real hornbows. They are part of a collection, the 'Weickmann collection.
They are from the 17th century, must be because Christoph Weickmann was born in 1617 and died 1681. He started collecting around 1653.
Has anyone an idea on what type of bow the straight one with the reflexed tips is? I found this a strange bow. The horn is broken on one limb, and on the other limb it has a twist. The tips have a piece of horn spliced in.
Kviljo
Way cool! Thanks a lot for the pictures. They go well along with the X-rays. Also very cool to hear that these bows are very old. I bet he did not collect new bows either... :)
I would guess the weird bow is a re-made bow. The ears seems to have been cut off at the limbs and a new tip V-spliced into the limb. But I'm not sure what type it originally was. Maybe some kind of indo-persian?
Uli
thank you for the pictures !
yes the strange bow may be persian. limb twist is not unusual in old bows, and the break shows that it's probably another victim of reverse stringing.
8)
Uli
PS: if anyone manages to get a bow I can arrange CT/MRI scan (which makes 3-dimensional reconstruction possible).
:wink:
Amarutu
Could this be an Arab Bow? I know its hard to tell from the photography, but it seems to me to have a shorter, and a longer side, which is described for an Arab bow in "Arab Archery." Additionally the mentioned straight limbs with short siyahs for warbows. It makes sense to me - but I just read.
Bede
It does really look like a rebuilt bow. A bow with its current characteristics would match a practice bow used in the Turkish training system.
jkekoni
Bede wrote:
...reverse splice ... It seems inefficient and a lot of work.
I was thinking if there was a material problem. Was it with both of the ears or just one?
Bede
It might have been a correction to a problem that became visible after the core was cut or it might have been an experiment. If my memory is accurate, I think it was both limbs. The glue lines were so thin and the paint had worn away, it was hard to see. We looked at it several times before we were sure.
