More on Sawing/Roughing Out

"Explain more" Was ticked on the last post...

I'll expand a bit about sawing out a log, it requires more care and thought than is obvious. At it's simplest you can just lie something straight along the log, mark with chalk either side and saw it (or run a straight string line and work from that). I have a length of very light weight steel U section the sort of thing that is used by builders putting up partitions or stud walls, its 1.5" wide and I found it in a skip. (see pic). Using it for a first rough out allows plenty of width. If you lay out that first cut out carefully you can remove some knots or place them in the centre of the stave.
The pic top left shows how I laid out the stave over to one edge to remove as much of the big black knot as possible. The pic below it shows the two sides opened out like a book and you'll see there is still a waggle of grain showing but the manky part of the knot is no longer in the stave.
There are still more things to consider as it's easy to mark a straight line on a curved surface and end up with a curve. I was lucky with these staves as they were pretty flat and straight, but with a log that is deflexed, reflexed or has a sideways bend it's easy to mess up when you run it through the bandsaw.
Putting it through the bandsaw is tricky too, I have a roller support behind the saw to support the end of the stave which helps. If it can be run through in a clean straight line with no twist (even if it's just on one of the first cuts) that provides a nice flat surface to rest on the saw table for subsequent cuts. (and for ease of marking out later). It's easy to rotate the stave slightly as it goes through, I try to hold it and guide it as one would a snooker cue using a clean straight action, I try to avoid too much re-positioning of my hands.

 Note, these first cuts are all straight and parallel, (so it resembles a length of 2x2) just to remove the excess wood and and allow me to see what's there before marking out the actual bow, it also allows some margin of error for the wood to move as its internal stresses get released. This is the state that most people will recognise as a stave, not being aware of the work that's already gone into getting it to this stage.

This is fine for a straight stave that can can be roughed out straight and Yew which is tolerant of some grain run out...
On a character stave or a less forgiving wood the cutting is very much by feel and eye. A process of successive approximation and being sympathetic to the grain flow of the wood. E.G See pic on the right. two wonky staves from the same batch of timber, these will need some careful reducing and some steam bending to get decent staves.

Having cut the two sides, it's much easier to handle it and lay out a line for the thickness of the bow. The quality and thickness of the sapwood is now more visible and some thickness allowance can be made for reducing the sapwood if necessary. At this stave I still tend to mark it out parallel. This may seem odd, but allows for error and also means any off-cuts are more likely to be usable. Sometimes cutting some of the final taper can be handy to give two tapered off-cuts which may work as billets. It's all a matter of studying the wood and maximising what you can get out of it sensibly without jeopardising the main stave... always best to have one good stave than two useless ones!
The next step will be to remove the bark and some sapwood where it's been gnarled up with a chainsaw and general rough handling. The wood may get another month or so to season and settle, I think it's a mistake to rush at it as wood may keep moving... some say it needs a year per inch of thickness, so bearing in mind there was a lot more thickness there before it was reduced a bit more time won't do any harm.
Oh bugger!
Just shaken myself up... I was up on the step ladder putting the staves back on the top shelf when the damn thing splayed open and I crashed to the ground. I'm ok, but grazed my elbow, knees, bruised my thigh and my arse/lower back is sore. Took me a while to get up off the floor.. expect I'll be stiff as a board tomorrow. At least nothings broken and I didn't hit my head.
The step ladder is an A shape, but the horizontal brace can be detached to allow it to fold up/extend. Normally that brace stays in place even when the ladder is folded and stored... it must have popped off, and I hadn't checked it... I normally do. By sod's law the rubber feet that I had replaced a few years back have worn through leaving bare steel which skidded on the concrete floor.
Every man is his own safety officer...

Next job, refurbish the step ladder or buy a new one. Mind I can't find one that has quite the same handy configuration.

A Pleasant Surprise!

I've been thinking about warbows and flight bows whilst bemoaning my lack of seasoned Yew.
The oldest Yew I thought I had on the shelves is April 2019 so maybe I could have a look at at and rough it down a bit.
I'd been out in the garage in the morning tinkering with the portable bow weighing rig which has been fun as it's given me an excuse to use the lathe and mini-milling machine, but it was bloody cold (had our first frost last night).
Anyhow in the afternoon I put on an old fleece and went out to have a play. I got up on the step ladder and took down a couple of huge great staves (sort of roughed half logs) which were the timber I had in mind... It said "Oct" on it ... that can't be right it's October now??
Ah! Oct 2018! Woo its certainly ready for reducing and making a start on, great!
This shows why I always write a date on the timber... it's so easy to loose track otherwise.

I put a coarse blade onto the bandsaw and donned my facemask (I'm much more assiduous in wearing it these days).
The first bit was the sort of size that a novice wood think would make two bows, but bearing in mind I'm thinking warbow, I knew there would be just one good stave with maybe a sliver of heartwood that might come in handy.
The second piece was lovely, and by taking off the two edges to give nice flat faces I was able to get one good stave and a nice thick full length heartwood stave too.

The last pic shows how the tension in the wood has made it shift once its sawn along its length... which is why it's prudent to reduce timber in stages.

Not Much to Report

I've been tinkering on my lathe making fittings for a bow weight measuring rig and refurbishing/improving an existing one for the ILAA.
I've bought a nice crane scale for it which weighs up to 300kg, a tad overkill but it's got a nice big display and is rugged. There seems to be a gap between 40-50kg and then 300kg which means if you want to weigh warbows with a digital scale you need the 300kg one.

I've also been busy growing a 'tache for "Movember"... it's very tiring. It gives me a laugh every time I look in the mirror.. I'll prob' end up looking like Blakey from "on the buses" :-)
We've had visitors the last few days and I'm generally lacking inspiration on the bow front. I don't like to force the issue.
I expect I'll pick something up soon when the mood takes me.

Tweaking a Bow

Some time back I was asked to make a pair of bows for a couple (Catherine and Brian), they wanted laminated bows with a good cast for roving at relatively low weights 35# and 50# respectively.
Well laminates aren't my thing and I wasn't keen to do it, but this couple do a lot to promote longbow archery, so I wanted to find a way to do it without having to buy fancy exotic timber. I also knew that Boo/Yew was one of the finest combinations, but for some bonkers reason Brian didn't really want a Yew belly.
A good solution dawned on me, I'd rework two of the 50# prototype flight bows I made earlier in the year and present them the bows as a gift. The 35# was Boo/Yew/Ipe and the 50# Boo/Yew, this avoided too much work for me and any embarrassment over what to charge and the fact that his bow has a Yew belly :-).
I tarted up the bows with nice leather grips, hers being red Rolls Royce upholstery leather with a mother of pearl arrow plate. I padded out the flight strings to accept regular arrows.
The bows were handed over at a rove and they were astounded by the distances they were shooting. Catherine found she had to shoot alongside the heavy bows rather than moving forward with the lighter bows, even then she was still over-shooting the marks! I suspect her bow cold probably win a 35# longbow flight contest as it shot only about 5-10 yards less than the 50#
The next week I received a very nice letter of thanks.

However, on Thursday Brian's bow reappeared in the hands of my mate JT having been sent back by Brian for a check up as he'd found it popping the string off when bracing it.
I strung it and could immediately see it had shifted a bit and was trying to bend sideways and the lower limb which had more reflex than the upper looked too strong. It dawned on me that the bow had only been shot by me maybe half a dozen times which would account for some settling.
By pushing the string loop across in the nock a tad it stayed strung ok, but I could see a slight sideways bend. A few good scrapes along the strong side of the belly eased off the excess strength and removed the tendency to bend. A bow will tend to bend towards the weak side, thus the opposite (strong) side need easing off. I scraped the "corner" between side and belly on the strong side.
It looked better, but I thought the brace height (BH) looked a bit low too, it was only about 5" and the string appeared to have almost no twist in it. Twisting it up a bit raised the BH to 5 1/2" and I decided to add the BH measurement to the writing on the back of the bow (5 1/2 - 6").
It was looking really good now and I decided to get some arrows shot through it to help it settle down...
WOW! It really smacked out the arrows (my regular field arrows) and they stuck in the target dead true in a perfectly vertical line with barely a finger width between each one. I couldn't help thinking it would make a great field bow being so fast, yet shooting clean and true.
I'll shoot it in some more and return it at the next roving shoot, being sure to demonstrate how to check the alignment, string loop position and brace height.

Out of interest, while the bow was at it's lower brace I had applied a slight sideways force and the bow did indeed give a slightly alarming kick as it twisted sideways and flicked the string off round to the back.