44" Turkish Bow Projects

bheggeseth · Post by **bheggeseth** » Tue Dec 15, 2015 11:27 pm

mikekeswick, at 3mm sinew at the sal about how many grams of sinew are you adding? On all of my past bow attempts I have been using from 80 to 100 grams of sinew overall, note the bows all have been around 44" long. I wonder how much more sinew should be used vs better/different placement of the sinew.

mikekeswick · Post by **mikekeswick** » Thu Dec 17, 2015 1:00 pm

I have been using 100 grams or so on each bow. Using 3 layers.
I'm sure 2mm is ok but it's just because of the failure of my cores that i'm going to be using 3mm on my next bows. It could well be the wood that I used and not the sinew thickness at fault at all.
I just put the first layer on a 48 inch Turkish bow. I used 30 grams, which let me build up the edges of the core (sal) flat and then about 1mm thick over full sal extending upto halfway up the kasans. I'll give it a week or so between layers. It a hornbeam core and i'm praying this one stays together!

bheggeseth · Post by **bheggeseth** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 7:22 pm

I have been working on preparing the horn strips and thought I would share some of the tools I use. Probably the most non-traditional but most used tool in my shop is a belt sander, it uses an old craftsman 6x48 belt sander frame which I mounted along with a 1.5 hp motor. I repurposed the tool rest to hold the dust collector feed. For collecting dust I am happy with the dust deputy from Oneida coupled with a large shop vac.

I use a metric micrometer that measures 1 mm per revolution on the dial, this works very well to slide across the horn (or bow) and quickly read the thickness. Finally I have a paper horn template that I can lay on each horn strip to map out how best to use each horn. Sadly not all 9 strips will be free of defects and several will be set aside for bows that will use less horn.