I’ve wanted to make a horn and sinew composite bow for years and finally set my mind to do it. Recently, I visited Mr. Norm Blaker at his home. He showed me a bow made by Lukas Novotny without the siyas typical of the Asiatic composite bows. Immediately, it struck me as the style that I wanted to attempt. I thumbed through my book collection, and struck gold when I saw the front cover picture of an early print of Jim Hamm’s – Bows & Arrows of the Native Americans. As I am a fan of short bows, I had to attempt the 36-inch, horn and sinew composite bow.
I had water buffalo horns long enough for two 18-inch pieces. I cut and sanded them into strips then glued them using hide glue to a 1/8 x 1 x 36-inch long osage core that I worked out of a quarter split stave. It was a bit disheartening cutting that nice big stave into such a small, thin slat. After letting it dry for a couple of weeks, I sinew backed the osage side with three layers of leg sinew. The bow was coming along very nicely. From the beginning of this project, I swore to myself that I would take my time on this one. It was my first horn/sinew bow and it was going to be special. I waited about a month between sinew layers fighting the constant urges to rush into them sooner.
Finally after the last layer dried, I strung it up with a long (relatively speaking) string to check the tiller. To my surprise, it looked good enough to shorten the string to brace height. In many ways, I was relieved since I really didn’t know how I was going to tiller the bow. I didn’t think that I wanted to scrape the belly. Was I to sand off some sinew from the back? Luckily, I didn’t have to try either. I drew the bow down to 23-inches. I noticed though, that the bow needed to be stiffer in the handle area so, I unstrung her and added a fourth layer of sinew just at the handle area and a bit beyond. That did it. So, I guess that I figured out how to tiller the bow; just ADD sinew where it needed to be stiffer.
Now for the decoration – I wanted some horizontal designs but, knew that I wasn’t much with a paint brush. I also liked the idea of snake skins but, I wanted something different. To me, this was far too special of a bow to settle for common rattlesnake skins. I thought about coral snakes. I began spreading the word that I would give my right leg for a set but, quickly learned that they weren’t too common. Also, they are a very small snake and to get two skins that were a close match and then for both to stretch even an inch wide was going to be tougher. After about another month, a friend in Texas came up with a set. Then, it was time for the hair on the upper limb. Instead of horse hair, I saved a beard from my first wild turkey that I took 3 years ago. The magic in that beard had to be part of it. Here are the final specs: 36-inches long tip-to-tip. 42 lbs at 23-inches of draw.
Topic: Coral snake backed horn bow (Read 721 times)
