Monday 21 September 2015

Roughed out Yew Molle and Heat Bend Result

I had a great day yesterday, drove down to a field shoot in Kent. It was a private shoot on an estate, The nice lady in my sat nav got a bit confused but I was rescued by a horse woman who pointed me in the right direction. It was a very friendly affair with loads of people I recognised but my memory for names let me down.
I had a look over one of the Yew longbows I'd made back in about 2011, it was in great shape, but had taken a little set, I said it was fine, but if it got a bit puddingy and tired I'd heat treat and re-tiller it.
The was a wooden club house, great catering and a fire going which is always a cheery thing. The weather was fine and I was shooting well although I flagged in the afternoon.(My neck was rather sore too... must drop a few pounds off Twister).
It was a nice change to shoot with a group of people I hadn't met before, all good company. One chap was shooting a bow he'd made himself and it was fast with a very nice tiller. We had some interesting chat about the power of positive thinking... I'd been missing a string of shots and was confronted with a down hill one between the trees. I stepped up to shoot first so I wouldn't be influenced by any one else's shots.
"I haven't got a cat in hells chance of hitting that" I said trying to find a clear shot... then I switched to a more positive thought process...
"Yes I have got a cat in hells chance!..." Focussed on a spot on the chest of the Deer, drew and loosed smartly without too much thinking. At last a first arrow hit to break my run of blanks.

This morning I've put the Yew longbow back on the tiller. The heat treating/bending doesn't seem to have brought up the draw weight surprisingly, but it has greatly improved the shape.
Maybe I rushed the heating, moving the hot air gun every 3 minutes rather than my usual 4).

I've also roughed out the Mollegabet, it's a but of a curate's egg with some clean areas and some with a lot of cracks, splits and shakes. One bit of wood just dropped off exposing what the inside surface of a crack is like.
I doused all the cracks with low viscosity superglue to hopefully hold it together. I will need to heat bend one of the levers into line and the slowly start trying to worth the limbs into an even taper.
My evaluation of a project usually wavers between thinking it's impossible, to do-able several times in the early stages. At one point I was worried I'd roughed out the working limb too thin at one point... Maybe I have but it's probably ok. Anyhow I'm thinking that maybe with the state of the wood 40# may be safer than 50#. Better a sweet fast 40# than a pile of broken Yew... we'll see.





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