Tail End of 2019

The best news this year is that I became a Grandad on the 23rd of December! :-)

My Daughter produced identical twin girls which made for a rather odd Christmas day and will doubtless keep us all busy next year.
As they are identical twins I've just shown one of 'em ;-)


I've had a bit of a break from bows as I've been modifying my Mini Mill (a Clarke CMD10, which is the same as a Sieg X1) to make it belt drive which should make it smoother and quieter. The pic shows the small stepped motor pulley standing on top of the big one which is still work in progress, centre hole being bored with a boring bar.
I found a nice article on the web where a guy showed how he'd done it, I pretty much copied what he did with slightly changed drive ratios and a few other details.
Once that's done I'll finish making the steel quick change tool post (QCTP) for the lathe. I bought a cheap Ali' one which works well for light work but has quite a bit of flex for any heavier work, bearing in mind by "heavy" I mean relative to size of the little lathe. Being fair to the lathe, it is doing a stalwart job and is even managing to turn 4" diameter Aluminium billet for the V pulleys for the mini mill belt drive.
I'm waiting for delivery of a 3/8" BSF tap at the moment so I can tap an alternative toolpost mounting hole on the compound slide of the lathe to enable the turning of the largest diameter V pulley.

I'll have a bit of a clean up ready for Thursday when my mate JT will be over for some bow making fun... currently working on the Boo backed Yew warbow.
Boo backing has been a bit of a theme over the past year, I made a series of 4 boo backed yew 50# flight bows, taking the best of them to a comp' and refurbishing the other two as gifts. I made a heavy boo Yew primitive and a boo yew warbow too, plus the usual sprinkling of primitives including a Wych Elm one.