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Asiatic Composite Build-Along
DCM:
That's a perty dog gone aggressive projek Lennie. Looks like you got it by the short hairs too. Darn thing bends good. Need to stock up on greens afore the killin' frost comes, so you can draw the darn thing. The grain pattern in that walnut has got me spooked boy. Seems like you'd want the grain running along the lenght. But then what do I know.
tom sawyer:
The grain runs parallel in the joint area. I thought that was most important. The rest of it is stiff so my thought was that it would hold up. The angle isn't that aggressive either. But like I said, I'm contemplating bolstering the siyahs with thin side plates of some sort, lashed on with sinew. Might have to get a rack of spare ribs just to get some sideplates. Wonder if sauce will mess up sinew? That'd be better for strength, high protein.
I think they normally heatbend the siyahs, or glue them together from pieces that have the grain running lengthwise, instead of just cutting them out. Hey its a first attempt, I never figured it'd get this far. I keep waiting for it to blow, gotta find the ol' football helmet.
Now I gotta get started on a Fu Manchu to get in the spirit of things.
Roger:
Dang Lennie...that looks great so far! Looks like a fun one to do. I've got some real nice Mulberry...might just have to give one of those a go soon.
Great job bud! hope the horn holds for ya.
Sparky
tom sawyer:
Thanks Sparky. They used mulberry a lot for siyahs. I'm sure it would make a good core as well, being fairly light.
Heres the update for this evening. Its mostly good news.
I managed to make a string that didn't break when I tried to string this bow. It is 14 strands of dacron, simply doubled over on each end and tied with an overhand knot to form the loops. I strung the bow using a stringer, that seemed to work pretty well. I needed the leverage, this thing is a bit of a beast.
I have posted a few more pics in the link above, one is the bow braced, one is the bow's side profile just after unstringing, and one is the bow partially drawn on a tiller stick. I don't have a tiller tree rigged up and nobody else was home to photograph as I pulled the bow.
As you can see I have one limb that is somewhat stronger than the other. I am seeking suggestions on how to even these up. I've scraped a bit on the horn on the stiff limb. I may also add another thin layer of sinew on the weaker limb. Although this remedy will increase the poundage a bit I suppose, not really what I am wanting. You can see in the just-unstrung pic, that the weaker limb is showing a bit more set than the strong limb. It seems fairly even, which is a good sign. I was worried that more of it was showing up on the outer end of the horn, where I butted a piece of wood to it to bolster the inner part of the siyah.
I measured the poundage on this bow with my bow scale. I managed to pull it all the way to 28" (back of handle) and measured close to 80lb. This was with the scale hanging from a nail, and me pulling down on the handle with all my might/weight. I shot a few arrows out of it but I can't pull it to full draw. Shot very strong and no hand shock but that is expected when pulling a bow only 20" or so. Hey Thimo, road trip on over here and pull this sucker to full draw will ya?
I did see a few small cracks in one area of horn on the stronger limb. It is in the smaller of the two pieces spliced along that limb. It doesn't look very bad but I will keep and eye on it. The cracks run parallel to the limb, not across, so it doesn't look like compression fracture. Might just be the horn drying or something, that is the piece of horn from the outer third of the length and some of it was solid.
The weaker of the two limbs, needs to be wrapped out by the end of the horn. I got the piece of belly wood just outside the horn, just a little thin on that side. I want to shore it up, although I need to decide about adding sinew to the back before I do my wrap.
If you have read all of this boring narrative, congratulations you are officially bored stiff.
Roger:
Lennie,
I've heard about guys scraping the horn to reduce weight. I guess you could always reduce limb width if ya have it to give. Have you sanded your sinew in prep for the leather covering. If your going to do that maybe you could give that a try as well. Maybe a little more sanding on the stronger limb. I am watching your progress with intrest.
Sparky
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