Here are some pics of my progress on my latest horn bow. I hope it does not explode. It is experimental. It is a test in many ways the strength of a 5 piece bow design using horn and sinew on bamboo core. I’m testing out the modular design of the 5 pieces and if replacement can be made without scraping entire build. We shall see. This bow is constructed with only hide glue or sinew glue specifically. I’ve used sinew wraps instead of my normal polyester thread wraps for serving the glued pieces. In building this bow to this point I’ve already had to replace on of my levers due to a grain concern and was able to just heat it up and remove and replace. I may still more wrapped sinew around the syahs or lever base yet. I double wrapped the handle section. The dimensions of this bow are closer to a tartar size but very loosely based on this type of bow. This one is 55 1/2” long ntn and 57 1/2” ttt. The width is 1.75” at widest part then tapers towards tips. The thickness of the limbs at the thickest points roughly are 1/4” wood core, 1/8” horn plate and 1/8” sinew layer. These also taper in thickness out towards the tips somewhat. Little thicker in Kasan area for added strength here. To replicate a tartar bow would be to use more traditional methods of v splices in assembly and then shaping the wood core with the horn already glued on. I didn’t do that here. I built this one little differently. I had made a jig in the milder c shape I was aiming for and glued the horn slats to 1/2 of the bamboo core. I then glued the other half that was backed with layers of sinew on the other half of bamboo core. Anyway not built traditional. I hesitated in posting this one until it either shoots or explosion but what the heck. This is a platform of learning. We shall see how it goes. Here some pics of my progress. You will notice the handle orientation is different too. I did this so as to more closely follow the way I build my 5 piece bamboo bows. Essentially that’s what this build is for. To see if it can be done this way using the 5 piece bow build method loosely but advantages of sinew and horn. Fingers crossed 🤞.
