Sunday 5 December 2010

Yew Stave on the Shave Horse.

I'm working on the Yew cut last February, one piece with particularly fine grain is taking a lot of time so I thought I'd give that stave a rest and try my shave horse and rough out onother piece.
I took the quartered stave and chopped the corners off it with an axe and put it on the shave horse.
I wish I hadn't bothered with the axe as the combination of shave horse and drawknife works like a dream.
The stave was held rigid and I could really pull on the drawknife, both slicing and splitting great swathes of wood off, I could really feel the flow of the grain too as the splitting action was following it.
I worked up a good heat too and even removed my woolly hat. It will really speed up those early stages of roughing out, have to watch I don't go too mad and end up with a matchstick instead of a bow.
The drawknife gives a much cleaner finish than the axe too, and because the stave is held firm the accuracy of cut is better too allowing fast but confident work.
This Yew is much coarser grained but still a reasonable colour, it will be interesting to see how they compare performance wise.
I've got a few Yew longbows to make so I need to get a feel for these logs so that I can rough out the bows to somewhere near the right dimensions.

I've prettied up the horse too, adding a clamp block which can pivot loosely on the clamp bar to avoid damaging the workpiece. I've put a wooden knob on one end of the clamp bar and drilled the other end to take a split ring to reatain it.
Actually the split ring is a pain and I've left it off as it's handy to be able to pull the bar in and out to turn the stave.

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