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

[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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[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.

[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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[Timo]

After 20 mins the glue is perty much dry to the touch.I then applied another wet coat of warm glue and let it set for 3 mins,then applied the horn to the wood. You can see my clamping system on this one.I get these big rubber bands from an application of my work.I have lots of them so I figured they would make a good clamp.They did ok for the most part, but I think next time I will just use clamps,As I had a couple spots that showed a glueing error.(my bad).

I left it over night and most of the next day before I removed the clamps. Here is a few pics of how the clamps worked out and what the bow looked like after I removed it. Sorry the last pic is out of focus.

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[Timo]

As I said,I had a couple spots that bothered me,so I heated up some glue and thinned it down a good bit,took a syringe and shot some in the bad spots,then used the heat gun to liquify it.I then clamped it back and watched it squeeze out, so then I knew I had some glue in there.

After a couple days I cleaned up the edges of the horn and worked out the tiller.

I have a good friend in Iowa,"John Stutevant" who makes probly the best bbo and horn(gemsbock) bellied bows I have ever seen. He has kept records over the years of how much weight the horn adds to a bow. His record read that app 1/8" horn adds 5-10#,I was hoping for 10# , but after I got the tiller like I wanted, It weighed in 48# only gaining app 5#. The sinew will add quite a bit so hoping to get at least a 55# bow from this deal.

Heres a couple more pics of the belly showing the horn,and the profile I have, ready for sinew.

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[Pat B]

Very cool, Tim.

[radius]

Did you taper the horn at the fades?

[Timo]

Thanks Pat.

Radius, I glue it on full thickness and then filed it into the fade,so yes I guess it would be tapered.

True horn bows had the horn running into the handle and meeting,sometimes haveing a horn splice under the handle.