Friday 8 July 2016

Two Bows on the Tiller


I don't often work on two at once, but I'm keen to get the flight bow done. It's the first time I've used commercial timber and I've not made a self Hickory bow before either, although I have used it as a backing. I may get it tillered to about 60# then heat treat the belly to gain a bit extra. The upper limb has just started to take a little even set, which is fair enough as it's working hard.
It's a tad scary as there were some odd noises coming from it during the first flexing, you can see the left (lower) limb is too stiff, but it's flexing a fair bit. I've since eased of the left limb and rounded the corners considerably which seems to have quietened it down. From rough out where it barely flexed, I've taken off about a mm, then another mm with draw knife and spoke shave, they both needed sharpening to cope with the Hickory. Now it's mostly rasp work, the levers are vastly oversized and haven't been touched yet. No point doing a load of work on them until I know it isn't going to explode!

The Yew longbow is fairly short at just under 70", it's to be 60# at 28" which should be ok as I've made 70 pounders that length before.

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