Some interesting ancient Indian bows on youtube

[Bede]

If the two halves were cut out as Stephen suggests, it would be possible to get greater uniformity in the core. There are many old bows that were made this way.

[Zoran Pavlovic]

Does it means that ears aren't spliced if two bow parts are carved from one piece of wood? I can't notice that this bow form has any splice in the siyahs portion, it is pretty difficult to get conclusion only by picture. But this design is very impressive.

[Bede]

Ear splices came quite late in bow development. Most of the early long eared bows were made with integral tips. Usually the bone strips on the sides were enough, but one of Stephen's bows and the Qum Darya bow had shaped pieces glued to the belly of the tip. I think I posted a coloured cross section of it in the original discussion of it.

Here is the drawing again. It was based on Stephen's X-Ray.

[Stephen Selby]

It is true that these early bows display amazing carving skills. I would have ventured that the makers had little faith in the strength of their glue to take the stresses of siyah splices; but then the Saka bows, which originated in the same general area though much earlier, have splices all over the place. Maybe the issue was that a siyah splice is taking heavy stress at just one location, whereas in Saka bows the stresses are more evenly distributed over the limbs. I'm sure Adam would have valuable insights.

[Adam Karpowicz]

Yes, the cores of Saka bows had the stresses distributed between all three vertical laminations with the inner one-piece horn. These bows could get away with all kinds of splices, although the bending section (the deflex) did not seem to have the splice, probably by design for safety.

The back-to-belly cut splices, V or scarf, must have been a great invention at the time. These splices are much stronger than the horizontal splices (cut side-to-side as in the first picture), even when the same glue was used. One should, however, consider the location of the splice as well. The farther away from the bending sections, the less stress on the limb. A splice at the static tip end is very safe and can be left practically exposed with no reinforcement. A splice closer to the inner limb, such as in the Korean bows now or in Indo-Persian bows would break if not sandwitched betw. the horn and sinew.

I think the laminated siyahs (horizontally spliced) only reflect the attempt to buuild up the thickness in the tips as required for stiffness when the core pices were not sufficietly thick there, and are not a deliberate design feature of the bows.

Adam