BANG!

I'm a bit gutted, I'd spent a lot of time patching the Molle' and as I strung it the patch lifted. So, I re-did it with a longer patch blended in and sculpted to match the ridges, it looked lovely.
I strung it and it was fine, but when I got it to 3/4 draw BANG and it exploded. Examining the break showed that it was a miracle it had lasted so long. When I made the bow I'd had to graft fresh Yew onto the belly side of the levers as they had long streaks of black manky material in cracks running along the grain. It can be seen from the pictures that this rot extended down into the body of the bow and into the feature "eye" knots.
I was dubious about the chances of a clean repair, and maybe it was an accident waiting to happen. I don't know if it's owner will want it glued back together as a "wall hanger".

Meanwhile may mate JT had got the hazel ELB back to 50# at 24" . Our aim for the session was to get it braced, evenly tillered and back to about 21", that all went too smoothly and we pressed on.
I should have urged him to use the finer rasp and to slow down, we'd taken video but pressed on without reviewing it... all a bit rushed.
A little over enthusiast rasping and pulling it to 55# caused a couple of chrysals on the belly.
This threw the tiller off and made it look very weak in the upper limb. He was gutted ,but we eased off the outer limbs, put a string on it and shot about 15 arrows. It was surprisingly fast, and now the initial disappointment has subsided we've decided to patch the belly and take the bow to completion with horn nocks etc so that we've gone through the whole process.
While he was working on the bow I was refurbishing the drawknife which I'd bought, the main effort being turning a couple of steel ferules on my little lathe. At least that went well!

Molle and Arrow Repairs

I'd been putting off working on the Molle' as I wan't sure what I'd find once I started chiselling out the splinter and I had various other odds and ends on the go.
Once I'd had a tidy up of the garage and spliced a laburnum footing onto a flight arrow that lost it's point on Sunday, I plucked up courage to start work.
The sap wood was V shallow where it was forming a splinter and as I dug down the heart wood was a bit rotten for a few mm depth. I've cleaned it out and I'll glue in a nice sliver of sapwood cut to a V section. In the pic you can see the heart wood is also showing along the ridge running down the centre.
I'll fiddle about this afternoon and see if I can get a nice bit of sapwood to fit, it can take a few attempts to get a nice match and a good fit. I may need to cut way a bit more to make the patch longer as a long thin patch gives a better glue line than a short fat one.

I've been testing the Yew flight bow to try and establish the maximum safe draw before it starts taking set. It had been drawn to about 25" on Sunday and had all night to recover. I laid it against a straight edge and measured between that and the belly (at the centre of the bow), the gap was 4mm. Then I put it on the tiller, pulled it to 27", took the string off and re measured... the gap had opened up to 12mm, but after about half an hour it had relaxed back to about 7mm. It will be interesting to see how it is tomorrow.
Update:- Yup, it's back to 4mm  :-)
I reckon that 27" is pretty much the maximum draw without it starting to take permanent set. It's a short bow and at 27" draw it looks like it's working hard and has real full compass look to it.

Oh, and here's a pic of the drawknife I bought off E-bay, with my one for comparison.
On top of the drawknife is the sanding block I made for arrow shafts. I ran my router along a couple of scraps of 2x1 , very handy.

Catching up after a Busy week

Forgive the positioning of the pics in this post... the editing software won't let them be moved around sensibly (Grrr)

A couple came over to collect the lighter Hazel primitive last week, we had a fine time and had a go with all my crossbows as they'd not shot one before. The Chinese repeater was greatly enjoyed and I even had a shot with my 275# repro medieval "light sporting crossbow" which is pretty spectacular in a confined space like my garage.
The larger primitive (see previous post for pics) was shipped off and the recipient said:-
"Wow, it looks absolutely gorgeous!!!! Really striking & beautiful bow"... "Draws up lovely. Really smooth. It feels much smoother than my Ash bow despite the fact that it's higher poundage and shorter length. Nice one Del! Thank you".

I've been working off and on with the Yew flight bow for this season and flight arrows too of course. The constant striving for an arrow of small diameter for minimum drag yet stiff enough to withstand the acceleration and flexing. I fancied trying Ipe as an arrow wood and remembered that my mate Matt (of Cambridge Longbows) had been recently using some. He very kindly sent some off-cuts in the post for me to play with.
The first Ipe shaft I made was slightly smaller diameter than my reference shaft  at about the same stiffness ("reference shaft" sounds a tad grand, it's really just one that had snapped off it's point), the bad news was that it was about 25% heavier! My next idea is top secret, so don't tell anyone, I cut a thin slat of Ipe and glued it up between two bits of straight grained pine, so it looks like a jam sandwich. This gives it more stiffness especially sideways without too much weight increase. I made a shooting board so I could plane the corners off to get it roughly round, I then turned it on my lathe. I also grooved a couple of bits or board to use with sandpaper as sanding blocks for smoothing shafts.

I had a couple of visitors with a yew stave that they wanted turning into a bow, then the next thing I get is an E-mail from a chap for whom I'd made arguably the best looking character I've ever made. It's a Mollegabet style from very marginal Yew with lovely  sharp ridges down the back and knots like eyes near the levers.It had started to lift a splinter on the back (shown by red arrow in the pic). He arranged to bring the bow over to me mid week and it was good to see both him and the bow again.
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/yew-molle-full-draw.html
I haven't started work on that repair yet as I'm in the middle of some other stuff.

Meanwhile I've been working with and guiding my mate JT while he makes his first ever bow (a Hazel ELB), it's coming along and is ready to brace. It's a very wonky stave, but that's ok as it teaches how to cope with the problems. It's very different to working a clean flat even laminated stave.
It was a pleasure to have JT working the garage and to see the progress, his first use of the spokeshave was rather tentative, but after a few hours, he was taking off long shavings with confidence to get the left limb flexing to match the right, and the bow was beginning to flex evenly, ready to be braced.

Just to round off the week I saw a nice old draw knife on Ebay, the handles were split, but the blade looked like it had never (or hardly ever) been sharpened. I stuck in a bid for £16 max and won it! I'll clean it up and sharpen it later.
Throw in some work tuning up the lathe, a visit from my brother and an Indian take away... great week!
Just noticed three frogs in a clinch at the bottom of the pond... spring is on the way!

Hazel Primitive Finished

The bow is finished, it looks gorgeous and shoots well, I've put together a video here:-
https://youtu.be/Q9yKADXlQ4k
Here are some stills too.

It made 180 yards easilly (with a bit of tail wind) but that was with my regular arrows, a clout or flight arrow would go further.

It has a couple of features, a slight reflex kick in the the last 9" or so lower limb. Even nicer is a diagonal ridge across the back of the upper limb where another pole had been growing up alongside. This caused a stiff area which I handled by scooping out the belly to match to get it flexing.