Guide to making hornbows

Sorry! I have some different views. One of my Korean friend, who is a senior member of Korean traditional archery club told me, even in Korean only less then 10% of the archers are capable of hadling the horn bow.
In the end over 90% of them are failed in handling horn bows. I think that also applied on every one of us.
If someone can't handle a horn bow, it is impossible to build one. In my case, there were more then 50 person shown up and want to learn horn bow building. They saw everything and I put 120% effort to teach them. But, they all FAILED. Furthormore, some get really upset and tatally give up the traditional archery.
Why bather to get through this painful and doomed to be failed process. From my view, someone eventually build one or even put them on the market for sale, they just looks like some cheap furnitures.
I see a Chinese archery expert, he never wanted to learn how to build horn bows. And a Korean archery expert, he also not wanted to learn how to build horn bows.....WHY???

Just like the Future Market, 90% of the people in the market doomed to loose money, yet every one jump in think they can make some profit...
Learning and playing the traditional archery is a lot of fun, don't ever let this painful process kill the appetite...

yokhua:

Why do you suppose so many fail?

I visited your website and really enjoyed the videos.

thimosabv ;
Will, I just tell the truth. You and everybody can try, that's no problem about. But you must know the chance to success is slim. Please, do not give up for the traditional archery. There are also many modern laminated bows (horn bow like) you can play with.
As for me, I think I'm very lucky and the God really gives me good blessing and talent. Come to Korea for the festival and everybody are welcom to view my works. I'm proud of it but not over gloat.

yokhua,
All I was asking for was that the various articles here, about building bows be placed in one stickied thread. At present, trying to find a description of particular methods or advice means trawling through almost the entire forum. There have been quite a few bows made and the process explained here. It would be nice to be able to put all that information in one place.
I really do not understand your objection. Are you saying that you believe nobody but a select few should be allowed to make a horn bow? Personally I believe there is nothing wrong in doing something you really want to do, failure is simply part of a learning process. To put it another way, if I were to have a go some time in the future and I fail miserably, it will not stop me enjoying my archery one little bit.

Orda;
Yes! that is exactly what I wish for. enjoy the archery no matter what. Everybody can try to build horn bows, but my point is to let people know that only very very very few can achieve the standared of quality horn bows.(I never said "allow"; God and youself will let you know you are "allowed" or not)
chance is slim, remember it.

Make a hornbow, easy.
All you have to know is why you are using wood, horn, sinew and bone.
And how a design, profile and cross-section co-operates to give the correct bend. And then how to get right horn quality. Harvest sinew and prepare it. Make the glue. Thats what you need.
And then how to make the joint in handle and siyhas. Cut the horn and prepare it for gluing on the wood. Glue on the sinew in a way so it stays on.
Make the parts in correct dimensions for the weight.
So you see, it's easy. You can get to that in few years if you start and study every included part.
And last, you can put on the "look".
But many starts with putting on the look at a piece of lousy material.

Orda Khan wrote:

yokhua,
All I was asking for was that the various articles here, about building bows be placed in one stickied thread. At present, trying to find a description of particular methods or advice means trawling through almost the entire forum. There have been quite a few bows made and the process explained here. It would be nice to be able to put all that information in one place.

Absolutelly right. So little information here to make a hornbow. Okay I can understand that it's tough process but I do not expect you to do all procedure in front of us. I just wanna see some information and get an encouragement. If you really want to expand "traditional archery" you ought to give some these, don't you?

:arrow: (for misunderstanding, I am nearly beginner at English. ) :lol:

Tanakan, your english was very good.

I understand peoples frustration on the subject of hornbows, and yes, it would be so nice to not have to hunt so much for the help.

I would like to ask everyone who is interested in composite making to be patient. It is not that the old timers are holding out on you. This is just like trying to make a violin 500 years after the last one was made. There are so many nuances, subtle differences, and few who are now professionally trained by masters. Bow making has a long history of slow development, change and secrecy, especially secrecy.

Get a copy of Thomas Duvernay's tape documenting Master Korean Bowmaker. Pray that one day a new audio translation will appear. You will have to do some ferreting out of information before starting.

It is too late to make heirloom quality bows. These came about through necessity that is no longer there. But we can experiment and make satisfying reproductions. After trying to study old posts here, ask your questions. Someone will chime in and a discussion will take place.

We are discussing thousands of years of bowmaking advancement. There is no one answer. There is no typical bow. -j-

jack farrell wrote:

There is no one answer. There is no typical bow. -j-

I appreciate there is no typical bow and this is borne out by the various photos of bows posted here. However, I think my request may be getting misunderstood, all I was asking was for the posts covering various techniques that posters have tried be placed in one place via a stickied thread.
I am sure that any first attempt will bring a host of problems as it no doubt did for others.

jack farrell wrote:

Get a copy of Thomas Duvernay's tape documenting Master Korean Bowmaker. Pray that one day a new audio translation will appear. You will have to do some ferreting out of information before starting.

Hehehe, I think that puppy dog has long since become soup. The bowyer got rid of it years ago. It's too bad he doesn't make bows anymore, as the dog he and his wife have now doesn't bark at all. Actually, the bowyer and I were just beginning a new video when he was stricken a few years ago. Still, maybe someday there will be easily accessible technology to cut out unwanted background noise.


T

That is too bad.

I downloaded this video some time ago. There is much that can still be gained from it, even if it is watched without any volume. I am a visual learner though.

My reply to a separate posting on this section:

Very good point. That has been in my mind for a few years.

I would like to see a design and easy-to-follow instructions for a generic 'my first horn bow'. It needs to be a sort of 'Wiki-hornbow', where several people can chip in, but it is just one bow design.

Not sure if we could get everyone to agree on the basic design; but there is a consensus on most of the techniques.

If this is agreed, we can host it here on ATARN.

To Yokhua: You are right. But let people fail. Everyone deserves to have a chance to fail. If some fail and give up, so be it.

Asian hornbow makers are so few, we cannot afford to discourage those who want to try. If one in twenty succeeds, we are already many times better off that now. Maybe God will favour a few more besides you...
S

Thank you. It would be great to have this section in the forum and it is very much appreciated.

They came to me enthusiastic then leave with frustration. I stop teaching people to build horn bows. Finally! I understand. The one who gave it up is me.. I cann't bear to see one more walking out with disappointment.
Now! I'm focusing on the archery itself, teaching people how to shoot using thumb draw, also I have to practice more... The point should be archery itself.. not building them. Am I WRONG ??

Personally I think I am a perfectionist, I know what is and isn't a good shot, and I always want to improve. For me the height of perfection is being able to shoot and make your own bow, not doing what modern archers do and buying skill in the form of fancy equipment.
If it turns out after trying to make my horn bow that I am not good enough yet, I'll just concentrate on shooting for a while then get back to making later when I'm confident.
Really traditional archery all over the world are in the position of the horn bowyers at the moment. Every longbowyer I know is over 55 yrs old, and they are constantly encouraging newcomers to learn to make their own. Sort the chaff from the wheat as they say, people who are good at things are also determined to succeed, give everyone a chance if they want it.

Well, thats my two pence.

cheers
Mike

The last 14 years I?ve teached about 5000 people in traditional bowery.
At my bow-classes there were kids, adults, elders, there were managers, house-wives, techno-archers, punks.......they all want to learn how to make a bow the old way. Most of them made self-bows, some hundreds of them made sinew-backed bows, and about 20 of them want to learn how to make a hornbow. The first years I did my bow-classes, almost every class one bow crashed. But my experience how to teach bowery grew and the last 5 years I can?t remember a broken bow.
1 hornbow is broken cause the guy tries to string it without me and without having had a look at the correct tiller. The other hornbows are more or less well done.

I like to tell other people what I?m doing (especially about trad. bowery) and before I became a fulltime-bowyer I worked as a social-worker with young adults addicted to drugs or with a violent behaviour. I had to teach them nothing than life itself is better than drugs or violence. I would never miss this experience, this time was the best "teacher" I?ve ever met.

I was taught that patience and modesty are the basics for teaching.

At my first bow-classes I wanted to see people finish the class with a super-bow associated with my name. This selfishness and arrogance was the greatest obstacle to overcome.
People just want to learn how to make a bow the traditional way, they are ready for a laborious weekend but there had to be fun too. Many people want to learn traditonal bowery, they do bow-classes voluntarily and they pay for it.
In a bow-class you will find more or less gifted people, sometimes it is really nerving when someone has never worked with a rasp not to talk about a drawknife or an ax. But that?s my job to teach him or her how to handle the tools.

I begun to teach how to make hornbows 3 years ago, when I really had the feeling that I know it by myself. Till then I?ve done 12 hornbows, some broken, some too weak but some good performers.
If someone wants to be taught by me in hornbow-making I want him or her to have experience in traditonal bowery and archery, I tell the people that the whole procedure will need about 50 hours of laborious and nerving work and will at least last more or less one year. And it will be a great experience.

I do a lot of hornbow-making support via phone or email or here in the ATARNeT.
The upcoming May I? ll offer a thread ( called NO FAKE NO) on my website with weekly reports about my daily work, with insights in my workshop...
I really feel obliged to share my knowledge that I finally got from the old great bowyers.

I think it will be a helpful idea to summarize the hornbow-making-postings in the ATARNet, I think it is up to Stephen to organize it. If my help is needed...o.k.

Michael

thimosabv wrote:

That is too bad.

I downloaded this video some time ago. There is much that can still be gained from it, even if it is watched without any volume. I am a visual learner though.

Downloaded? If it's my video, it should not be available for download anywhere, as I never made it available that way.

I found it in 3 minute sections while doing a yahoo search. Also videos of arrow making as well. This was about a year ago.