gemsbok horn filled with black locust in progress

[welch2]

here are some of the early stage photos of a bow I've been working on for awhile .I'll take some photos of it as stands now with several layers of sinew ,if anybody is interested.















Ralph

[Pat B]

Ralph, This is gonna be interesting!   Looking forward to your progress.    Pat

[Justin Snyder]

I'm really looking forward to seeing this too.  Have you done anything special to the horn butt joint to stop it from comming apart.  Justin

[welch2]

Thanks Pat and Justin.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this too.  Have you done anything special to the horn butt joint to stop it from comming apart.  Justin

No not really ,I probably should have .I started this bow several years ago and have learned alot from it so far. I ended up protecting the splice by wrapping it with backstrap sinew and hide glue. Here is a picture of the butt joint after glue up.



One of the things I learned from this picture is, hot horn is very soft.

Ralph

[medicinewheel]

hey ralph! - looking foreward for this-one...!
frank

[Harrifer]

Nice work! If the devil had a bow it would look like that. Maybe you should call it your devil bow?

[a finnish native]

I would put more reflex when applying the sinew. this one is interesting.

[Hillbilly]

Ralph, as everyone else said, this is definitely gonna be an interesting project. Looking good so far, keep us updated.

[welch2]

I forgot to take pictures during the early stages of the sinewing.       But basically what I did was ,fill the remaining hollow part of the horn with sinew .After that dried for a few weeks ,I applied the first real layer of sinew ,then wrapped the handle and tips with sinew, let dry for a few months ,repeat...  It's up to sinew layer 6 or 7 now . Still not done . At this point I'm appling sinew in spots ,not layers .to even out the reflex from limb to limb ,,and to tiller.  I'll take some new pictures.

I'll warn you though ,it's not a refined Asian like horn bow ,it's getting uglier all the time .

Ralph

[welch2]

[medicinewheel]

some serious reflex in this-one... 
frank

[Rich Saffold]

Ralph, I like your originality here, and I'm sure the next sequence of photos should be very informative..

Rich

[welch2]

If you look at the picture of the belly side of the horns at the butt joint above, It was a tight fit but I seem to have used horn to close to the base .At the base the horn is thin and not as dense .So while I had the bow strung to check tiller the horn at the joint crushed it self.
      I'm going to try to repair it by cutting out this section on the handle and inserting a bone or ivory piece to bridge the gap.



I should have done that to start with ,but this is one of my first tries at a horn bow. I've finished a few since starting this one.This little bow has been and is a great learning tool for me.   

Ralph

[welch2]

I started working on this bow again .In this picture you can see where I cut out the failed section of horn,and the core beneath it.



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[FVR]

I am very much enjoying this thread.

Looking forward to more pics.