Saturday 2 April 2011

Shooting in.

I shot the bow a fair bit at the club and it performs well, I let a couple of other guys shoot it too so that I could watch it in action and see how it flexes. I was very pleased, the undulation in the upper limb can look a triffle odd especially from one side, but watching the bow draw I could see the whole limb working and the section between the the grip and the undulation starting to work nicely as the bow got to about half draw.
This pic is a composite showing the upper limb from both sides, you can see how different each side is, and the undulation looks more severe in the right pic, this is the area which gave me a few problems. Pretty amazing how the the grain contorts over such a small distance across the width of the bow.
It was good to see it shoot some different weight arrows too as my 70gn pile ones are a tad light, I think 100gn piles on 5/16 shafts would be about optimum. It seemed to shoot them all fast and true, which was a relief as I'd shot some late last night in the garage and I wasn't shooting well in the dark!
Being faster than my usual 40 pound Hazel flatbow caused me to lose one arrow into the woodland as I shot high. After a good deal of shooting and being strung for a couple of hours, it had followed the string by another half inch or so, but it soon settled back once unstrung. The swelling at the bottom of the pic is where the arrow pass is, I shall inlay some Waterbuffalo horn and build up a leather grip.
All in all it's a handsome bow, with a nice bit of character, It's settled down to a whisker under 50 pounds now.
The log which this came from will eventually yield 3 bows, two have been fairly testing and one pretty straight forward. The Fourth stave has a knot about 3/4 of the way up it plumb centre, I might be able to get a bow to one side of the knot, or maybe a short flatbow, I'll have to see.

3 comments:

  1. It would be nice to see some video content of you shooting the bow. How long have you been making bows?

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  2. I started making 'em when I was a kid and I've been making them off and on for getting on 50 years. But I've only really got back into it seriously in the last couple of years.
    Have you looked at my website? (Just google delsbows), there are a few bits of video there, but not shooting a longbow. Perhaps I'll shoot some video when I've finished the bow.

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  3. That's neat. Yes, I have taken a look at your website! That repeating crossbow is veeerry cool.

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