Why were the bone siyahs used?

Sinsigel · Post by **Sinsigel** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:05 am

The question might look toosimple, but......

Numerous archaological findings and contemporary paintings show that bone was frequently used for the siyahs of ancient and medieval bows. Huns, Magyars, Romans, Koreans are some of the people who made such siyahs.

Nonetheless, why were bones used so much for the siyahs, when there was enough wood for longer limbs where (in many cases) sinew and horn were glued?
(Hollow bones might have offered smaller mass for higher efficiency, but it's only my own hasty conjecture.)

Furthermore, as the time passed wood was again used extensively for siyahs rather than bones.

What, then, would have caused the archers of the antiquity to use bones for siyahs, and then resort to wood again?

redhawk · Post by **redhawk** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 9:39 am

I was and I?m thinking a lot about this fact.

I guess bone was used due to its stability. Siyahs are very sensitive parts of a hornbow. To join and to fix them straight is one thing, but to often siyahs go out of the line due to moisture or warmth, cause they are made of living materials. Bone is a very close and stable material and does not twist.
Inside bones are hollow, so you have to use the walls of leg- bones from buffalo to stabilize a siyah.

To stabilize a siyah is more necessary the longer a siyah is.
I guess the Turkish bowyers realized the disadvantages(...weight...)of the long bone-stabilized- siyahs and refined the hornbow- design.

Some more ideas?

Michael

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:47 pm

My thinking is that because the early siyahs were laminated, the construction is unstable and a strong bow would cause the sayahs to split. After the discovery of fish-tail splicing and the resulting stability of the core, bone reenforcing plates were no longer necessary. Indeed, because of the resulting savings of weigh, gradually became obsolete. This is also a function of arrows and arrowheads becoming smaller. Lighter bows were then more suited to shooting lighter arrows a greater distance with greater accuracy. -j-

Sinsigel · Post by **Sinsigel** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 5:44 am

Thank you all for replying.

Mr. Farrell, how were the early siyahs you mentioned laminated?
Were they consisted of several woods or sinew, etc?

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 12:45 pm

Sinsigel; You can find excellent x-ray pictures of a bow from Khotan in the archives of ATARN. Basically the wood core and the horn backing extended entirely through the siyah with the addition of another wood slat to fill out the heigth. This is then covered on the edge by thin bone plates. On other bows there might be additional plates to the nock areas.

I have seen the illustrations of bone reenforcing plates from Korean finds. Could you please tell us about where they were found and their approximate age? Jack. Please feel free to call me Jack.

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:48 am

In the specimens I have examined with bone plates on the siyahs, the wood sihyahs themselves were extremely thin. Actually, they could have not taken any stress, so the fact is that the siyahs were bone, with the wooden core just forming a base for gluing them on.

The bone plates are extremely light but strong and resistant to warping in the extreme changes of humidity and temperature that are found in Central Asia.

jkekoni · Post by **jkekoni** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:30 am

The fact that bone typically has lower rigidity/weigth ratio than wood also support the above theory.
(The bone rigidity is however not directly related to weigth.)