Almost Finished

I don't want to count my chickens too early, but there comes a time when the horn nock overlays need to go on and the ends need slimming. I can't resist buffing up the nocks as I start cleaning up the bow.
Lower limb is the one with the waggle, (uppermost in top left pic. Bottom in pic on the right, closest to camera in lower pic)
It's been drawn to about 26" so it's pretty much there, bearing in mind that 2 more inches of draw length is only about 2/3" of tip movement.
Here's some pics for a sneak peek, the heartwood belly will look much darker when finished with Danish oil and beeswax.
You may notice I've made the belly slightly concave in places, not actually a hollow limb design, bore a slight nod to it and a way of following the wood and bringing the draw weight down without de-crowning or taking away most of the heart wood.

Handle Glue Job

I decided to split the handle off the Yew primitive and re-glue it as the cracks were opening up.
It's turned out to be a good decision and the bow is coming along nicely now.
I took some video showing the stages of the glue up and it flexing on the tiller.
Both tips have had some deflex taken out and the overall shape is better now. I didn't want reflex, just to remove the ugly deflex. It's still got a bit of a deflex dip just below the grip, but that will have to stay!
https://youtu.be/O-7gam6aAS4

Aurora Shoot

Had a good days shooting despite some fairly heavy rain, shooting in a group of 5, (1 PV, 1 AFB, a couple of recurves and a bamboo recurve which I don't know what style it was being shot as...)
I came last but not by too much, but then I shoot far less frequently than the other guys. I made some good long shots.
I was very pleased with the footed arrows, I certainly hit stones a couple of times and had some wicked deflections from trees which would have smashed my regular arrows, but the footed ones survived unscathed. I did contrive to lose one which was a bit irritating, but overall most enjoyable especially when warmed up with the Chicken and potato curry, which was most welcomed when we stopped for lunch in a rather soggy state.
Thanks to all at Aurora for the great shoot.
Brian, one of our group took this pic, that shows my skin of the teeth first arrow wound, which made amends for one that bounced off the back of a wolf!

Yew Character Primitive Taking Shape

I've been doing some work on it including a bit of heat bending and it's starting to look promising, pulling about 50# @ 22"
The pics show before I did the heat bend and the side cheeks I clamp on whilst applying heat, they keep the heat off the back and help spread it along the belly
Video here:-
https://youtu.be/X84EJmB3SRA

Finished my Arrows

I've got my new footed arrows done ready for a shoot on the 26th.

Been busy in the garage and the garden, my mini mill has been completely stripped and re-built, I put in new bearing while I was at it and reassembled it correctly rather than botching it together as a previous owner had done. I had to build a new drawer under the bench to accommodate the tools, but that's a good thing as it uses up some of the timber I have lying about.


Raiders of the Lost Manhole :-
Meanwhile we've been building a new compost heap and digging out the old one which was there when we moved in about 25 years ago.
According to the deeds of the house there is a man hole cover underneath it!

We have a large tree in that area and I wanted to open up the man hole and check that the tree roots aren't damaging the drains. We eventually located the manhole cover a full 8" beneath the ground level! I'll have to excavate round it, build up the brick work and re-install the cover. Maybe I'll get someone in to do it, but, that's prob' the easy bit anyhow!
Hopefully I'll be getting on with the bows soon.
Indeed I've taken the drawknife to the belly of the character Yew primitive, the wood is full of shakes... maybe it'll make a bow, maybe it won't. Once I get it on the tiller I'll have an idea how it seems to behave.

Mini Mill

The mini mill turned up and appeared to run ok, as I cleaned it up, it revealed a host of problems. The main column was cracked and the speed change was seized solid. It looked like it had never been fully stripped down cleaned oiled and adjusted... just the sort of thing I like doing.
I sourced a new column for a mere £58 including postage, mind it had two tapped holes about 3mm out of position so I had to re drill and tap them. A few other things needed a bit of sorting and it was tricky to free up the speed change selector.
I've tried it on Ali' and steel and it works nicely, I was careful to take only light cuts on the steel as the plastic drive gears can strip. I may convert it to belt drive at some point. I might even try welding up the cracked column and adding some stiffening. The design of the column is poor with a sharp change of cross section where it cracked and no radius, fillets or strengthening ribs. The new column looked to be slightly thicker section at the base.
A minor detail that irritated me, the handles on the control knobs are about 2" long, carefully design to catch in you trouser pocket and get whacked by bowstaves... I've cut 'em down by 1/2" might even take 'em down a tad more.
I think it's going to be V useful for crossbow parts etc.
It's only got a 150watt motor, but it's a DC permanent magnet motor and they are V gutsy. From the info it looks like it runs on 200v DC!! So it should have plenty of torque... doubtless more than the plastic gears can withstand!

We had a visit from my nephew and his family, after 2 months of sunshine it rained non stop. I gave 'em (him plus wife and 2 girls) a go with various bows and we had a fine time despite the rain.
I made an awning from a couple of £2.09 tarpaulins from Toolstation, this was providing some much needed shade over the last week or so. With the rain it was collecting a nice puddle and the 2 girls were enjoying swooshing the water off the tarpaulin with a walking stick... sometimes, the simple things are the most entertaining.

Inadvertent Purchase

Having been tinkering around with the x-y table and my pillar drill, I've been looking at buying a small drill/mill, the problem is the decent sized ones are just too big for my garage without some major reoganisation, but there's a little Clarke CMD10 which can be bought new at about £450. Well that's too much for something that's just for tinkering with. I saw one on an Ebay auction at £240 but there were a few days to go and often the price suddenly shoots up in the last minutes or seconds. Anyhow I kept an eye on it and no one seemed to be bidding. The problem for me is that it is in Oldham which is rather a long way off. Anyhow with just a minute to go it was still £240 and I thought, if it sells for that, I'd wish I'd stuck in a bid.... so I bid £250, fully expecting it to climb up to near £300.
I won it! I'm now in the process of sorting out a courier. It seems that UPS will be a decent price, prob' less than £50, mind it's very difficult to get a quote without providing reams of info' so I can't get an exact price until it's packed up ready for shipment.

Meanwhile I've been footing a set of arrows for the Autumn when it will be neither too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet etc and I'll get a couple of field shoots in. The two nearest venues to me are rather stony and tend to snap the points off arrows if you find a stone. (maybe I should try to hit the target more often)

I've also been tidying the garage to make room for the mill and to sort out some staves. I chucked a few weaselly limbs of Ash, Hornbeam and Hawthorn that I'd saved in a fit of optimism, but they simply weren't any good... mind I still have plenty of dodgy staves!
I came across one that Piers had given me, very thin sapwood, dark heartwood, but with a lot of shakes in it. I made him a gorgeous character Mollegabet style bow some years back ,but it eventually failed. I don't know if this bit will fare any better, I'll keep it fairly long and wide and fingers crossed. I marked it out and roughed it through the band saw. It may need some heat straightening... we'll see.