Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Horn Bows => Topic started by: thegreatwhale on September 04, 2014, 12:26:24 pm
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I perused through searches trying to find if anyone has spiral cut gemsbok horn. I've most often seen them cut in half and then using dry heat, flattened and trimmed down to whatever thickness is desired. Is there a benefit of having two separate pieces for the limbs vs. having one continuous piece? In my mind you could mark a spiral up the horn, for the sake of easy numbers, leaving one inch between the lines spiraled all the way up to the tip or wherever it becomes solid. Then it looks like a cork screw that would only have the natural bend of the horns radius, which I believe would get increasingly smaller the farther up you go. Wouldn't that yield a longer continuous piece of horn? Also, why is it always dry heat bending when it comes to horn and not boiling it? Will boiling it for short periods of time deteriorate it significantly? I am not planning on doing a horn bow for a very very long time, but I was curious about this and figured with the new horn bow section that this would be the place to ask!
-Kegan
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Here is something you may like. I have treys to research this and have not found any other info then whatsin the thread. I've tried to contact this the originator of the thread to no avail. I hope I don't get in trouble with this but is the link http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,13877.0.html
:laugh:
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I was just gonna suggest you look up Timo's post with spiral cut bison horn.
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That was an awesome build! The end result was fantastic without a doubt, I wish Timo was still hanging around here, I definitely want to know if over time the cutting across grain of the horn resulted in a problem or not?
So what about the second question, would there be any benefit of having a single piece of horn that is long enough to do the entire belly of a bow vs. having a piece for each limb?
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I was messaging back and forth with timo a while back asking him about that and although it worked he said he wouldn't do it again I guess it has some deffinate problems, why would you have to spiral cut gemsbock? Joined at the handle is no problem while the spiral cut will create unnecessary work, just my two cents worth
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Its good to know that he wouldn't do it again, although I'm very curious as to what problems resulted from it. Bubby, if you happen to find out what those problems were or if Timo himself comes on to explain what it was I would be very interested with the results and appreciative!
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Horn is usually joined at the handle of these horn bows. It uses a butt joint since it is in compression and sometimes a bone spacer is placed between the two sections of horn. I guess you could join two pieces of horn at mid limb and that too should be a butt joint and I think I'd wrap on either side of this joint.
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It was George Bird Grinell who mentioned the Cheyenne made sheep horn bows in two ways and this was one of them. This was word of mouth from oldtimers and could have been missinterprited. Would love to see somebody try this. I have my doubts without a wood core and cutting through horn like this
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New to posting on the board, but have worked bison horn for my other hobby - muzzleloaders. Bison horn is a bit more "grainy" or coarse than cow or water buffalo horn and on some of my powder horns over time what was glass smooth shows grain once more. That may be a problem with the spiral cut and cutting across the "grain". Over time the horn separates and loses the strength it once had.
In no way am I an expert on horn but that would be my reason for not using bison for a horn bow.
Phil
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it wasn't the fact that it was bison horn, it was the spiral cut, I can't remember the whole pm off the top of my head and it was deleted long ago, i'm personally going to use some bison horn cut in strips and but joined with a wood core
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Bubby, thats what I meant. the spiral cut utilized the weakest orientation of the horn since the grain was violated. I believe the method you describe would use the horn in its strongest orientation.