Full Recipe for an Alternate Composite Bow

[Jdailey1991]

Back home, the recipe for the composite bow is as follows:

• Horn (usually water buffalo, gemsbok, oryx and ibex)
• Wood (usually mulberry and spruce because bamboo is a GRASS, not a woody plant)
• Sinew (usually from the hindquarters of wild deer or domestic hooved mammals)
• Glue (usually hide glue or gas bladders from fish)

In this alternate Earth, the recipe for the composite bow is as follows:

• Either rhino horn or deer antler
• Bamboo
• Ivory
• Heartwood
• Yew sapwood
• Deer, camel or bison leather
• Sinew from the hindquarters of deer, camel or bison
• Horse glue

So with this recipe, how would the alternate composite bow compare with ours? More powerful? Less powerful? Or as powerful? Would the materials even stick well together?

 

[pmmg]

Uhh...I have no strong opinion or knowledge of this. I suspect it would be mostly the same, or whatever extra power it could produce would not significantly make it a better or worse bow. However, I hesitate, cause I can only guess at the materials and how they would work with each other. I think the question I might ask is, as these materials are all available today, why has nobody else put together a bow of this type using them? and that would lead me to think they end up being less than ideal for this role.

Some questions I would need answered though, is a rhino more brittle or possess some quality that a water buffalo horn does not? If so, it might not be a good material for this. I know they make longbows our of Yew, but I am not sure if they make Composite bows with it. That might be because yew is not a good material unless it is of a certain length, or perhaps it cannot be significantly improved by adding other composite materials over just using Yew all the way through.

I suspect however, that unless you have people who construct Bows reading your story, none of the readers will know either, so...I don't think there is any danger of using this.

 

[elemtilas]

In this alternate Earth, the recipe for the composite bow is as follows:

• Either rhino horn or deer antler
• Bamboo
• Ivory
• Heartwood
• Yew sapwood
• Deer, camel or bison leather
• Sinew from the hindquarters of deer, camel or bison
• Horse glue

So with this recipe, how would the alternate composite bow compare with ours? More powerful? Less powerful? Or as powerful? Would the materials even stick well together?

I'm surprised you didn't throw some bone into the mix!

Antler is a check! (You can look on Youtube for making a bow from caribou antler.)
Bamboo of course is a check! Bows have been made of bamboo for ages.
Wood, leather, sinew and glue have all gone into bowsmithing.

Ivory in (non-musical) bows I can't find reference to except as decorative work. Ivory is basically a tooth --- hard and brittle and doesn't lend itself to being cut into thin laths the way bone can. And of course it breaks easily.

A caveat with bone: fresh bone is somewhat flexible. Bone was designed to serve as a stiff and relatively unyielding framework. It doesn't like being bent a whole lot and will fracture relatively easily. Once bone dries out, it's just about as brittle as you could want a substance to be. I'm not sure how long a bow made with bone would last.

Another material you might consider is baleen --- very much like horn.

I've seen references to bows made with rhinoceros horn.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Don't know a lot about bows, but the only difference between the two bows you've mentioned seems to be the ivory as the stock (do bows have stocks?) and the type of wood used for the flexing part. Now using ivory as the rigid part isn't really an issue as you can cope with the issue simply by redesigning parts so they're heavier and have broader surface areas. The wood for the flex seems fine if you use yew at least. Yew was traditionally used in the making of the English long bow so should be up to the task. And the real flex / recoil comes from the sinew which is the same in both recipes.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[La Volpe]

From what I can remember of composite bows, the general idea is that you have wood in the middle like a regular bow, then sinew on the back of the bow to resist stretching, and bone/horn on the belly to resist compression. And then that will deliver a larger draw-strength than a normal wooden bow of the same size.

So I suspect the result of differences would be to compare the ability of each recipe's belly-side material to resist compression, and the ability of each back-side material to resist stretching, and that will give you an idea of which would store more energy.

I'm not at all sure about this, but something in the recesses of my mind seem to suggest that bamboo is not a good material for a bow (maybe it'll work on the belly side, I don't know).

 

[TinyHippo]

If you have the strength, yew is probably one of the best materials for bows. Back in the day, the english folks experimented with yew longbows which could reach had draws up to 180 pounds.
Nope. Not bullshit.
Warbow, Joe Gibbs, English Warbow Society, 170lb Mary Rose type, Italian self yew. - YouTube

 

[Jdailey1991]

That was a longbow, not a composite.

 

[TinyHippo]

You can use the same kind of woods for either one. But since you wish to be so difficult
Here: yew composite cores...pics in Archery - Composite Bows Forum