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Turkish learn-along

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MattZA:
Hi all,

I've started playing with a Turkish shaped horn bow build. Not having Adam's book, I've been working with information from various places across the internet and TBB series.

Being limited to very few materials and experience, I'm treating this as a learning curve and an experiment. I'm fully accepting that it may fail due to incorrect materials and mostly my building technique, but as I say, it's a learning curve for my next attempt.

I'm aiming for a Turkish shape bow, pulling anything up to 50# at 29". I've chosen to use vertical bamboo as the core, with Gemsbok horn on the belly. I'm waiting on a butcher I know to finish removing the sinews from three South African antelope. Two wildebeest (slightly smaller than an elk) and a single blesbok (about 25% bigger than a whitetail deer).

I'm sure I've broken every rule in the book so far, but here are a couple of photos. I've made a bit of progress since then, and have the horn glued on the entire belly. Next I'm going to glue my handle onto the back, shape the bow a little bit, and then start preparing the back for sinewing.

If you have any advice or questions please feel free to voice them. I'd very much like to get more discussion going on the building of these magnificent machines.

Matt

MattZA:
Here's a photo of the siyah being glued in. I opted to use Garapa wood. Despite it being a tropical wood, I've found it to bend well enough and to glue very well. It's very stiff, and slightly lighter than Osage.

I hand spliced the Vs, used self-made hide glue (and a little gelatin). There's a bit of a gap at the end, but the belly side of the splice will be covered in horn, and the back side will have a second strip of wood laminated over it to provide enough thickness and enough wood for me to shape the outer limbs.

MattZA:
Here's a quick picture of the core pre horn and sinew.

I'm assuming your first thought is that it's too thin at 3/8". I agree and am going to add a cut-to-shape laminate on the back from the beginning of the kasan.

The handle (white ash) is going to be glued on the back as well.

I'd love the thoughts/ideas of experienced horn bow makers here. Is it doable to build it like this?

MattZA:
The horn is another area I'd like to have a discussion about. Being the first time I used Gemsbok horn, I wasted an awful amount of it, but decided to use what I have. That way if it fails, I can see how and why it failed.

I had to use 3 pieces. The short piece is obviously at the handle, and the same length. The longer pieces have since been glued on and will reach the far end of the kasan by the time I finish feathering them out.

My major concern is width and thickness. There is a very slight taper in width of the strips, and they start about an inch wide. Also, instead of leaving the visible side of the horn in its natural crowned shape, I opted to sand a small flat section across the top of the crown to try and spread the load of force. This means my horn is probably only 3mm thick along the "de-crowned" crown.

Any advice here would be very much appreciated.

bownarra:
Possibly! But I suspect the core will fail. I use that boo in glass bows all the time and have seen how poor the glue joints are sometimes, they also don't use a great glue in the first place as the stuff is only meant to sit on the floor haha.
Good luck with your build.

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