Looking Over the Year

It's been my first full year of retirement and  I've had fun with warbows, the cross bow, primitives, flight bows,  building the shooting machine and re-working some bows including Twister.
My stand out warbows have been Wonky which was a tad extreme, and the 3 RPI (ring per inch) fast grown English Yew which disproved some of the myths and prejudices about yew.

February and the spring was somewhat tied up with looking after Emily Cat who went missing for 3 days and came back injured, fortunately she recovered and is back to her bonkers best but without her tail now..
The ILAA Popinjay shoot was great fun and I consider it a "must do" for this year.
My two fave' bows were the 3 RPI warbow and the pretty Boo, Purpleheart and Yew trilam...
Over the year I've improved my tools collection with a load of G clamps and improvements to the arrow tapering jig and the thicknesser.

In the spring I made up a spliced yew flight bow from some dodgy random billets which performed quite well and has given me food for thought for 2018's flight bow, and of course the arrows, because self evidently, one the arrow has left the string... it's all about the arrow. Hopefully the shooting machine and my new camera should help in achieving a little more distance this year. I'll be making a flight longbow/warbow to be used by my trusty test pilot and chum JT in the summer.

Failures included the exploding take-down ELB, a big Yew log with no decent wood in it and a Laburnum heartwood primitive which eventually was destruction tested.
The ongoing crossbow project was a bit like the curate's egg, good in parts, the trigger mechanism was good, but the prods varied from just about acceptable to failures, mind I am trying for an impressive performance with a lot of self imposed constraints. Maybe I'll persevere with the natural materials or maybe I'll make up a prod with fibre glass or carbon laminations over a wooden core.

Bliss, just got out of the house for a couple of hours harvesting some Hazel with a couple of mates. We cut a few poles and split two of 'em. I'll quick season one of the poorer staves... so we can start some bow making at the start of February. I'll be helping JT through the process and hopefully he'll end up having made a shootable ELB.
Here's an early try out with the camera, using my crossbow pistol.

All the best to friends old and new for 2018