Prod Mount

I've been away over the weekend in Lincoln, which is a beautiful city with a nice medieval feel.
I'm finishing off some flight arrow for my mate JT, but while the fletchings are gluing I've been doing more to the crossbow. Last week I made a block which I glued onto the bamboo back to provide a flat surface to clamp it all together when mounted. The block is made of Ash and to match up to the bamboo back it is curved in two planes (you can see in the pic), thist took a lot of fiddling around sawing it rough on the bandsaw and then touching it up repeatedly on the nose of the belt sander, finally a curved scraper smoothed out the irregularities. I had to get a reasonable fit to allow a decent glue line and to allow it to be clamped hard in the vice while the glue cured without splitting the wood or damaging the bow. Hopefully this will give enough strength to allow me to cut away a portion in the centre where the bolt (arrow) will fly through, this will let me mount the prod fairly high to avoid the string bearing down too much on the track.
The pics show the arrangement, note I haven't cut the front plate to accurate size yet, as it is sensible to get the holes correct first, then true up the plate, rather than trying to drill two holes perfectly aligned.
I made it out of aluminium this time mainly because it's easier to work, in fact the bandsaw managed to saw through it using an appropriate blade.