Long time listener, first time caller. I kept googling strange information about bow making, and this place kept popping up. I have been working on a horn bow, after making a couple wooden ones I decided to try my hand at a composite. It's water buffalo and hickory. Why I backed with hickory, I couldn't say. It seemed like a good idea at the time, based on available materials. I had a good quality hickory stave and was reluctant to use bamboo on this, so here we are. I put the core and belly together with liquid hide glue, which I now regret, but I'm not going to reverse course at this point unless it delaminates. I will say this though. I have a lot of faith in my glue-up.
The siyahs are purple heart, walnut, hickory, and paduk. I am thankful that the laminating went as well as it did. I think using 20 clamps helped with this as well. They are still a little blocky and will need some slimming down.
I experimented with some granular hide glue until I figured out the basics. Then learned about gram strength and had to order more. I was experimenting with 192g, but waited to put the siyahs on until the 444g came. It kept turning into gelatin as I was trying to attach it. So after several attempts, I added more water, upped the temp of the glue to 141, then used a head gun on low on the bow tip and siyah. I figure if it pre-heating my coffee mug works, it'll probably work for this. And it was pretty satisfactory.
I let it sit for three days, for paranoia's sake, before taking the clamps off. It's been cold and wet here lately and this far in, I'm being cautious. The siyahs are shorter than I had envisioned, and the angle not as extreme. I'm beginning to think that's probably for the best though, since I'm not really sure how the thing will work out.
Initially I was going to grind the siyah off at the red line, putting a string pad at the green arrow. Now I may be off in my concept of the siyah, but would performance be improved slightly if I kept my rasp to myself and placed the pad at the blue arrow?
And here's a pic of the whole thing today after coming out of the clamps. The handle is hickory, and due to maybe inexperience and wanting to avoid a critical failure, it has a hickory slat on the belly side as well. I have a fair sized hand, but it still feels a little blocky in the back, especially to my thumb. I'm going to have to thin that out, even though it makes me nervous. Then deer backstrap sinew on the limbs, then the handle. And then I will have to grapple with how I want to wrap the thing. I tried birch bark on my mini-mongolian bow and am not really pleased with how it's going. I may have to make a leather sleeve for it.
Any advice is very welcome! Thanks
