A guy from the club came over with some bows, one needed the nocks replaced and a little off the length. One nock had split and a hasty repair done which wasn't satisfactory.
It's a nice fast bow used for clout, Bamboo back Ipe? core and an Osage belly, it has taken a little set mostly mid and inner limbs. I could see the outer limbs could be tapered into the nock more and the nocks could be much smaller.It's slightly unusual insofar as the arrow pass is at the geometric centre.
Anyhow, I jumped in quick and got the top nock done just to see what the wood combination was like to
work... short answer, all the woods are rather hard. The bamboo is rather flat so to help it blend into the round nock I glued on a tiny sliver of yew. I also rasped a good bit off the width and rounded the corners of the bamboo down, right back as afar as the first node, which was also reduced a tad (they can actually be taken completely flat, but I never go that far myself).I remembered to take a "before" picture". Oddly the limb tip almost looks fatter now because the nock is so much slimmer!
what's a "node"? and "completely flat"?
ReplyDeleteBamboo has nodes, these are the ridged rings that run round the stem. If you click on one of the top two pics you will see one near the left edge of the pic. The bamboo backing is cut from a large diameter stem and the outer face forms the back of the bow and is pretty flat.
DeleteIf you look at this post you can see a backing strip being prepared and you can see the nodes:-
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/bamboo-backing-build-along.html
By completely flat, I mean the node can be rasped down until it is level with the rest of the backing strip.E.G If you run your finger along, you can't feel the bump of the node.
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