First try at no horn asiatic - build along

[jameswoodmot]

I’ve been procrastinating on this one for a while, might as well get on with it!

I’m pretty confident this is not going to be a good bow, or even a bow but I’ve got to get the experience some how.

After seeing styilian Stefanov’s Mongolian bow video years ago I’ve wanted to try it but I’m finding it pretty hard finding much info. Making normal bows there are loads of suggestions about dimensions but with sinew all I have found really is make the bow short.
So, likely outcomes are-
Too long to engage the sinew, rubbish bow
Too short for the wood to be able to handle it, too much set and/ or failure.

Other likely issues I can think of -
Limb alignment
Splice failure
Wood failure due to poor dimension choice
Chasing tiller and wood ending up too thin for the amount of sinew.

Other likely outcomes I can’t think of-

…


Siyahs and handle are beech, natural crooks. Limbs are cherry. I’ve never used Cherry before so this will add more fun to the experiment!

Cherry cut and sanded to a fairly consistent thickness, it’s pretty wobbly but quite clean.
I’ve cut out the handle and siyahs with plenty of  spare room so I can adjust angles.

[jameswoodmot]

I spent a while moving the limbs around on the handle and the siyahs to get an idea of the angles and lengths. The longer piece of cherry is 28” so plenty of spare. I want to thumb shoot it so a 30” draw would be nice.

I cut down the handle and roughed in the spice on the bandsaw, I’ll fettle it later. 

[jameswoodmot]

I decided to go shorter, I’d rather it explode or not make the draw length that I want that be a floppy and slow bow.

I also then re steamed the tip of the limb so I could have the space going round the recurve to keep the overall length shorter and to not loose working limb.

My steaming set up isn’t the prettiest but it’s working and this green cherry just bends so easily.
 

[jameswoodmot]

So this is where I got to today.

The Cherry needs to dry, no point in fitting the spices up when the wood is likely to move. I’m going to give the limbs a heat treatment too which is likely to make them move a bit as well.

The limbs are over sized in width and thickness, I’m not sure what sort of size to take
Them down to. They’re about 1 1/2” wide and 3/8 thick. I think I need to leave as much width in them as I can feasibly but I dunno how much that is. I’m also not sure how close to final tiller they need to be before sinewing. I imaging the thinner they are the more the sinew will be able to pull them into reflex.

[sleek]

Whelp. You have 100% of my attention!

[jameswoodmot]

Glad you’re interested sleek, doesn’t seem to have many views so maybe I should have posted in bows? Anyway, to continue-

I made up a second former, can’t remember the name of them caul? This way I can tweak the curved a bit and also it will be belly out, not belly in as the first former was.

Then I got it mounted under the long burner. I’ve not used this much, I got a better regulator for the propane and a better tap. It maintained its flame much better. Main issue is that any moving air blows the heat away. It gets pretty hot in my shop so I had the fans blowing to keep me cool but it disturbed the flame a lot so I had to turn them off and cook myself as well as the limbs!

I tried oiling the belly’s too to even out the heat. I think it worked but as it was (another) thing I haven’t tried before on a wood I haven’t used before I’m not sure what colour the Cherry should turn after a good amount of roasting.
The biggest issue I had was the oil seeped round into the splice. Gonna have to clean that up pretty good.

After heat treating I have them a bit of a bend and then took another 3mm or so off the thickness.
Of course doing this I’ve taken back some of the heat treatment but I have no reference at all as to how thick the limbs should be.

[jameswoodmot]

Pics

[jameswoodmot]

ne of the biggest take aways so far is that heat treating cherry smells DIVINE. One of the best wood smells I have so far experience.

On boo boo I have realised- I have constructed the handle as i have seen in the past, except my limbs are going to be a good bit wider than a horn bow. This means I’m going to struggle to get the handle width very narrow. I should have made the handle section longer, but I was trying to minimise the overall length and so shortened it all up. We will see how that plays out.

The next day I filed and fettled the splice. Ignore the centre lines they have gone out the window.
I took a bit of material off the inside of the limb side of the splice to try and get rid of the oil residue.


Then I took a hacksaw blade and cut in the grooves. I dont know what that’s called. It went pretty smoothly, in hindsight I would have done better with a coarser saw blade or taking an old scraper and cutting teeth into it. I think hacksaw teeth are a little fine maybe.

Either way it went pretty well, and I was sure to take down the limb side, again to try and get past any oil.

Originally I thought these grooves were supposed to interlock but I think actually they’re just to key the surface good and proper.

[jameswoodmot]

Pics

[jameswoodmot]

I did that to both sides and then glued with normal wood glue. I don’t fancy experimenting with hide glue on this one.

Next I will do some rough shaping on the grip to see where we’re at. Then I’ll mark out my centre line and fit up the siyahs.

[jameswoodmot]

Uploading pics is pretty painful this morning!

As you can see we aren’t quite in line. I am not one for putting in the effort marking things out. I trust my eye and I leave things over sized so I can bring them in to shape and size later. Always best to leave room for error and design change!

As you can see we aren’t quite in line. I am not one for putting in the effort marking things out. I trust my eye and I leave things over sized so I can bring them in to shape and size later. Always best to leave room for error and design change!

[medicinewheel]

Nice project! Lokking foreward to see this one finished.
Hope the cherry wood can stand the compression!

[jameswoodmot]

Nice project! Lokking foreward to see this one finished.
Hope the cherry wood can stand the compression!

I’m hearing a lot of mixed ideas about sinew increasing compression forces and also relieving compression by moving the neutral plane towards the back.
I’m sure it’s not a black and white answer and I suspect it can do both or one or the other depending on its application.

I’m thinking a couple of layers to start and see how I’m feeling