Busy Busy Bowyer

I've done a little to the Maple bow as you can see, most of the bend is in the central 1/3 of the bow which is ok for now. It's pulled to 45# in the right pic.
I'll start reducing the mid and outer limbs next, it's a bit tricky with all the swoops and dips in the grain and there's some twist as well, which I shall just follow and tweak the tiller to get the bow to pull back straight.
It should be full of character when it's done.
Below left is a rather poor pic of the upper (right on the tiller) tip which shows the character in the stave with a rather weird deflex wiggle at the very end (untouched back of the bow is to the left).

Here's a pic of the belt sander with the dust extractor plumbed in too.

I've had some insulated plasterboard delivered which I've got to get screwed up to the ceiling to improve the insulation in our extension which gets B cold in the winter.
The belt sander has come in handy already cleaning up some old rough sawn 2x1 which had been used outside as a fruit cage. Now it's cleaned up I will make a couple of props for holding up the plasterboard whilst I screw it up to the ceiling. It will be a good job to get done as it will cover over the scruffy artex too.

The belt sander is very useful for the area where bow limb fades into the grip, because there is a lot of end grain there it's difficult to get a good finish and there are often tool marks which take an age to get out by hand to really show the grain to best effect. The rounded nose of the belt sander cleans it up nicely once the fade has been rasped to shape.
If you enlarge one of the pics of the bow on the tiller you can see how even the fade is. I've used a bottle with sandpaper wrapped around it before now to acheive the same effect. Normally I would be getting that dgree of finish much later in the process, but I just wanted to give the belt sander a try out.