rojaros
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Making Horn Risha
Hi Oud Players,
I wanted to share with you my recent experience with making a Risha from a cow horn.
I got a decent horn from ebay shop called
Alicia's Wonderland Afrika-Massai
They sell it as drinking vessels as a charity fund rasing for the massai. It was not so expensive.
Here the picture of the horn before it was cut.
The advantage was that it was already worked on, so it was not so terribly thick and it was clean and easy to work on and to sandpaper.
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rojaros
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Making Horn Risha
Then I cut the pointed side off, so the remaning piece can yield several pices suitable for rishas.
Than I sawed it along at a suitable place to get a nice raw stripe of horn.
This was the raw piece to work on.
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rojaros
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Making Horn Risha
Here is the horn with the cut out stripe and here is the raw horn stripe. It is slightly longer than the Pyramid celluloid rishas
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rojaros
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Making Horn Risha
the picture of the stripe
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rojaros
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Making Horn Risha
And finally here is the (almost ready) risha:
It's not yet soaked in oil as it is sometimes advised, but already it plays really nice.
It has a more focused sound than any other risha I have, though other factors of course are the form and thickness.
But the way how this material responds elastically is kind of different from other materials I know!
good luck if you do it for yourself - it's not a big work and well worth it!
BTW: the natural curvature of the cow's horn is quite nice for a relaxed holding the risha - so I found...
best wishes
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patheslip
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Lovely project. Good luck playing with it.
Just a thought. I know the Masai look after their animals well, but could there be a risk of exotic disease, perhaps by breathing in the dust?
I know nothing about this, I'm just wondering.
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patheslip
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I've got a couple of young cherry trees (Prunus avium) I need to clear. I understand some people make picks out of cherry bark. Does anyone know
anything about this and if it would do for an oud?
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rojaros
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BTW has anybody a tip how to soak the hornn with oil and with what oil?
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Jameel
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Nice pics. Thanks for sharing this.
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Dr. Oud
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| Quote: | Originally posted by rojaros
BTW has anybody a tip how to soak the hornn with oil and with what oil? |
I've used olive oil or skin lotion
- just smeared it on the risha and let it soak overnight, wipe it dry and play on dude!
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rojaros
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Thanks!
How far do you go with polishing (600 sandpaper or 1000 sandpaper?)
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shareen
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Ya Rojaros,
Want to sell me some of you rishi? I love natural matrials and haven't yet found a risha to love that is horn except one made by Najeeb Shaheen who
isn't making them anymore. Yours looks like his. Pulleeezze???
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rojaros
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Hi thanks for your interest. I'm making them not for commercial interest, just to play oud myself...
Why don't you make them by yourself? It's so easy; just buy a cow's or buffallos horn, saw it with a metal saw from tool shop, and sandpaper it with
basic sandpaper to the shape and feel you yourself like! Then polish it with fine grain paper (600 and a bit of oil).
You can experiment, have fun and get plenty of beatiful rishas for little money and effort - and be independant 
best wishes
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hamed
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Nice risha rojaros, i made risha out of cow horn a couple of yrs ago and it was the best risha i ever had, i soaked them in olive oil for at least one
week. If you don't soak it for one week the risha will be easier to break or chip.
hamed
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Brian Prunka
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Patheslip has a really good point. Anyone working with animal parts should be very careful. A couple of years ago, a drum maker in New York was
making drums with goat skin. He nearly died of inhalation anthrax from drying and scraping the skins. Then he had to spend a few days in "custody"
because the authorities were curious as to how he had contracted anthrax.
I don't know much about the biology of the disease, maybe horns are safe and it's just the skin that's risky. hopefully ones like this, made for
commercial export, would presumably have been screened somehow. Anthrax is a pretty common livestock disease in much of the world, though.
riq makers don't have to worry about this . . . fish can't get anthrax
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rojaros
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Thank you for making this point on safety.
As I already made the risha I only can say I'm well and alive yet - and certainly be dead one day.
Until than I'll try to be as carefull as possible.
Best wishes to everybody...
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rojaros
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Wanted to keep you informed. I had the risha one week in peanut oil. After some additional sanding it plays just beatifully. The sound (especially the
attack) is quite different from all plastic rishas I have.
Really worthwile
best wishes to everybody.
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littleseb
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That's excellent, it's probably the nicest DIY risha I have come across!!
Will have a go myself!!
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patheslip
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The risha sounds like it was a great success. Well done rojaros.
Anthrax safety point, a drum maker in London died a week or so ago from the disease.
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