New Turkish 48 inch

[mikekeswick]

Here are a couple of pictures of my latest Turkish hornbow. It's 48 ntn and 55#@28. It's been a long journey learning to make these bows and I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere!

[wizardgoat]

Looks awesome, would love some more pics!
Great to see you posting again 

[mikekeswick]

Cheers Wizardgoat
It's shoots like a dream, I've just started covering in leather, this one will be getting painted and gilded also. It should take about two weeks and then i'll have some more pictures.

[Del the cat]

Great, I gotta get my backside and have a go sometime...
Del

[joachimM]

Well done! Anyone making a horn bow deserves my full respect (for what that's worth  )
Some specs maybe?

[mikekeswick]

Cheers guys.
The core is a five piece with hornbeam riser, hornbeam limbs and ash tips. The horn strips were a funny shape, I had to add a small piece at the ens of the grip on one of the strips and they are only about 3mm thick. 105 grammes of red deer leg sinew. The sinew I've been getting has been too short in an ideal World...I wish we had elk and moose here and not farmed red deer....well you've got to work with what you've got!
Got most of the leather glued last night.

[Marc St Louis]

Glad to see you back Mike. 

Very nice bow

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Incredible! Well done. I'm with JoachimM, composite hornbow makers get mad respect in my book. I'm not very good with my hands so while I like reading about bowyering I'm a little intimidated to give it a try (living in a small apartment with no tools doesn't help either), but I can't imagine making that leap into composite bows...

[Aaron H]

Well done Mike,  I need to try my hand at a horn bow one of these days also

[Parnell]

What wood did you use for the laths/siyahs?  Is it 3 piece?  Is that a steel ring through them?  Interesting.
Looks really beautiful.  Looking forward to seeing your finish.

[bubby]

High level of coolness Mike, can't wait to see her all dressed up for the big dance

[sleek]

I think i am in love.

[mikekeswick]

Thanks guys. You are all too kind!
Leather is fully glued on now. I just dyed the kasan belly piece and the edge strips with ferric chloride and tannic acid. This is so that these pieces are black the whole way through and any scratches etc won't show up like they would if these pieces were just painted.

I tried my hand at gilding yesterday for the first time....quite tricky and a steady hand is a must!

[loon]

I gotta try ferric chloride and tannic acid, I guess. What I have used is iron acetate and tannins from tea.

This is really cool, I wanna make a Turkish horn bow one day. They're screamers

[BowEd]

Very nice Mike.Love watching your work here.Beautiful shape on your bow.I've got one here ready to tiller and one ready for sinew and would like to know or at least see the process of getting the shape you want from the backwards curl you start with.There are those clamp on form things[I forget the name of them] used in  karpo's book that I can't seem to get familiar with.Using mild heat to get them into shape too I'm sure is used.Or maybe a form type jig board to get the shape too.I made my bows according to Jefferey Schmidts way of doing things.Grooving and wrap glueing etc.Got pics if I'm not understood completely.