First attempt build a long !

[Aaron H]

Nice and flat for sure.  Looking good. 

[BowEd]

Nice work that drum sander does.Wish I had one myself.My friend Grant does an hour away.Horns' looking good bud.A butt joint 2.5" from the tip should work ok.The joint should be dead nuts square with each other and be hardly noticeable.No wrap should be needed either IMHO.It should be hardly working at that area with your length limbs and be very thin.1/16" thin or less really.You can wrap and match it on the other for looks for self security confidence reasons though.

[Stick Bender]

I will make sure every thing is square when I get there I'm going to leave the butt peace long until I get the joint perfect ,yes the drum sander is a real time saver for making all kinds of lams, if I was going to use the belt sander I was going to take the flat board and put 2 aluminum 3/16 flat stock peaces on ether side of the horn like rails put in place with the carpet tape and put painters tape on top of the flat stock and run that upside down on the belt sander and when the sand paper started taking off the tape it would be close to the 3/16 or better kinda a thickness gauge just a thought for some body that has a belt sander or you could develope some talent & due like Ed did...lol  Aarin don't know if there's much to watch just kind of feeling my way threw it here ,Next I'm going to make up a templet of the limb dimentions that Ed sent and lay the horn out I'm going to wait tell I make the core for final cuts on the horn just in case there's any changes !

[Stick Bender]

One thing I'm learning about prepping water buffalow horn is you get far less usable horn then you think in the pic those sets range from 50-75 cm & none of them will give me the 19 1/2 in. I need for this long bow type composite with out butt jointing but would be perfect for Magyar or Turk bow  but the Gemsbok horn has a lot of length compared to the water Buffalo horn  & would be well suited for the long bow type composite , I'm going to use butt jointed water Buffolow horn on this build , but for any body thinking about building one Gemsbok horn would be a cheaper solution too !

[mikekeswick]

Bear in mind that you don't need horns that long anyway. You caould safely end the horns a few inches earlier and simply shape the core to stop any bending in the outer limbs.
Virtually everybodies first composite (after making wood bows) is understrained. 19 inches of horn would make a bow that is capable of being drawn way past 30 inches. There is no need to play it safe with these materials! Also more bend near the handle is a good thing, the limbs are thicker there and have a faster return speed than the thinner outer limbs. Bending closer to the handle (without outer limb bend) gives the tip a longer return path. Longer non bending outer limbs can be lighter (narrower) than bending outer limbs.
Gemsbok is ok horn but you can run into problems with it being too thin after flattening and you need to heat them quite a bit to flatten the concavity across the width. Which is a shame! Just remember you do not need all that length unless making a Manchu bow and have a 36 inch drawlength haha!
After prepping these horns can you see why the Turks used concave/convex horn/cores?
A useful ratio is bow length to potential drawlength. bow length of 48" / 1.6 = 30 inch draw. 

[Stick Bender]

Yep your right after working with these horns you see why the elders did what they did concave/convex etc  & also see why the Magyar bows are popular with the shorter horn I'm attempting a longer one like Ed's bow on this one @ 30 in draw maple core !

[Stick Bender]

Im prepping the exstention horn this morning and was wondering for you guys that have done this before , how many times can you reheat horn with dry heat before making it brittle I make sure Im not exceeding 209 Deg F ? Im not trying to get it perfectly flat just enough to run on the belt sander to get one surface flat ?

[Stick Bender]

Im just trying to pass a long what Im doing as I stumble my way threw the process I always liked it when I was trying to learn something and somebody would post pics so my way might not be the right way, but on a raw horn strip where one side is concave I used the belt sander and fingers to feel the flatness on this hornstrip I dont have a lot of thickness so Im being real carefull not to get to thin but as you can see by the second pic after its off the belt sander even though its hard to feel ,the horn is still a little concave so I did the final flat side finish with a sharp scraper Im glad that I made the quick release jig it really speeds things up because you can quickly change positions for scrapping & eye balling your peace ,this horn strip was just a spare any way because of the laterale bend on the end so it was a good canadate for the exstention and it was also thin !

[Stick Bender]

Still concave

[Stick Bender]

Flat side ready for the drum sander

[Stick Bender]

I ended up finishing all horn peaces I need ,still need to dimension the width & tapper but need to figure out how to make a tapper sled for the drum sander , I  decrowned a hard maple air dried stave earlier but need to make up some 1/8 ply templets from the specs Ed sent and the list goes on I need to processe about 1400 grains of elk sinew,make yellow croaker bladder glue ,make a reflex form , a bending call to match Ed's for the hooks & hit the bike shop for some old iner tubes Etc, If any body has any suggestions please let me know !

[Stick Bender]

Maple core stave

[mikekeswick]

Don't use innertubes. They stop the water escaping and don't have the clamping power when they touch the hot core and horn. Look up the rope and wedge method. Wrapping with the rope and binding tool. Or clamps and a pressure strip.
You can make a taper sled by getting 2 pieces of dead straight wood, figure out the taper you need and then insert a spacer of the desired size inbetween the two pieces of wood, put the whole shebang up against your fence and run through the bandsaw. Simple Or contact a galls bow builder like Big Jims bow company and ask them to send you some precut/ground tapers. The will ask for the taper rate in thousandths per running inch.
Consider what I said earlier about butt joints/horn length/drawlength....

[Stick Bender]

You know Mike I have been fixated with using the drum sander that I never thought about the band saw tapper sled, I kind of wanted to make the sanding sled for future lam type bows to, on this bow Im using smooth on ,hence the rubber bands , also a updated using the doubble back tape the first time I used it a older roll It had worked great I bought a new improved roll and it was much sticker to get off no problem getting it off just a pain to get all the addhesive off , used soap & water  but there is still some residue left I will have to figure out how to clean them before glue up or rescrape they still are thicker then finished dimension !

[bradsmith2010]

looking great,,