What the heck am I going to do with all this SINEW!

[LittleBen]

For some reason I felt like my current box of elk and deer back sinews was dwindeling ... so I picked up some whitetail leg sinews .... What was I thinking .....

 

[Echatham]

send me a few!    

[LittleBen]

Haha we'll see ... maybe you'll get lucky. Anyway, they need to dry some more first I think. The guy who sent them is not a bowyer, so his concept of dry is not that same as mine. My concept of dry requires that I can store pounds of sinews without my fiance telling me it smells like deer season in the closet.

[Osagetree]

NICE HAUL!

[Sam Harper]

Nice.  Over the years, I've accumulated four.

[Bowjunkie]

I have that much, maybe more. I'll use it eventually.

Better to have it when ya need it than need it and not have it.

[LittleBen]

I've been realizing that given how much time sinew backed bows take, even just keeping all the sinew from deer I tag, yields a good portion of what I can use.

[vanillabear?]

[canopyboy]

I'll trade ya: a few sinews for power tool usage!

[LittleBen]

HAHAHA I think thats a fair deal

[halfseminole]

Looks great-I could have used a few sewing up the medicine bag I passed on a few weeks ago.  Been stuck in PT and my wheelchair instead of the woods this time around.

[KellyG]

ooooh I know that would look good on the back of a short yellow stick!

[wakolbinger]

Looks like one horn bow's worth...haha

[John Scifres]

I have to be in the mood to make a sinew bow and that mood doesn't come often.  I have a lifetime's supply in the shop and my family keeps killing deer so I guess I'll just have to live longer  

[Troy D. Breeding]

If you have a dog just don't let it near all that. I made the mistake of answering my phone one day while working up several pieces. Needless to say when I returned I had no sinew.  

[LittleBen]

HAHA Troy I learned that lesson also, fortunately my dog only got to a few strands but I found out because she was caughing and had 6" of sinew strands sticking out of her mouth (pugs are not adapted for eating stringy treats). After pulling the sinew out (weird) I decided not to process sinew on the floor anymore.

John, I'm with you on that ... I've got to be feeling like really punishing myself. My next one will likely be osage,
or maybe yew if I win the lottery or someone with alot of yew decides they need alot of sinew ... both of which seem unlikely.

[scrub-buster]

Nice pile of sinew.  I tried something new this year with sinew.  I cleaned all the slime and skin off of every piece before I dried it.  It took a long time to clean 210 pieces but I think it will be worth it when it comes time to process it.  I noticed after the clean sinew dried it is a clear amber color and any fat that was in it was squeezed to the surface as a liquidy oil and easily wiped off.

[LittleBen]

Thats what I usually do with mine when I harvest it. This stuff I got from a guy who's does the deer processing near a friend's deer camp. I figured step one was getting the sinew. Next year when I stop in there I'm gonna bring the guy a sinew bow and then ask him for more sinew and to get em CLEAN as a whistle first like you mentioned.

[John Scifres]

I've done a bunch of sinew in my life and I am a little confused about what you mean by slime and skin.  I've never really had any slime or skin on mine.  Are you talking about the sheath?

[scrub-buster]

I guess I'm talking about the sheath.  I put them in a bucket of water to clean them off after I remove them from the leg.  After I rinse them several times there is a layer slimy skin on them.  I remove all of that and am left with really clean sinew.