I've mostly been working on converting my Mini Mill to belt drive and the bow making has just been once a week helping my mate JT make a Boo backed Yew warbow, which is now almost finished.
The Boo Yew is one of the interesting projects done with the materials that were available. The Yew is stuff that JT had from a local farmer which had dodgy sapwood and the stave itself was rather knotty, requiring a long section let in at one of the tips, it also had a lot of deflex. The Boo had been previously prepared by JT for a slightly shorter bow. Anyhow, it's now virtually done and when we finished yesterday it was pulling 110# at 28" (target draw length 31").Link to video of the bow on the tiller:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os6Q2fxy0as&t=11s
The belt drive was up and running yesterday and I made some test cuts with a 10mm end mill into some angle iron, a 5 thou cut, then a 10 thou, then a 30 thou, all went well with the mill running much smoother and more quiet (on the slower of the two speed ranges)
I then moved to the other end of the work piece and milled across at 3mm depth! It took it in its stride with a slow steady hand over hand feed. That's something I wouldn't have dared to try with the plastic gears for fear of stripping them. This is a great improvement and will really speed up roughing out cuts.
The ugly blocks of ply are just glued to the aluminium base plate with rapid epoxy... it looks rather Heath Robinson, but it's a quick dirty and effective way to mount the belt guard and speed controller.
All I have to do is make the belt guard, which I've tried out, made from card and am now fabricating from thin sheet steel which I saved from the back of an old electric oven many years ago.
That's made now and just needs fitting. I may clean it all up and paint it... but maybe I'll just leave it and get on with the project of making a steel quick change tool post for the lathe.
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