Nocks On the Boo Yew.

Busy weekend, I went to the Thurlow Fayre, didn't do much to the bows but chatted to lots of people. There was a wood turner and a couple who kept bees next to me , they were V interesting, I got some beeswax and picked up some wood turning tips. There was a have-a-go archery there and they kindly let me loose a few arrows from 'Twister', I put 3 round the outside edge of the gold and then 2 right in the inner gold. It would have been a shame to spend all day there with my bows and not loose an arrow.
The was a good deal of interest in the services of the tree surgeon too, so it was a good day for all of us.

I've got the horn nocks on the BooYew, and started cleaning it up. You can see the colour change where I've scraped the dull pale rind off the bamboo, I took the pic when I'd just done up to the first node to show the difference. The horn is a tad dull and grey looking but it will cheer up a bit once it's been on the buffing wheel. Once it's all cleaned up I'll make the string and shoot some arrows through it to settle it down.

Twister 2 hasn't had much else done, but I'd ordered some ultra low viscosity superglue which turned up today. This has been flooded into the cracks to seal and stabilise them.

Bow making will be slow over the next week as I've been busy collecting apples from around the cycle tracks nearby. I've refurbished my apple scratter and I'm hoping to make 25litres of Cider over the next week or so.
I've added an extension to the hopper from some polycarbonate roofing sheet, so I can pile in more apples which will help provide weight to press them down onto the rotating Oak drum.
The drum has stainless steel countersink headed screws protruding from it to mash up the apples as it spins round. I've also added some flaps of off cut vinyl flooring to direct the mash downwards rather than throwing everywhere. The motor/gearbox is now attached to the side of the scratter, that was from an old wooden electric golf trolley that I made years ago. It's powered from a 12v battery.
It should all be more solid and efficient this time.
I didn't make any last year as the apple harvest was virtually non existent. The year before that I'd made a trial batch of 5L and it was a great success. Free booze.. what's not to like ?

Original post about the scratter is here http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/oak-apples.html