All fired up

[Kirkll]

Nicely done! Great numbers.   Kirk

[Mad Max]

Amazed at the amount of unstrung reflex and braced preload on these bows and was surprised at the crazy floppiness in the limbs when the bowstring is a bit too long. But as you said raising the BH reduces it. From the videos I’ve watched re these shorty horse bows, that vertical instability seems to be part of their MO to one degree or another. My question is, how durable are these bows? Do you have any thoughts on that or did James Parker talk about that at all? I got the sense from your post that he has made a passel of laminate Asiatic bows. Here are some pics of my recent build sans any finish:

I missed this ?
We did not talk about durability---you want your brace height as low as possible without hitting your wrist -----he has made a good many Horn bow glass replicas and horn bows too-----when I took mine to the Classic he looked at it and said you siyahs need to come up into the limb more or it will be unstable.(pointing more upwards at brace than flatter)  He has over 8,000 bows in his log books and wants to make it to 10,000

[Kirkll]

Wow! 8000 bows in his log book? THAT is a lot of bows. Obviously not a one man band.

These horse bows are very cool….I’d really like to try one of these some day. Right after I finish the Osage self bow I’ve been tinkering with for ten years…. That’s bad….   Kirk

[Mad Max]

Wow! 8000 bows in his log book? THAT is a lot of bows. Obviously not a one man band.

These horse bows are very cool….I’d really like to try one of these some day. Right after I finish the Osage self bow I’ve been tinkering with for ten years…. That’s bad….   Kirk

He works by himself and has been doing it a long time

[Kirkll]

That’s 200 bows per year for 40 years…. Can’t touch that….

[Mad Max]

Some of his bows he has 5 or6 forms and glue’s all of them at the same time

He used to make a lot of boo backed Ipe or Osage bow blank’s, you finish

[Longcruise]

Wow! 8000 bows in his log book? THAT is a lot of bows. Obviously not a one man band.

These horse bows are very cool….I’d really like to try one of these some day. Right after I finish the Osage self bow I’ve been tinkering with for ten years…. That’s bad….   Kirk

Well, at least you can be sure it's dry. 

[onetone]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Max - Appreciate the info about siyahs. Seems like there is a trade off with them, lever action vs dead weight. The stablekore provides enough torsional stability in this bow, but there is still a bit of that longitudinal wobbly limb action. Nothing that bothers me at all, it’s just weird, but I will keep in mind what you mentioned about moving the levers up the limbs for another build. The bow shoots great … including the string, it is 11.45 ounces of badass! What a hoot!

[onetone]

I'm dragging this post back up the ladder because this morning the bow delaminated at the lower fade while I was shooting. I have shot at least 1500 arrows thru it.  It looks like a glue failure to me, maybe a glue starved joint? Never had one of my bows delam before so I am puzzled. 

Right where the delam happened there is an in-curve on the back of the riser and I think that might be the, or part of the cause. That area of the riser is under major tension, particularly at full draw, which is when it went POP and pulled all the lams up out of that hollow spot. No materials failure cept the end of the fade. All the lams stayed intact and glued together.

I'm going to build another bow like this but I want to think it through first. I'd appreciate your ideas on this. What say y'all? 

[Shredd]

Your not puzzled my friend... You know exactly what happened... I see designs similar to this now and then... Where you are totally relying on the glue... Flatten that section out or make it slightly rounded and I believe you will be good to go...

[Mad Max]

Like shredd said.
On the next one flatten the back to match that gap and  remove wood from the belly to get the fade the way you want it.
 Lots of stress on the glass there.

[Mad Max]

Fades are extremely important on these bows, make sure the fades are 1/16" thick at 1" and 1/8" at 2".
The broke fade came after the glass popped up.

[Longcruise]

Fades are extremely important on these bows, make sure the fades are 1/16" thick at 1" and 1/8" at 2".
The broke fade came after the glass popped

X2!

When I zoom in on the fade it looks like it cracked in several places.

[Longcruise]

Gotta add that other than the way it ended, this bow is/was a beauty.  I really like the workmanship on the tips. 

When I looked back at previous pictures and blew them up the taper rate in the fades looks very abrupt.

[Mad Max]

I assume you are talking about his fades, if so delete the photo on the quote you did on my photo.

[Longcruise]

I assume you are talking about his fades, if so delete the photo on the quote you did on my photo.

Well yeah,  it's obvious that yours isn't broken. 😀

Didn't know a photo could be deleted from a quote.   It's out now.  Wouldn't Want anyone to think you are designing broken bows.

[Mad Max]

 

[onetone]

Thanks for the input gents. Gonna rework the design and will post the results here … if y’all get tired of seeing this thread, blame it on Max.   

[Mad Max]

 

[onetone]

Ok back at it. Reworked the contour of the bow form so there aren’t concave lines at the fades on the back of the riser.

Built another bow but with an increased stack thickness cause I wanted more DW, jumping the parallels from 0.06 to 0.07 and the result is something I’ve shelved for the time being. Had it clamped on the tiller board at about half draw and walked out of the shop to get a camera when I heard a crash inside. Found the bar clamp a couple of feet from the wall, bow scale under the tiller board and bow at the other end of the shop. Got a string on it again and the limbs seemed then unbalanced, maybe as a result of throwing the string and the crashing flight across the shop, so I decided to shelve it for a spell and build a more mild mannered bow. With such a short bow the increase in lam thickness was too much I think.  That’s where it is at now.

Will glue up another on Friday. Pics show the redesigned riser blank below the one that delaminated and the flying bow riser below the previous design. To be continued …