Monday 14 March 2011

More Yew Longbows

I'm working on my last 3 Yew staves. This one has some character with a few nice swoops up and down in it, and some natural reflex (Although this will doubtless get pulled out during tillering).
There was a smallish knot too, it looked insignificant until I tested it with a small screwdriver. It was manky, I cleaned it out with a combination of screwdriver, drill, my nice fat permagrit needle file and one of those big thread cutting woodscrews, they have quite a sharp thread and it was v good for scraping out the bad wood. It's important to get back to clean wood.
No good trying to glue a peg into rotten wood. It made me feel a bit like a dentist.
I fashioned a tapered wooden peg from a scrap of nice dark Yew by roughing it out and then turning it in the pillar drill.
The bottom end of the peg is supported in a hole drilled in a scrap of Oak with a bit of beeswax in it for lubrication, the pic shows my poor man's lathe in action. I used a tapered peg and hole as it gives a tight fit when tapped firmly home.
The sap wood on the back of the bow has already been carefully worked down to be just 2 growth rings thick, which is looking quite attractive. Maybe one day I'll try going down to one ring, but perhaps that's just crazy talk.
I've stopped using the drawknife and gone to the spokeshave and rasp now, there are a couple of areas by knots a swirls in the grain where it tears with the spokeshave and it needs the rasp.
I've put the long tillering string on it and pulled to 50 pounds, it barely straightened out the little bit of reflex, so I've obviously got a fair bit of wood to remove still before I can even start to see the curve of it.
P.S This isn't the same stave as in the previous post.

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