Roughing Out Some Staves

Had a guy come over on Saturday with a log he'd cut about 4 years ago, I'd made him a bow previously (Ridgeback) and he wanted me to make another. From the pics he'd sent the log didn't look too promising, but once I'd trimmed off the end an had a shufti, I could see one clean face with a bow in it. There is still one iffy knot, but most of that will disappear (see pic)

After he'd gone I ran it through bandsaw and there were some troublesome areas where one growth ring had been damaged/rotted, maybe by fire, lightning, rubbing against another branch or just bad weather. Fortunately it was fairly near the centre and by the time I'd got the save roughed down the bad ring had been cut away.

The other two staves are Austrian Yew cut from a rough half log that was bought at a bargain price by one of my friends in expectation of one good stave and maybe a skinny second. Again there are some splits and shakes, but careful laying out has produced two warbow staves, they are a tad on the short side at 73 and 74" (bearing in mind I like to have a couple of inches spare on a stave), but the bloke isn't very tall and has a 30" draw so they should be ok. It's hard to tell which is actually the best stave so I'll probably work 'em down together and see which is 100-110# and which is good for a bit more.

The paler English Yew stave is prob' going to be about 60# but I've got to discus what's required.
It's good to have a few staves ready to work on, and I've actually got a spliced Yew one as well. I tend to think of this time of year as bow making season, as there's now't much going on in the garden. I'll be thinking of cutting a couple of Hazel staves too with my mate JT, who's going to try his hand at bow making early next year.... I'm sure some beer drinking will also be involved.

I went over to Cloth of Gold as a guest of Mick the Blacksmith on Sunday, had a great shoot around in good company, we weren't scoring and did 18 targets each from two different pegs, so I shot a good few arrows. My shooting seemed back to normal and I made a few decent long shots too. Probably my last outing of the year as it's getting colder, although I might manage the ILAA at Windsor if the weather's good.