advantages of different types of horn bow?

[stuckinthemud]

OK, so in the Autumn, once I've tidied away my next couple of projects, I'm starting a composite crossbow; I've already done a lot of prep work on the horn and read everything I can find. There are two basic types, all horn and sinew like a sheep-horn bow, and, wood/horn/sinew, either as wood-horn-sinew or horn-wood-sinew.  What are the advantages of each approach? As I see it, a horn/wood/sinew composite should be the most efficient and also the most difficult to tiller and the most susceptible to breakage - apparently the wood core was a known weakness and broken and repaired examples are known of.  The wood/horn/sinew bow would not use the horn very effectively but would be easy to tiller and repair. The last hurrah of the composite bow was the horn and sinew bow, short, drawn to tight radius curves and immensely powerful but I have absolutely zero experience of horn/sinew bow other than what I've read on these pages.  Any comments would be very welcome.

[DC]

I've never heard of wood horn sinew but just because I've never heard of it doesn't carry much weight Would you just be making a "conventional" bow or would you have siyahs and lots of reflex? I think you need lots of reflex with horn/sinew. Don't know if that works for a crossbow.

[stuckinthemud]

The earlier ones used reflexed horn nocks but not sijah as such, early ones were longer and lower in power and sometimes heavily reflexed, later bows seem only slightly reflexed or even straight, perhaps because reflexing a 500lb bow only 24 inches long could be an interesting challenge? If you are interested I have a pretty comprehensive pinboard at pinterest   pinterest.co.uk/avenuew/crossbow-project/

[DC]

I'm interested but I don't understand Pinterest. I just seems to be a bunch of pictures that misdirect me when I'm doing searches. I found your site (I think) and it's just pictures that I could have seen by doing a Google images search. I must be missing something.

[stuckinthemud]

Yeah, Pinterest is a photo sharing site that lets you collect images and clip them together on subnjects that interest you

[stuckinthemud]

So, how do horn/sinew bows compare to horn/wood/sinew bows in terms of efficiency and reliability and draw weight?

[DC]

I'm speculating here. If everything is the same, length, thickness, width I think the wood core would win out on performance because the limb would be lighter. Durabilty may be suspect but wooden cored bows have lasted hundreds of years so maybe not. Wooden core may be more complex to make but I don't know that for sure. You may be able to get away with less horn and sinew for the same performance with a wood core.

[bownarra]

Cores breaking is either an incorrect choice of wood to start with. Easy to avoid. Or somebody hasn't used the correct thickness of glue on the sinew/core joint. The core only breaks (sound grain) if the sinew lifts on a patch thus causing the core to feel tension.
Horn bows with no core are prone to all sorts of problems that a well selected and executed core eliminates.

[bassman]

I admire you guys that turn out good horn bows.