Friday 2 September 2011

Hornbeam

It's a lovely wood to work, the workability of Hazel with a bit of extra crispness, not a lot of visible grain, sot of Hazel with a hint of Beech.
The wood is begining to speak to me, but mostly telling me what it doesn't want to do!
I put a lot of heat and strain on it to try and straighten it a bit overnight, but it's not done very much.
I shall have to work down the limbs and correct the lateral bend when there's less wood to shift.
A couple of knots in the area I was trying to bend also need to be worked out, but if I remove them the limb will be too narrow at that point.
The solution is to move the narrow area nearer to the tip of the bow by sawing a few inches off that tip and moving the centre/grip area down. This works well because it puts the grip onto two other big problem knots and still leaves the bow taller than me (5'10").
That's why any character staves need to start a lot longer than the finished bow. More pics later in the day or tomorrow.
Update:- I've slimmed down the limbs a bit more and tested the moisture content on one of the offcuts, it was still up at 15% so I placed it in my sophisticated drying facility.
That's to say I lobbed it up on the south facing flat roof which is roofed with black rubber membrane and gets nice and hot. Later in the afternoon I got it down (mmmm tasty warm stave) stuck it back on my heatbending jig to try and straighten it some more. I'll leave it overnight, pics tomorrow.

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