Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: wizardgoat on March 29, 2017, 01:17:39 am
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This bow has been in the works since Xmas, finally finished it up recently.
Theres 6 Inuit bows in my local museum, this bow is based off 2 in particular.
The originals are said to be made from fir or larch, but depending on location, many other woods and materials, including yew were used.
The originals also use whale sinew, which proved to be very tough to find, so I used cow sinew.
I used a very clean branch for the bow, I decrowned it, focusing on making a nice flat back for the cable.
I tillered the bow out to 35# at 25", and figured I'd touch it up after the cable was installed.
The cable was built over many winter nights, about 40-50 hours all in. Including the bow string, nearly 80', and a bit over 4 oz.
A good amount of the cable is used in the recurve binding though. I used baleen for the recurve stiffeners. Such a cool material,
works like horn, but has "grain" and smells like the sea when worked.
The cable installation took a few times to get it where I was satisfied, it added 4-5# right out the gates.
I soaked and pre-stretched it, so 2 twists and the weight spiked another 8 or 9 #. I shot the bow for a few days, and tightened it one more turn.
I checked the weight 52-53# at 25". The cable is then binded at the grip.
50.5" ntn, 1" wide at the grip, tapers up to 1 1/4" at the recurve, and back down to 1" at the tips
There is bit of a thud on release, but not nearly as bad as I expected. The levers bend a bit, if they didn't I think it would be much worse.
Its a really fun bow to shoot, it creaks and moans like a hollywood movie bow when drawn.
Photos were taken on the Nanaimo river, was a bit of a bleak day and photos didn't turn out awesome,
so I messed with some filters to hopefully improve them.
Cheers guys thanks for looking
(https://s28.postimg.org/j6smsi2v1/IMG_2907.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/r0t8dwanx/IMG_2908.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/w0qolugal/IMG_2909.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/8nsn3c071/IMG_2910.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/4sp90rh19/IMG_2915.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/j6x868s8t/IMG_2963.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/czh8sc73x/IMG_2916.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/ptfalokjh/IMG_2919.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/h9vwnxc71/IMG_2918.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/o2w9k730d/IMG_2920.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/xemwuw4xp/IMG_2964.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
(https://s28.postimg.org/o84m7lzp9/IMG_2965.jpg) (https://postimage.org) (https://postimage.org/)
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Impressive build! Soething youbdon't see often
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What an undertaking! You are truly a wizard.
I have always wondered how much adjustment to draweight could be made with these cable backings. Apparently a lot :o
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That's one cool bow goat. It shows how much time you put into it. Amazing! Cheers- Brendan
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Rad. Experiential archeology of the coolest kind. Have you seen the ones they made out of antler? There is a video floating around youtube documenting inuits making this kind of cable-backed antler bow.
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very nice, have not seen anyone build one in years.
Can you link to pics of the museum bows? Hopefully there might be some southern eskimo style as well? Some examples have been identified as yew, I believe.
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Wow - Too cool ! Bob
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Way cool, very nice for sure. :)
Pappy
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Has my vote for backed BOM. Awesome piece of work.
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Very nice bow always some thing unique from Goat ,nice pics !!
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That's some fine craftsmanship right there. Love the braced profile
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Very nice work. Looks awesome
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Fantastic Wizard just Fantastic. Even your pictures that "don't turn out" are beautiful. Thanks for building and posting such a beautiful bow.
Bjrogg
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Great job. I love the write up, the detail about working baleen, priceless :)
Thanks for sharing.
Del
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Only a wizard could craft such a bow. I'm just wrapping up a month-long unit on the Inuit with my 5th graders. I know they'll get a huge kick out of seeing these pics. Thanks so much for taking the time to do the write up. It's got my vote for BOM as well!
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Well, Wiz, like I said, that is one, cool bow. Just looking at it you can see a lot of hours involved.
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All I can say is WOW
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That's awesome!
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Very nicely done. Caribou sinew would have been a good alternative if you could have found some
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A masterpiece goat, truly outstanding
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This just proves what i tell everyone that asks about building wood bows, PA has the top bow builders around, join up and learn from tge best
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Incredible job bringing history back to life with that bow. All of the hours of hard work paid off with an amazing bow.
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A work of art Wizardgoat.A dedication in a huge amount of time to a replica bow.Investigating and construction.Congratulations!
Great write up about the adjustment of poundage also.
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Incredible, Ryan. You sure nailed that one. Nice, nice, nice.
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You should write a book with a chapter dedicated to this bow. Archery books have been written by guys that don't have near the skill sets that you possess. I would buy it just for the photos alone. Thanks for bringing that piece of history to us.
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I'm pretty sure you could give a seminar on the flemish twist method of string making by now.....lol.On a side note I imagine if a bow like this was used up above the arctic circle in the dead of winter the dry cold air would be a benefit to the sinew stiffening up for better poundage.
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That, for me, is one of the best bows I've seen over the years on the site. So good. It screams focus and commitment to the project.
Outstanding bow.
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Impressive...labor of love right there.
I had a guy offer to sell me baleen a few years ago. What little I knew about it was that it might not be legal in all instances, so I said no. Always wondered it I missed out. Heck, I wouldnt have even known if it baleen having never seen it.
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Very cool bow, Goat. I don't think I've seen a modern made one before, only in museums.
The dreary day made for fantastic pics. No shadows to compete with.
Very well done!
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Yea I like the pics too. Very cool. I picture an elk slowly looking toward that creaking noise as I (I mean you) draw down on him.
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You outdid yourself with that one Goat! That is incredible.
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wow very nice,,, congrats :BB
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WOW.. Very cool bow.. Incredible workmanship
Thanks Leroy
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Dang, dude nice job!
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Thanks everyone, this bow taught me alot and is for sure a milestone for me personally.
Limbit- I have seen the spliced antler bow vid you speak of, of the bows in the local museum is a well known short spliced antler bow.
Its around 32", the core is made up of 3 or 4 pieces of antler, it looks like a thin backing of something, baleen maybe? With a sinew cable as well,
Beadman - Making sinew strings is something I've gotten pretty quick at, so its not as tedious as it once was. I actually find it pretty enjoyable and satisfying now.
RPS3 - From what Ive been told, its not illegal to have baleen if it has been cut up for craft purposes, or something like that.
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Awesome Ryan, I have been waiting for you to post this one! Turned out incredible, you have outdone yourself with this one. (A)
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80 feet of sinew cable!!!
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Wow sir, you continue to amaze. That's a lot of hard work and craftsmanship right there
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That is an amazing undertaking and great end result. You take it to another level Wizard.
Thanks for posting it.
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Great work goat
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Well done Ryan.
Great persistence to see that one through. I am thoroughly impressed
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Very nice Goat! I really dig these old bows, nice work twisting up that sinew. Excellent craftsmanship!
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Goat...Yes flemish twisting up cordage can go along at a decent pace.I can remember making stinging nettle cordage at night after letting the dogs loose years ago.Making 8 to 10 foot at a time.Tough stuff.
I'm sure making enough was the key to your bow.All out of cows is the impressive part.
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Now thats what I call making a commitment to a project, I think I would have called it quits about 6 hrs into the sinew cable making step. ;)
Incredible bow Ryan and to have it come out so perfect on your first attempt shows your top of the heap skills. Will you be starting another soon? :D
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Amazing persistence! All that and little kid cruising around! Beautiful bow and superb dedication!
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beautiful and unusual bow, excellent craftmandship and work, great landscape and pictures (A) :OK :OK :OK
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Finally someone went all in to replicate one of these bows. This is the first I have seen made with real sinew. You took no shortcuts. Awesome replica!
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WIZ!!!! I'm so glad you did this! I have actually been mulling about these bows for YEARS. I have spent hours trying to determine proportions from the photographs (if you Google up "inuit bows" and hit the images search, these are some of the first pics to come up, but there are only 6 or 7 pictures there). This is one of only a few designs I really don't feel I understand. I get how cables work and splices, etc...but this one I do not understand how they work exactly or why they did some of the things they did. I hope you can help me out! :D :D
"There's 6 Inuit bows in my local museum, this bow is based off 2 in particular." These are the famous ones, and there are, like, two images of Inuit man drawing one, and another of two men side by side, drawing the bows.
"The originals are said to be made from fir or larch, but depending on location, many other woods and materials, including yew were used." THIS is where it breaks down right away for me. The middle sections look pre-deflexed of course (a good way to relieve strain on an inferior wood like fir), and seems to bend some both when braced and when bent. BUT, as near as I can figure from the photos, the wood is quite thick, fairly narrow, and doesn't seem to taper much in either thickness or width. Honestly, it LOOKS too thick to bend much at all without breaking (cable notwithstanding). It's so hard to see anything in the pictures..... the full draw pics the bow is heavily canted, for instance.
So, in YEW, it seems like that bow can do anything it wants, bend wherever, etc....but in fir, larch, or even birch, it seems too stiff to pull and/or too thick to survive.
!!!!UNLESS!!!! those weird recurves do most of the bending and the middle bends almost not at all, either by hinging at the splice, or by a combination of bending and flexing/hinging at the angle. So, are they one piece, or spliced on?
So, which is it? In yours it seems apparent that the outer limbs taper in thickness. Do they also bend heavily at the angle? I can see the middle flexing well in yours, and it just seems like too much for fir or larch to take.
"The originals also use whale sinew, which proved to be very tough to find, so I used cow sinew." You twisted up a heck of a lot of sinew one way or the other, and did a beautiful job of it.....
" I used baleen for the recurve stiffeners. Such a cool material, works like horn, but has "grain"....." Are these stiffeners? Are they glued down? Or are they more of a bridge to raise the cable? OR....are they designed to stiffen the recurve angle..... but ONLY after they have flexed a certain amount? I recently patched a bow having a "previously undisclosed" bug hole on the back by making a "rocking chair" curved oval out of ipe, 1/16" thick and 2.5" long, which I clamped straight on the back and bound down with fine linen cord. So far it has held for dozens of full draw shots. It doesn't seem like it should help as much as it does.
"The levers bend a bit, if they didn't I think it would be much worse." do the limb tips bend or the angle flex?
"Its a really fun bow to shoot, it creaks and moans like a hollywood movie bow when drawn." Completely awesome.
Last question. It seems to me that the recurved/deflex tips must serve some very specific purpose related to the cable. They were obviously made with care and occur on multiple bows. Deflexing the middle section to relieve strain I get (Karpowitzs low-stack design in the TBB's.) Adding NON-deflexed outer limbs to gain length I get. Recurving the outer limbs to gain braced string tension, thus improving F/D curve, I get. Making recurve angles that flex, I get. Raising, but binding down the cable IN and AT the recurve angle, I get. I get cables in general pretty well. I get either of two ways the baleen could be working in the angles. And I get how the bow needs to flex some wherever it can, but proportionally LESS in the middle as draw progresses.......but why did they deflex the tips????
Does that force the cable to work differently in the later draw? Does it force more flex in the angle and outer limbs later in the draw? Does the cable settle against them as the string angle increases, winding onto the outer limbs like a pulley, almost like Baker theorized the Penobscot bow might have worked in the TBB? If so, what purpose could that have served? What would be so different about the bow if they were straight, sitting parallel to the string at brace? (Like some examples sitting next to this type in displays).
You are obviously Da MAN! having made this bow, and I'd appreciate any filling in of my knowledge gaps you can do.
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Similar bows on display....
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and....
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finally....some of my favorites, the most adorable bow I have ever seen....
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That is so cool wizardgoat. I actually really like the pics. Some bows make me want to be a better bowyer, some make me want to quit. This one just awes me. Well done.
g.
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Amazing work WG!
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cheers guys thanks again.
Springbuck - the first 6 bows in the photo you posted are the same 6 bows at the UBC museum. I posted this topic a while back
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=52997.0
I will try to address some of your questions as best as I can. I went to the museum again recently to take some close up photos and to "ballpark" some dimensions.
Side note, I spoke with a curator who said I could set up private viewing times for any of the bows they have :D , so i'll for sure be doing that in the future.
"The originals are said to be made from fir or larch, but depending on location, many other woods and materials, including yew were used." THIS is where it breaks down right away for me. The middle sections look pre-deflexed of course (a good way to relieve strain on an inferior wood like fir), and seems to bend some both when braced and when bent. BUT, as near as I can figure from the photos, the wood is quite thick, fairly narrow, and doesn't seem to taper much in either thickness or width. Honestly, it LOOKS too thick to bend much at all without breaking (cable notwithstanding). It's so hard to see anything in the pictures..... the full draw pics the bow is heavily canted, for instance."
Its hard to tell even looking at them a foot away through glass, if they taper much at all in thickness. Similar to some RDs, the limbs really don't travel too far to get braced, but at least on my bow, there is plenty of early string tension. The recurved areas are the widest part of the 4 bows of this style, and they narrow at the handle. The deflexed areas I'm sure did the bulk of the bending on these bows. Why not just leave these areas a little thicker?, I figured probably because they are meant to work a little bit.
"So, in YEW, it seems like that bow can do anything it wants, bend wherever, etc....but in fir, larch, or even birch, it seems too stiff to pull and/or too thick to survive.
!!!!UNLESS!!!! those weird recurves do most of the bending and the middle bends almost not at all, either by hinging at the splice, or by a combination of bending and flexing/hinging at the angle. So, are they one piece, or spliced on?
So, which is it? In yours it seems apparent that the outer limbs taper in thickness. Do they also bend heavily at the angle? I can see the middle flexing well in yours, and it just seems like too much for fir or larch to take.
Using yew, I probably didn't need to add so much deflex, but I really wanted to stay true to the profile. They needed to add it because they were using inferior wood for the most part no doubt. Its very hard to see if the levers are spliced on the originals, but my bow is obviously one piece. Id like to get some accurate measurements of the originals, to get a better picture of how they may of bent. I tried to get mine close, then went with what I felt was right for the bow. I will share some close up pics I took of the levers on the originals.
" I used baleen for the recurve stiffeners. Such a cool material, works like horn, but has "grain"....." Are these stiffeners? Are they glued down? Or are they more of a bridge to raise the cable? OR....are they designed to stiffen the recurve angle..... but ONLY after they have flexed a certain amount? I recently patched a bow having a "previously undisclosed" bug hole on the back by making a "rocking chair" curved oval out of ipe, 1/16" thick and 2.5" long, which I clamped straight on the back and bound down with fine linen cord. So far it has held for dozens of full draw shots. It doesn't seem like it should help as much as it does.
The originals use wood stiffeners, or bridges, what ever you want to call them. Baleen was used for this purpose in other areas, and really, I just needed an excuse to try the material out. They sit on top of a piece of thin deer hide, just loose, but binded all together. The originals have some kind of hide under the stiffeners, and all the way to the tips. Are they essential? I'm not sure, I suppose I could check to see if theres any change in draw weight with and without them. All the originals use them so I did. I believe they are there to stiffen the recurve area, but still allow them to bend and hold their shape.
"The levers bend a bit, if they didn't I think it would be much worse." do the limb tips bend or the angle flex?
Its hard to tell, I think they bend just slightly.
If the tips were not deflexed, the string would contact the levers at brace, like the smallest bow of the 6.
If things are not perfectly lined up you could run into stability issues, or even the string reversing the bow when shot like some horn bows.
Thats the only real reason I can think of, it adds some stability at brace.
Or maybe it was a style thing.
I have not plotted the bow on a FD chart, but it feels much like an RD to start. Smooth out to around 22, 23", then stacks a bit near the end, but its also a pretty short bow.
I hope others try to build these bows, I'd love to get some other brains on it.
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Using yew, I probably didn't need to add so much deflex, but I really wanted to stay true to the profile. They needed to add it because they were using inferior wood for the most part no doubt.
When the wood of the bow is entirely in compression and the tension requirements are handled by the sinew cable, the thicknesses may seem out of place compared to conventional designs. Bows of this type were reported to be "very powerful" and that "a stone headed arrow was often driven by one of these bows wholly through a polar bear."
Its very hard to see if the levers are spliced on the originals, but my bow is obviously one piece.
Parry gives the length of one of their best bows, made from a single piece of fir, as 4' 8". " a bow of one piece is, however, very rare; they generally consist of from two to five pieces of bone of unequal lengths, fastened together by rivets and treenails." he reported from his second voyage.
John Murdoch of the Smithsonian wrote quite a bit about the different types , and reported the use of "soft coniferous woods", antler, and driftwood being used also
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Thanks, Wizard, that helps a little. Your work was really fantastic here.
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Goat, my students were blown away by this one. Figured I'd let you know while the thread is still hot. You posted it on the last day of their Inuit unit and it made for the perfect end to a month of learning. :OK
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Springbuck- even after making one there's still some unanswered questions for me too. They are a bit of a mystery. I'm not much into the numbers side of bow making, so some things I don't really care to pursue.
Upstate - that is very cool! Thanks for showing my work to your class. :D