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American bison, horn bow w/sinew(pic update)

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Timo:
Been watching along with Ralph  thread on his sinew, all horn bow and have been intrigued.The current PA mag has an article on American buffalo horn bows by Tom Ressler. After reading it I knew it was time to stick my neck out and make one. I have always wanted to do it, just never really had any ideas as to how to go about it. Tom's recent bit has helped a bunch and he has been tutoring me along the process via emails.

I have taken several pics and kept track of a few things along the way.The bow isn't done yet,so this will get drawn out as the sinew dries, so bear with me.

I'll try to post a few pics and story line every day for those with interest.

The search for horn lead me to a few online sources,I wanted this bow to be a bit longer than most of the plains bows, I found a pair of 16" horns,from an ebayer.

I layed out my template on a piece 2" masking tape,cut it out and transferd it to the horn, then I sprayed it with some white paint,peeled the tape. A good line to follow.

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Timo:
I layed out my core from an osage slat of 1/2" thick,quarter sawn.I was shooting for a 52-54" bow,the horn had the length,if I could get it cut out right.

Cutting found me scratching my head,I tried a dremel first, then settled on a hand held jig saw with a fine cut blade.Just took a few minutes. This it what I came up with.

More later.

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radius:
ok, awesome!

keep it coming

Timo:
While I was cutting the first horn I had some water on the stove and getting up to boil. I then shut it off and put the horn in to set over night. Next evening I brought it back up to boil and left it there for a couple hrs. Then removed the horn to check it,and it was ready. With help from my daughter we managed to get it clamped down and somewhat straightend out. Not as easy as one might think, the horn doesn't want to comform to anything other than what it is used to. I found that I had some thin spots in the horn that would be a problem later. ???



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Timo:
After setting for bout 24hrs, I removed the clamps to check my work....Not bad.

Tom said that 1/4" thick horn would work well and I had some areas that made that thickness,but there were 2 areas through the length of the horn that I knew (after clean up) that they would only be 1/8".Nothing to do but carry on I guess?

Here is a couple pics of the horn right off the form. Second pic shows the thin areas.

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