Tuesday 19 February 2013

Special Relationship Bow



This bow is made from two that exploded on the tiller last year, one was Oregon Yew (the limb that exploded had bug holes in the sapwood) and the other English Yew (rather knotty on one limb), each had one remaining sound limb, these were spliced together just to see how it would perform.

I mistakenly supposed the Oregon Yew would be tougher and better suited to the lower limb which has higher strain on it being a little shorter. This assumption turned out to be false as the English Yew which looked skinnier seemed to slightly stiffer than the Oregon Yew... so I inverted the bow, this made the spliced join appear  slightly off centre.
The join is a bit of a mash up with both back and belly patches to get the whole thing blending together, there's even a tiny addition on the side of the splice to fill a gap (2nd pic down on the left).
It's ended up very deep and narrow at the grip and seeps to shoot surprisingly fast. More pics later in the week showing it drawn.

I've tillered it for a guy at the club to experiment with, he's a big chap and being relatively new to archery hasn't settled on his desired draw weight or length yet. This will allow him to try out a more powerful bow at longer draw before I custom build him something a little special in later in the year.
It's currently drawing 50# at 29" and I'm pretty confident in taking it back to 30" once it's shot in a bit more, I've only shot 30 arrows through it so far.
There's a weird dip on the edge of the upper (Oregon) limb, to counter this quirkiness the English Yew has big knot and dip, originally this was to be at the arrow pass, but is now on the lower limb.

It's fun to do something experimental as it can be tested harder than one might usually dare, in the knowledge that the bow has had a second chance. This begs the question, do I christen it Transatlantic, Special Relationship or Second Chance?

PS. It's this bow that's having the arrow plate inlaid in the previous post.

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