Awaiting Inspiration

Now't is really grabbing my attention at the mo'.
I'll do a leather grip for the Plum bow and maybe sort through my staves.
I did a little repair for an old friend this afternoon, the bow wasn't one I'd made. It was a Hickory backed Osage ELB, the repair was just a fine linen thread binding over a splinter and it didn't take long. It was good to see him and have a natter tho'.
I've got some more glass coming for crossbow limbs which I may jump onto as I also have some Maple for the core.
I did some testing of the crossbow with the rigid 'scope mount. It shot nicely with the wooden bolt at 20 yards with only about one and a half dots movement on the graticule compared with 10 yards.
I then tried the Ali' bolts and despite being 7 grains heavier they shot about 4" higher! The difference is they are slightly smaller diameter, shorter and have smaller plastic fletchings so ar more aerodynamic. The lesson is that to do any meaningful sighting up one needs well matched bolts (Yeah... I know that's obvious!)
For me the BIG disadvantage of the Ali bolts is that I can't see where they are on the target until I walk up to about 10 yards. So...
I searched the internet and found some Chinese carbon arrows that are bright yellow and 30" long so I'll get 2 bolts from each.
Six of 'em for about £11 which is cheap enough to have a play with.

It's pouring with rain here so I may end up clicking "buy" some more or writing things on my Christmas list.

Plum Bow Finished.

I got the bow finished, but it didn't seem to group well, a bit of investigation showed my hand was slipping up the grip giving an inconsistent position and effectively making the arrow sit nose up on the string. The grip needed some tweaking, this was mainly due to the upper limb having been shortened and the position of the grip notionally moved down by about and inch.
It didn't need much adjustment and it isn't a heavily sculpted grip, it's just shaped enough so the hand sits in a comfortable consistent position. The other factor is that I haven't shot for ages, so with a bit of tweaking and a few arrows every day, it's now shooting where I point it.

Plum?

After the Elder bow blew I was at a bit of a loose end and in need of a success... but something easy just didn't really appeal. I could have made a hickory and Lemonwood ELB, but then, where's the challenge in that?

So I rummaged through my staves and came across a piece of dark wood with "Cherry/Plum? 2009" written on the end. I'd often looked at this and couldn't decide quite what it was and how to deal with it, so I just ran it through the bandsaw to rough it out and go with the flow. Some comparison with some known Cherry leads me to think it's plum which is supposed to be a good bow wood. I didn't want to go mad and push it too hard so I'm going for my primitive shape at about 40-45# .
The stave has a few small knots, a crack running down the belly of one limb, a sideways kink in the other and a deal of sideways bend in the middle, there's a little deflex in an ugly place too. Other than that it's plain sailing!
I used the hot air gun to do a sideways bend at the grip. I allowed a little too much bend, expecting some spring back which didn't happen, however heating it again let it relax back to where I wanted it. The little ugly deflex was similarly taken out with heat, taking care to keep the heat off the back.

I followed a ring on the back, or at least along the centre of the back, this will get tidied further as the bow progresses. I found that I'd gone a tad tight with the bandsaw and that after following the ring I had a weak point on the upper limb about a foot down from the tip. I marked that area W for "weak" and worked the rest of the bow to match, being careful not to over-stress it on the tiller. After a good deal of work it was still a little weak so I sawed an inch off the tip, this moves the weak area nearer to the tip where the bow will be thinner anyway. Down near the fade on that limb I removed some wood to effectively move the whole limb down towards the grip... that still wasn't quite enough to remove the weak point so I took off another inch and also heat treated the weak area.
That did the trick and actually gives equal length working limbs rather than the more usual slightly shorter lower limb.
All this work didn't happen sequentially, it was a bit of work on the back, a bit of heat work, checking on the tiller and reducing the length etc all slowly moving it along.
The grip is V skinny and not very thick, so I glued on an off-cut of the same wood with the grain running the same way hoping for an almost invisible glue line. I could have used contrasting wood but I don't think it would look so primitive.

It's almost finished now and I think it will be rather handsome (assuming it doesn't go bang on the last inch of draw!)