Dry vs "seasoned" sinew

[PEARL DRUMS]

Lets discuss the finer points of sinew. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. 3 year old, open air stored sinew is cured before I ever use it.
2. Dry is dry
3. Prove to me with numbers, and not ancient Japanese proverbs why waiting (x) amount of months is crucial.
4. Glue quality maybe?

If a sinewed bow is rock hard and dry after a month or two, why wait six more months? Around here my sinew could dry, rehydrate and dry again in six months with all the humidity changes we get. It can go from 25% to 70% rather quickly totally undoing any drying done in prior months.

So what are your thoughts? Lets not argue, rather share thoughts or even hard numbers. This topic has always interested me and I feel a lot of info is just passed on with no real regard to the "why's".

[Stringman]

I'm interested also...

[4dog]

eondering the same thing   

[Fred Arnold]

I've never thought about it in those terms but would think once it was dry enough to separate that it could be used at any time thereafter.    Am also wondering if it may not be better using it as fresh as possible allowing any further seasoning or curing to be done in it's final resting place.

[Dean Marlow]

Pearl
  Maybe sinew is like a dry stave. What would you rather have. A dry Osage stave or a dry and "Seasoned OSAGE STAVE".

[PEARL DRUMS]

Dry is fine for me Dean. Its all good in my book.

[Onebowonder]

<snip>What would you rather have. A dry Osage stave or a dry and "Seasoned OSAGE STAVE".

Whichever I can get under my drawknife first...

OneBow

[mullet]

When I see that the glue is dry I shoot it. Hide glue takes longer then Tightbond to cure so I let it sit till it is glassy looking and hard.

[PEARL DRUMS]

I've never thought about it in those terms but would think once it was dry enough to separate that it could be used at any time thereafter.    Am also wondering if it may not be better using it as fresh as possible allowing any further seasoning or curing to be done in it's final resting place.

Green sinew would probably rot/mildew on the bow Freddy

[mikekeswick]

The rate at which sinew dries is roughly 1 -2 weeks for a 1mm thick layer. If you allow your sinew to dry for this time between layers and only apply 1mm thick layers then it will be dry pretty quickly. I like to do all my bows like this.
The problem is if the underlying layers aren't left to dry before adding a new layer the drying times rises with the square of the thickness. Or 1mm - 1 week, 2mm - 4 weeks, 3mm - 9 weeks, 4mm - 16 weeks.
Also when you apply a fresh layer to dried sinew then that lowe layer will absorb some of the moisture from the fresh layer which leads to longer drying times than you might think.
As for does leaving it for years and years really help.....has anybody here got the inclination to make a large selection of different sinew backed bows, leave some for the minimum safe drying time and the rest for say 3 years as the old Turkish flight bowyers did........then tiller them all flawlessly and do some rigorous completely unbiased testing?? If not then I guess all we've got is that they did it in the past and logic tells you that they wouldn't have done it if there was no benefit. Bearing in mind that back when the Turkish were making these hornbows en masse the methods used would have been the ones perfected over many hundereds of years.

[PEARL DRUMS]

That's just it Mike. Lots of things done in the past don't hold nearly the water now. Im not arguing any points you've made, just conversing is all.

[Onebowonder]

<snip>If not then I guess all we've got is that they did it in the past and logic tells you that they wouldn't have done it if there was no benefit. Bearing in mind that back when the Turkish were making these hornbows en masse the methods used would have been the ones perfected over many hundereds of years.

Uhmmm... actually logic tells us no such thing.  We could surmise that there may have been some reason for the this practice that was based upon scientific observations and sound engineering, but it certainly does not follow merely from the demands of logic that such was the case.  Any of a thousand explanations might explain the same behavior as well or better than the sound and reasonable engineering theory.  Magic, superstition, tradition, practical demands of mass production, or any number of other ideas could readily have caused the exact same practice.  I mean, it's farfetched, but it could even have been that there was a higher tax rate on finished bows than bows that were in the process of being made.  So perhaps they delayed finishing them till they had a buyer to pay the taxes.

The 7 most powerful words to blockade any kind of progress are "That's the way we've always done it."  Ancient peoples were not less subject to the power of those words than we are today.  In fact, I'd postulate that they were likely far more impeded by their power than are we.

Not all sunken chests have a bottom lined with gold doubloons, ...some just have old dead sailors wet socks in them.  Just because an idea is old and hidden in a veil of mystery, does NOT mean it is the best or better idea.  Logic certainly does not imply such.  Logic only tells us that there was a reason, and perhaps several reasons, but it does not require that the reasons were good ones.

OneBow

[Pat B]

I've only made a few sinewed bows and have given each layer(usually 2 or 3) a month or so to dry(cure, season) so that is all I know personally. I've seen the different processes of some of James Parkers Asiatic horn bows. James gives his bows about a year I believe to cure. You can see the bow's reflex increase until the limb tips pass each other over that time making me think the sinew/hide glue continues to cure. The ancient Chinese gave their horn bows 10 years sometimes but if their bows failed the bowyer suffered. 

[PEARL DRUMS]

Pat I add so much reflex at glue up that none of my bows have ever changed after a few weeks of drying. None have gained any reflex and none of the tillers have changed. I think a lot boils down to proper amounts of hide glue, proper humidity when the job is done and proper amounts of sinew.

[paulsemp]

Always wondered this myself. One thing that I have thought is that people did not have the controlled environment like we do. Their work was probably subjected to the elements more than ours. We have the ability to constantly move air along with regulate temp and humidity. Also they probably had more hours in it than we do with modern tools so the simple/stupid way was to leave it alone. Plus I don't think hard numbers were more important than traditional values in ancient society. I could be totally wrong but that's what I think.