trying to learn more about holmegaard bows

[animus_divinus]

im interested in making a holmegaard bow soon, and was going to do some 3D design and rendering so i have patterns to work by, but before i can create these, i would like to know if anyone has any accuracte sketches of the holmegaard bow?...

ive seen the top view image of the museum bow, but cant get any side profile detail

[Holten101]

Alot of people ask for this so I have tried to gather whatever info I had in one meaningfull picture:



Note that either the photo or the drawing below is slightly distorted.

Its the best I can do right now...and all critism/corrections are welcome!

Cheers

[animus_divinus]

very useful information, however theres hardly any noticable thickening of the outter limbs to stiffen them to act as levers like on the mollegabet

[animus_divinus]

well.. anyway.. where did these dimensions come from?.. ill re-create this in my 3D cad program and maybe make a printable 2d drawing that y'all can print to scale and use as templates if anyones interested

[Holten101]

Oh really;-)?

Sorry....you are right ofc, people have had a tendency to call lever tipped "Møllegabet" bows for "Holmegård"...I dont belive the Holmegård bow(s...there are two) were anything but straight forward pyramid bows....stiff outer limbs were definatly (imo) not a defining design characteristic of these bows.

One limb do have a shallow shoulder (reportedly the other bow also have a shoulder(s?)...but I have not seen the fragments for my self), but that could be the result of several things.

But keep in mind that the Møllegabet bow is only know from a mid-limb fragment, that had been descarded and secondarily used in a fish-trap ("ruse" in danish) (edit: or was that the Muldbjerg bow?)....the bow could for all we know, have been assymentrical.

Cheers

I have the dimentions from a danish bow building site: http://www.buewesth.dk/stenalderindex.html and http://www.bueogpil.dk/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=9&allpages=1&theme=Printer
The latter will be hard to read....but the dimentions are there!

And picture from http://oldtiden.natmus.dk/udstillingen/jaegerstenalderen/jaegerstenalderens_buer_og_pile/verdens_aeldste_buer/language/u/

It would be more reliable if I had better sources I know:-/

[Holten101]

Hmm...this thread got me searching. There are very few pictures floating around the internet of the danish stoneage bows. I did find this of what is supposedly the Møllegabet bow artefact (doesnt look anything like the drawings I have seen though):


I might find time to visit that museum soon...ill take plenty pictures when I do;-)

Cheers

[Hank]

Here's a pic of one

[jwillis]

This is an interest thread. Thanks to those who posted photos. I find it very interesting that the Holmegaards were pretty much just pyramid bows. Jim

[animus_divinus]

these are definitely interesting links... so apparently the "pyramid bow" was the most common stone age bow it seems, and some people say the shoulders of the holmegaard and mollegabet bows was the ending of a sinew backing that would stretch across the bow from shoulder to shoulder of the limb...

and so far, none of these museum pieces actually show a thickening of the limb.. merely shoulders, but no thicker outter limb that would remain straight except for the mollegabet which someone stated was only a misused fragment

so would could easily take from this thread so far that a proper stone age bow would be a simple pyramid type.. with, or without shoulders and one MIGHT add sinew between the two shoulders and might still be within the limits of an accurate reproduction

[Holten101]

The sinew hypothesis has pretty much been discarded...the archeologist that first describes the bow have very little insight in bow making.

Im certain that the Møllegabet bow that a distinct thickening of the levers....the Holmegård specimens dont.

Cheers

[animus_divinus]

id like to see a photo of the mollegabet fragment

as far as sinew goes.. who knows, that would be the first thing to wear away on an old bow as moisture would cause whatever has been used to glue it on to dissolve and release without much trace

like many people believe these guys lived in caves when in fact they had structure not all that simpler than a medieval hut.. but 9000 years of weather would make the earth materials wash away and the wood to rod

anyway, im almost finished with my rendering of the holmegaard bow according to the dimensions given before, but drawing a spline line between the lengths given results in a bit uneven curvature which could easily be due to weathering, so when im done with drawing one up according to specs given, im going to recreate one to be a little smoother, and scaled up to fit myself and try to make one

[Holten101]

Hi Animus
-Elm doesnt need sinew
-The specs given + sinew would make it whip tillered...its tiller fit the profile well without sinew
-There are no traces of surface treatment (roughing) of the back as would be expected if it was sinewed
-Denmark has very wet weather (even back then)...and there are no caves

Only "reason" to think sinew at all, is the occurrence of shoulders....and as we know now there are plenty reasons a bow can have shoulders....sinew is rarely one of them.

Cheers

[bucksbuoy]

Its said that the mollegabet bow had a draw weight, if my memory serves me, around 20 pounds. This tells me it was probably a child's bow or possibly a prototype.

[animus_divinus]

bucksbuey.. if only a fragment of the mollegabet has been found, how can anyone be sure about any part of it?... ive seen the fragments of the mollegabet bow, and this "stiffening" section of the outter limbs could have just as easilyy been the riser section of the bow... theres no real way to tell the narrower, thicker section was actually outter, non bending limbs or merely just the riser and someone misinterpreted the find... might not be a bad idea to disreguard the commonly perceived mollegabet design until real evidence is found to support the widening limbs

in reguards to all of this.. to be the most typical of a stone age period, a holmegaard, with or without shoulders would be best

i guess if someone wanted to create a holmegaard style, drawing out the narrowing of the riser, and the shoulders leading to the limbs, and then a compound radius curve starting almost straight and leading gently into a point would be simple and accurate

stitching a piece of rawhide over the grip wouldnt be outside of the technological abilities of stone age society, but then neither would the use of hide glue which evidence shows they had at that time

im not sure if nocks are even neccessary, but from some of the fragments it would appear they had atleast a slight nock, which could also suggest they may have

some of these photos show a dark band around the limbs, any idea what these are made of? it could be horn

[animus_divinus]

just took about 5 minutes to create this with my solid modeling CAD software.. its 72 inches long, has the typical holmegaard type riser section, radiused, tapering limbs of consistant thickness... only problem is i only made these limbs 1/2 inch thick, so it would probably be a little light, the holmegaard was about 3/4 inch thick.. so for a black i would start out with a 1 inch limb and tiller it down to what i want from there... i used 2" for limb width, so this bow will scale up to the average height of a modern human (i didnt round the edges on the back yet in the rendering)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4140/5410007930_9b72386c9e_b.jpg