Another Year's Round Up

Christmas has just about wound down, we'll be making a robust Turkey soup this afternoon which I always enjoy and hopefully we'll ease off eating nibbles etc until New Years Eve.
I'm trying to get back to normal and doing some stuff in the garage. I got some nice useful presents.
A Taper reamer for cleaning up the taper in my lathe headstock mandrel (work in progress already).
Some nice waxed sash cord for my tiller rig, it's a waxed cotton braided outer with a polypropylene (I think) inner core. It's a tad irritating that they don't quote a breaking strain or safe working load, but I think it should be fine. It has a much nicer feel than the nylon rope I have on there at the mo'.
A book of "simple steam engines" that I can maybe make on the lathe and mill, some other books too.
I've also got a nice zip up cardigan that I'm "allowed" to wear in the garage ;-) rather than those that are for "best". I don't really differentiate, as long as I'm warm and my arse is covered I'm not fussed about clothing, but I take advice on what is appropriate attire!

I got some draught excluder too that I'm going to use on the bandsaw to improve the efficiency of the dust extraction. I've already made one mod, which was to add a block of pvc foam with a slit cut in it to stop sawdust being carried up into the top of the bandsaw from where it falls back down onto the work. It was just a quick try out held in with double sided tape, but it is quite effective.
I bought myself a present which I didn't open until Christmas day, some cheapo bright yellow carbon arrows from China to turn into nice visible crossbow bolts. They will give me something to tinker with (I've ordered extra screw in points and inserts, I'll prob make the nocks myself)

I've looked back over the blog to see what I've actually done over the year, as I though I'd not done much.
Four Yew ELBs, a Yew flight bow, I worked with my mate JT mentoring him as he made a Yew warbow (I had one explode on the tiller too)
Two Yew Primitives, a pair of Hazel Primitives, one of Plum and a little bamboo bow for visiting kids to use.

So that's about a bow per month, which is nice...
I made a shooting machine which was useful for observing flight arrows as they leave the bow and this helped me achieve my new PB for a self bow (Osage) of 341 yards. I'll push the bow a little harder and try to improve on this on a suitable day when the ground is soft and the weather is good.
My crossbow project went through about half a dozen iterations of Yew/Bamboo prods before I resorted to fibreglass.
The workshop had a bit of a reorganisation to accommodate a second hand micro milling machine (Clarke CMD10) which has been very useful for the crossbow parts once it was repaired and refurbished.

All in all a pretty constructive year, I even managed to do most of the things on the "jobs around the house list" ... in fact I've already done one thing off next years list, which was fixing some kitchen cupboard doors which were graunching and would have driven us mad whilst trying to cook Christmas dinner.

I have a few projects lined up for the new year including making a jig to do fancy 4 point footings on arrows.
Wishing you all a great 2019, may your arrows all fly true, and may those that don't remain clearly visible!