Hello all, i am working on an ELB made out of hickory. i want the look of the classic horn nocks but are there any cheaper alternatives? I ahve a hard time paying 20-30 bucks for preshaped nocks when i only paid 1/4 of that for the board i'm making the bow from. would ebony make strong enough nocks if the grain was oriented the right way? has any one else used a horn nock alternative? thanks a lot, Dan.
I have used horn overlay style nocks like a regular long bow, worked fine. You could also use any dense wood or antler as overlays.
I've used whitetail antler on a 45#@29" yew longbow with fast flight string. You'll have some pith in there but it's definitely less expensive than horn. By the way, the $30 for the pair of shaped horn nocks is cheap when you consider I spent over 5 hours shaping, sanding, and polishing my antler nocks.
If I build another yew longbow, I'm definitely going to get those finished horn nocks. I don't have a ton of time and they look great.
Jason
Making horn nocks was the hardest part of the building process on the 95# yew war bow I built. I wouldn't do it for $30 for anyone. d:^)
I have made horn nocks with deer antler and they worked out well. Overlays work also and self nocks work with hardwoods. Pat
Gopher, PM me with your shipping address. I have a pair of Horn nocks from an old broken bow of mine. They've still got some wood glued into them, but I'm sure a man of your caliber could clean 'em out! :D You're welcome to them, if they're any good to you.
I'm just finishing a bow with ebony overlays.
Warning: Do everything possible to "degrease" the ebony or it will resist taking a finish coat. I think I've finally got it whipped but I won't use ebony again in spite of the fact they look good.
Dan, another alternative is to use some type of hardwood instead of horn, my favorite wood to use is snakewood, below is a link showing one finished.
http://groups.msn.com/Horseapplesbowpage/bamboobackkedlongbow.msnw
Bob, next time you use Ebony as overlays, rub a thin coat of super glue over them, it'll fix you up.
JD
thanks for the tip JD :thumbsup:
Nice looking tips JD.
Jason
Now those are cool JD!
BTW that's one whopper of a swamp buck! Don't they have blaze orange Cardinals caps?
If they do Tom let me know:)