Plenty to be Getting on With.

The chap, came to pick up the bow on Friday, we had a good chat while I finished off a few arrows for him. I've since heard that it's performing well, he's very pleased with it and it's had plenty of admiring comments.
I shall have a week off from bowmaking to finish some work repairing a giant wooden ladle for the Gibberd Garden, it's not a full restoration (which would be a huge task).

I'm just refitting the handle and it's ball end.
There is a lot of rot which I've dug out and filled, hopefully I can patch it up to last a few more years.

I've also got to mend our patio table which fell to bits when I had the ladle handle on it!
Oh dear I'm sure you all know that sinking feeling when one job ends up creating yet another.

Anyhow, those jobs shouldn't take too long and then I can de-bark my next longbow stave and have a good look at my baulk of Hawthorn which I cut last year.







I shall play around with trimming down the one hour bow (see more about it on my website). I'm intending to take a mm or two off the belly to remove the chrysals and trim it down to become a kids bow.
It will be nice to give it a new lease of life and it will make an interesting primitive. I don't really like making low draw weight bows, so re-working one is a win-win result. Here's a pic which shows the chrysals on the belly.
They are the fine silvery lines across the bow, they are compression cracks which are raised, you can feel them if you run your fingernail over them. There is no real cure without taking off wood and losing draw weight. If you try sanding them off it just weakens the belly further and more wood is likely to collapse.