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Knots in Scythian bow slats

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Tom Dulaney:
Hello,

I am trying to understand the Scythian bows of Xinjiang. They have a very unique construction and this document is a great help in getting a basic understanding of how they are built:

http://www.atarn.org/chinese/Yanghai/Scythian_bow_ATARN.pdf

It is mentioned that the wooden slats used on the bow are split from saplings. In my personal experience it is very difficult to find saplings that don't have knots in them. Do yiu think it wohld be impossible to build a good Scythian bow, if the wooden slats had small pin knots on them?


Thanks for your time.

stuckinthemud:
What a fascinating read.  Thanks for posting that Tom! 

It seems the slats are all quite short, the document states, "most lengths of timber were 15 cm long ..... as tamarisk does not seem to have been available in longer lengths".

Finding 6" lengths of good timber is quite straight-forward, even in really knotty saplings, so, while long lengths of timber seem to have been unavailable to the Scythian bowyers, good quality timber wouldn't have been too hard to come by in the lengths they needed. 

As I understand it, even pin-knots would be a really bad idea in a high-stress design, but I stand to be corrected.

Urufu_Shinjiro:
There's a fellow on the ATARN Facebook group who's really into building these right now, I think he's working on his fourth in the last few months, lol. He goes on FB by the name Jason Beever, perhaps he could answer your question.

Aaron H:
Jason also goes by jwb bows on you tube, he has a few short videos on his Scythian bows.

mikekeswick:
The wood must be flawless.

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