Then 3 come long at once!

I'd not had much lined up to do, but my mate JT came over on Thursday and wanted to have a go turning wooden blunts on the lathe. I improvised a tool rest and it worked pretty well turning up some Box wood that I had been given years ago, some long waggly, spalted fire damaged stuff that I had no
use for, but was much to good to ignore.

The turning was fun and led me to ordering a couple of screws and some steel to make a decent tool rest and to find out about wood turning too sharpening angles.

Then I got going on the crossbow limbs again and made a new improved solid taper sledge for my thicknesser . Last time I'd used it the wood came out slightly thicker along one edge, and some investigation showed that it was my aluminium adjustable taper sled that was causing the problem by flexing. The new sled was glued up from 3 sheets of MDF, cut on the bandsaw and tidied up on the belt sander. A test on a piece of scrap showed a much truer cut, I checked the thickness along each edge at 3 points, the worst error being 0.004", the other two being 0.002" and 0.000" repectively which seems pretty good.
One slight problem is that it's difficult to accurately measure the thickness of the work once it's glued to the sled and I took off a whisker more than I intended, probably due to haste and backlash in the adjustment mechanism. Having got the limbs machined, I'll be doing much pondering before the next step.

Next thing, I get a facebook message that the much loved 3 RPI (Rings Per Inch) warbow has broken at the grip. I'll do an estimate of how many arrows it's shot as it has been used regularly.
Just asked the chap, he reckons an average of about 80 arrows a week, and it was made in August 2017, that works out to about 6000 arrows, which isn't too bad. It would have got him through a campaign, assuming the dysentery hadn't got him first! Anyhow, hopefully he'll bring it over this afternoon so I can see how bad it is.

Ah, it's just arrived, not repairable, but I'll re-make it as a shorter lower poundage bow. I'll also make a replacement ASAP. Fortunately I have a couple of roughed out staves that may be suitable.
It looks like the back failed with the failure probably starting in the splice at the bottom of the grip where starts to fade into the limb starts . I'll cut it down to make a shorter bow.
Meanwhile I've started on the replacement, roughing it down some more and filling some knots ready to get it on the tiller.

Video here:-
https://youtu.be/cpFv9ODj1wc