Wednesday 30 September 2015

I'm Back

Before I went away for a few days I managed to get some gluing done on the Molle' so it would be ready to work on when I returned.
The big problem was one weak limb, the wood was full of splits, cracks and shakes. When I tried to work on the lever it virtually fell apart under the rasp.
I formulated a plan to stiffen the weaker limb by bringing the whole limb down towards the grip about 2".
If to have a tapered limb and you cut some length off the tip end, that end will now be a little thicker due to you being further up the taper. To maintain the length you extend the root of the limb back in towards the grip.
Say the limb is 1/4" thick by the grip and 1/8" at the tip, you are effectively removing wood from the 1/8" and adding wood at the 1/4" so you are thickening the entire limb slightly, sort of moving it along towards the thick end!
I hope that makes sense, but like much of bow making, you can't gain a huge amount, but in this case the limb was rather thin just inboard of the lever so the fix has some extra benefit in removing a weak spot.
I glued new Yew heartwood on to form the belly side of the lever extending it about 2" to overlap the weak point. I'll re-shape the new lever, shorten it to match the other, rasp into the handle to give a new fade area and hopefully have that limb stiffened up.
Simple then!

What I'm hoping is that the weaker limb is transformed into the stronger limb which will mean I can reverse the bow on the tiller and the slight offset in the grip will then favour a left hander. At the moment the grip hasn't been cut out at all, this gives me some room for manoeuvre. Worst case I can put some heat correction in at the grip if necessary, but hopefully I won't need to.
It's looking hopeful for 35-40# at 28, but of course it could all explode into a pile of matchwood.


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