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My horn bow build-a-long

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bownarra:
Good on you for attempting a hornbow :) A 100 mile journey starts with a single step....
A bit of advice - you need to make the kasan eye bend less severe/greater radius and your tip bend could do with being tighter. A way to concentrate the tip bend and make sure it is exactly where you want it is to rasp out two curved 'scallops'  from the inside of the lathe, one on either side right where you want the tip bend to be. This method means that there is less wood to resist the compression during bending which equals less chance of raising a splinter on the outside of the bend.

DC:
That was mentioned in Adam's book. What do you do with the "scallop" when you are shaping the back or do you leave the lath thick enough so that the bottom of the scallop is the finished thickness?
Also I got the impression that the radius of the kasan eye varied from war bow to flight bow. As no particular radius was mentioned I just assumed it was an individual choice. I will work on that after I take these trial laths off. A little heat should straighten them some. In order to end up with enough total reflex should I increase the amout of sal bend wgen I decrease the kasan eye bend?

bownarra:
I make my lathes 40mm wide give or take. The scallops are around 25mm long and go into the width of the lathe by around 10mm each side. This leaves around 20mm width to play with when trying to get a straight core. The tip is only around 10mm wide when finished. This centre section is of course left full thickness, ideally 18mm. They are around half of the thickness.
If these cores you have already bent have knots in the them no matter how small they are no good for making a bow.
It is a while since I have rad the section in Adam's book on core shape but I seem to remember he does mention a radius as a starting point. It is easy on the first few bows to end up with a stiff kasan eye that doesn't flex quite enough. Also if the kasan eye is a tighter radius the bow will be quite a bit harder to stabilise and the sals will have a lot more stress on them so it is best to start a little 'relaxed'.
The difference between a flight and war bow is more how the limb tapers and thus where it bends. A war bows thinnest point will be right at the kasan eye causing quite a lot of bending there whereas the flight bows bend closer to the handle. Without getting too deep into the whys and wherefores the warbow is less stressed and able to be kept strung for long periods with little deteriation of performance due to the bend being spread over a longer bending limb. The flight bow however has quicker return speed of the limbs as the bend is predominately closer to the handle.
The sal should be straight and gradually blend into the kasan eye, the kasan is again straight (important) with the tighter tip bend aided by the scallops. Don't worry too much about totally reflex to begin with, as long as the tips are more or less 90 degs to the handle/sal section it will be good.

DC:
Oh, the scallops are on the sides, I missed that, that makes sense. Thank you. My laths are about 35mm so I'll have to go lightly. The laths I have bent are just for testing methods and such. I will work them up to the point of  getting ready to glue on the horn and then I will trash them. They have quite a few knots. They would have made a nice selfbow though. :D I also thought that if I could bend the ones with knots then the good ones should be a cake walk.

DC:
Here is my form by itself. If I round off the eye bend that will shorten or straighten the kasan. The Book says I should keep the kasan straight if I'm reading it right. Should I start from scratch.

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