[LE] mashing up weapon meshes?

[Panarchy]

I'm a noob at all this, but I've gotten fairly good at making basic armor mashups using 3DSmax and Nifskope. Now I want to try mashing together weapon meshes for a mod.

 

Here's the plan: I want to make a buckler (just a rescaled vanilla shield) and move it up the left forearm. Easy enough. But then I want to add a bow mesh to the left hand so it looks like the character has a bow and buckler equipped on the same arm; seljuk or mongol-style. Functionally, it will be a shield while the bow-in-hand will be purely decorative. Later, I want to do the reverse with a bow but with a decorative buckler. The idea is to make two items - a buckler/bow and a bow/buckler - with the same model but different functions.

 

Starting with the buckler-bow, my noob-brain reasoned that I would only need to add the bow-mesh as an ni-tri shape to the shield nif like making an armor mashup in nifskope. Tried that, the buckler showed up in-game but the bow did not. Now I'm stumped.

 

So what's the correct procedure for mashing up weapon meshes? Do I need to take additional steps in NifSkope? I've been looking at weapon nifs that are made up of multiple NiTriShapes, but so far I can't tell how they're different from the one I made.

 

Thanks in advance