Main Discussion Area > Horn Bows
My horn bow build-a-long
Mafort:
The horn bow I’m making is kind of a weird one. So hopefully it all works out
DC:
Have you found that a boiled strip takes longer to get stiff again than a dry heated piece? I have one that I boiled and after a couple of days it still seems bendier than the ones I haven't done.
Mafort:
Dry heat plasticizes the cells of the horn which may account for the stiffness. Which I don’t mind too much. I don’t know about boiling. All I know is I had a mother set of horns which I ended up turning into knock reinforcements for arrows and overlays. They boiled for 30 minutes and they were barely straight but it’s probably because of the thickness I had them at.
DC:
Oh that sucks. How do you know they're ruined? Symptoms?
These are a few of the things I've been trying with varying degrees of success. Sometimes there is just no substitute for more clamps. I've avoided more than 10 min boiling and more than 250°f dry heat so hopefully I'm OK. I've got one to the point that I feel I can start running it through my thickness sander. I smoothed/flattened the outside but it's still curved. I'm hoping he thickness sander will work for the inside. Somehow all the write-ups I've found seem to gloss over this part. "Boil for 10 mins and bend straight" hardly covers it. :D
DC:
Another question. I've read that when you heat tiller or heat the horn/core for any reason the horn will try and resume it's original shape. This makes sense. Does that mean that the horn strips have to be oriented so that if/when they do revert they will be adding reflex? This would mean that somehow you would have to mark the horn strip so that you don't lose track of which way is which. As long as you have a bit of the horn base showing you will be OK but if you were to make perfect rectangular strips it could be a problem.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version