End of Year Round Up

I've been doing a a few odds and ends over the holiday period.
The tips of the BBY have been narrowed a bit to reduce mass and hopefully reduce shock whilst maybe improving speed. I drew a pencil line about 7" from the tip and tapered from there straight to the edge of the horn nocks rather than the curved taper that it had before. I shot it at the club yesterday and it felt good,  the string needed to be twisted about 10 turns to get the brace height up as the string settled (I'd noticed it had started shooting slightly left). The arrows were loose on the string, which is a distraction so when I got home I bulked up the serving with one strand of serving thread, some people use dental floss, but stripping out one strand of serving thread looked cleaner and more tidy. I also melted a spot of beeswax on it and massaged it in.

I've been working on the Hickory backed Lemonwood  stave I was given, for a lad at the club. It's coming on nicely and is back to about 35# at 28" at a low brace with temporary nocks. I'll have to get him to try it before reducing it much more.

The Yew stave has been worked down a bit more and studied, I think it will need a bit of steam bending to take out the S curve, bit of a pain, but better than trying to lay out a straight bow across the curve of the grain.
Talking of which, one of the guys at the club had a very cheap Hickory self longbows from the USA as a 'first bow', they are good value for money, but a tad agricultural. I was pointing out how the grain ran at a nasty angle across one limb and sure enough a big splinter had already started to lift. I think low viscosity superglue and linen thread will patch it up. I offered to tune up the bow once the guy has bought a decent bow (he's leaving it a while until he's happy shooting longbow and knows what draw weight he's comfortable with). It will be interesting to play with the Hickory, I'm sure the tiller can be improved and the tips narrowed a bit.

This morning I ran my Yew log, which I'd cut in November, through the bandsaw (the one I got council permission to cut). I made a good job of sawing it to give one good length stave and the other half which has a huge knot in it has a clean 5' length which may make a primitive or one or two billets. I got the staves up on my shelves out of the way.

Looking back over the year it's been pretty good, I must have made about a dozen bows (and broken a few). My favourite bows are probably the 90# warbow and the pretty longbow I did for the girl at the club. The Hazel bows (especially the bark-on ones) are rather fine too.

That's about it for 2013. Happy new year one and all, and good luck with any bow making exploits.