How I do my horn nocks

[african man]

There are many ways to nock a bow and this is the way I do myne at the moment , I'm sure I'll learn new tricks as I go along (feel free to add your method as well)

First off I choose some horns , these were picked up on a hunting expedition by my brother
They are "Blue and black widebeese (gnu) ,I will use the Blue which are the larger



The tips are cut off leaving enough space for drilling and grinding , rather to big than to small. I use the bow to measure


A guide hole is drilled making sure that it stays straight and does not run off to the side. I then use a spade bit that I have ground down as in the picture.




The tips of the bow are then cut off and are ground down to match the angle of the bit , I use a belt sander but it is very unforgiving of mistakes , so a rasp is a safer bet



Once they are fitting as well as you can get them I rub some chalk on the inside of the nock and push it onto the bow , the chalk will mark the high spots that are then removed , one keeps doing this until the nock fits snugly


The nock is then shaped , I do this by grinding the sides and bottom flat and shaping the top. I then take off the edges the some way one would make an arrow. With further grinding one rounds it off



The bottom nock was cut shorter and shaped




The top nock was too straight for my liking so I heated it up and bent it into a better shape



After the shaping was complete I use a knife to scrape off the grinding marks and then use progressivly finer grits of wet and dry sand paper to to finish it off ending with 600 grit. I then polish the nocks on a buffing wheal which then reveals any scratches that were not removed the first time round. I then go back to the wet and dry paper until all scratches are removed



I normally boil the nocks to soften them and force them onto the bow , that makes them conform to the shape of the bow and take up any slack there might be . This is not an excuse for a bad fit in the first place but just a bit extra to help them fit . This time around I used a heat gun to soften them



The inside and tip is roughed up to help the glue bond . Acetone is is then used to clean the tips and inside the nocks . I use epoxy to glue the nocks on and hold them in place with tape while the glue sets



I then clean up the glue and file the groves into the nocks



Hope this helps
Chris 

[african man]

Thanx guys 

Purbeck :- The top drill bit was just to show what I use to grind the " taper hole drill bit thingie" out of
               I cut the end of the bow off so that I can line up the string groves up , because if one were to just grind the tappers on to the end of the bow you would find that the nock to nock dimensions would increase and you're poundage would drop.
I do all of my shaping on a belt sander , a bench grinder is to fast which would burn the horn and cause a terrible stink , and the stone would get gundged up very quickly.

Xris