Tuesday 22 September 2015

Yew Molle & Iffy Wood

I've heat straightened the levers relative to the limbs and pressed on with it quickly to get a feel for how the wood would stand the stress.

I roughed the limbs to a reasonable taper and pulled it to round about 40# at about 24" or so keeping a careful eye on it.
The upper limb looked weak as the longitudinal cracks on that limb buckled.

It's not entirely fatal and it could probably be finished to make say a 35# bow, or maybe I could do huge patch along the belly of the dodgy limb, using some billets that aren't quite right for longbows.
That's a lot of work for a bow with marginal wood. so in the mean time I've flooded the cracks with low viscosity cyanoacrylate glue and strapped it up tight.
I won't rush at it and I'll see what the guy who brought the wood wants me to do.

I've not spent too much time on it, and it could always be finished as a fun bow just for the hell of it, you just don't know, sometimes such bows end up being great performers, after all, in terms of speed per pound of draw weight a 35# bow will out perform a 70# every time!

No comments:

Post a Comment