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

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welch2:
      Thanks Timo .  I've never seen a horn strip taken from around the horn, sense it crosses the grain. You look like you were careful to lay it out so that the strip is almost completely 90 degrees to the grain . I think it will work (being completely across grain it won't run out anywhere) if you don't split it while straightening the horn, and maybe not use a huge amount of reflex .
      Osage is very heavy ,So I would make the bending parts of the core as thin as you can. How do you plan to straighten the strips ?

Ralph

Timo:
 The core is a straight forward piece of osage,that I glued a small handle on.54" overall length,1 3/8" wide for bout 4" then straight taper to 1/2" tip. I added some deflex in the glue up,then reflexing the tips about 2".Here is a pic of the horn after I had it flattened and ground down for glueing to the core.

Next I'll glue the horn to the core.Stay tuned.

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Pat B:
Looking good so far, Tim. Thanks for the build along. There is a horn bow in my future but when, I can't say. ;D

John K:
Looking great so far, thanks for the build along ! I'll be keeping an eye on this one.
I have a few sets of Buffalo horn i saved from the butcher shop that i would like to try on something like this one day.

John

Timo:
After I got the first horn under my belt, I figured out a few things to do different,always seems that way. Instead of letting the horn set over night in hot water,and then boiling, I went ahead and just boiled it,for bout 4 hrs. It seemed ready,but I had a harder time with it. I think that letting them set over night in the water bath made a good difference.Next one I do I will let them soak.

After both horns were ready, I tillered my core wood. Perty straight forward on this,so I didn't take any pics.I just went with what my eyes told me.Tom says to tiller the core to 20-30 # as the horn and sinew will add a great deal of poundage to the bow.Since these horns were thinner than what he said, I took the wood down to 43# @ 26". Drawing it several times on the tree.

I then clamped her up and used a toothing iron to score the wood and the horn. I cleaned everything well with acetone and got my hide glue ready.

I used a mix of 1 part knox,to 3 parts water,and let it reconstitute before I added it to the heat. When it was ready I then brushed a good coat of glue onto both wood and horn, and let it set for 20 miins.

Here is a couple pics showing the bow /scored and wet with glue.And the same on the horn.

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