30 hours working on a hickory bow -then crack -UPDATE

I have repaired the cracks (I think) with the Loctite 420 glue. The gluing on the rounded surface was kind of tricky and I did it in several steps with a small portion of the surface at a time trying various clamps and clamping methods. Here are two of them:



After that, I sanded the surface by hand with 120-220-320-400 grits of paper. The result is encouraging:



I am waiting until Paul sends me the sinew and I apply it to the back of the bow before I continue the tillering.

I am quite hopeful that this will work.

Thanks for the reminder Frank. I will get the stuff this weekend from my friend.

Thanks Paul.

Also, I would appreciate instructions about how to apply the sinew if your friend can provide some.

You might be interested to know that Native Americans frequently reinforced their bows with sinew and/or rawhide. It's a traditional fix!

Bruce Haugen said:

You might be interested to know that Native Americans frequently reinforced their bows with sinew and/or rawhide. It's a traditional fix!

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Thanks Bruce. I do know that the application of sinew is trafitional. But, it's a tradition that I don't know how to apply ( even though I am 1/8 Cree).

Frank Pellow said:

Thanks Bruce. I do know that the application of sinew is trafitional. But, it's a tradition that I don't know how to apply ( even though I am 1/8 Cree).

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Here ya go: http://bowyersworkshop.com/sinew.html

Actually, there's lot on that site. Enjoy!

I don't have the sinew yet, but I went ahead and after removeing some more
material from the flat side of the bow and, in particular, from the flat side
near the middle, I took the risk and put it back onto a tiller board. So far, I
haven't bent the bow it far, but it has been bent further than when it
cracked.



I don't really know what I am doing, so I have to be very careful.

frank dont know why your rushing this, but the info that bruce gave you is good info and if you have had one oops already i wouldnt chance another without checking out the info and using the materials from paul when they arrive.. so far its still good the next time it may break worse.. from my experience in making a bow which isnt alot but i do know that i have shot many, and yours looks to be to thick in the tips.. but it maybe the style..

Thats good advise Larry and I know I shouldn't be rushing it. But, is was a beautiful day last Sunday and my grandson Ethan and I decided that this was a good omen and that we should give it a try.



That's not much of an excuse, but it is my excuse.

I won't do any more until I get the sinew.

larry merlau said:

frank dont know why your rushing this, but the info that bruce gave you is good info and if you have had one oops already i wouldnt chance another without checking out the info and using the materials from paul when they arrive.. so far its still good the next time it may break worse.. from my experience in making a bow which isnt alot but i do know that i have shot many, and yours looks to be to thick in the tips.. but it maybe the style..

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Agree with Larry. Those tips could be placing the stresses in all the wrong spots.

Frank i can fully understand you getting going on this before the sinew arrives. To use a phrase my father used to say to me when refering to my pocket money .."it burns a hole in your pocket" well this would have done the same to my head too.

Bruce thanks for that link i learnt a great deal. Here i was thinking the sinew was gonna wrap around the wood like i guess i would expect strips of rawhide to work but i realized i had the bull by the udders completely in my understanding of sinew.

So i guess the indigenous people of the past would have done something like boiling the animal hoves to obtain the gelatine mix they sought to be able to use the sinew. We have really lost a lot by having boxes on the shelves of supermarkets and not knowing where or how to come by these things.

I am still puzzled at how the sinew works. Mechanically they look to be short strips which figures given where on an animal it occurrs. But somehow they must mechanically form a single chain when secured in the way they are to the bow in one long line behind each other. I guess these must be overlapping pieces to form a common fibre layer something like homemade fibre glass.

Looking forward to seeing you do it Frank and hearing all about your experience.

A long time ago in Fine Woodworking, there was a great article on the making of hide glue. One of the interesting things was a competition in the plant where it was made to refine the glue to the point (like Knox Gelatin) where it was totally tasteless and then incorporate that into some new food concoction.

The sinew works almost exactly like fiberglass laminations. The idea is to prevent the wood from stretching so much that it forms stress fractures. Hundreds of years ago, the Turks did similar things with buffalo horn and made extremely heavy-draw bows that could shoot arrows close to 1,000 yards, the first "flight" bows. IIRC, the draw weights of these bows were very heavy, more than 150 pounds. It took a better man than me to shoot one.

One of the reasons that both yew and bamboo make such good bows is that they both have a combination of wood cells that resist stretching on one side and cells that resist compression on the other. That's what we're trying to do with laminations.