I'm pretty active on line and keep an eye on Archery Interchange, it's mostly about target archery predominantly Olympic recurve and compounds, but I watch out for newbies so that I can point them towards field archery and wooden bows, I also look out for people interested in making bows. A bowyer popped up on there who I hadn't seen online for years, he was selling off some of his bows and stuff... including a part finished horn/sinew bow, Adam Karpowicz's book (Ottoman Turkish bows manufacture and design) which is no longer in print, a pair of water-buffalo horns, some horn tips, and sinew. As you can imagine I jumped at it, he only wanted £50 plus postage (£16), but when it arrived I was so impressed I offered £100. We settled on £80 which satisfied us both. I think he was pleased that the materials would be used and the project hopefully finished. I'd actually already bought the book in electronic format for my kindle, but it is almost unreadable like that, it's the sort of book you need to dip into over months if not years to slowly absorb the information. The whole project is something that can't be rushed, and I'm not picking it up immediately... It'll grab my attention when the time is right.
My mate JT came over yesterday with a bow that he/we had made back in
May 2018 It hadn't been shot for ages and when he strung it, the nocks looked about 45 degrees on the skew and it was trying to bend sideways! At first glace I thought maybe easing off one side would help, but once we put it against a straight edge we could see about 2 1/2" of sideways bend. I think we'd had to correct a sideways bend when it was first made, and maybe that had been done with steam and had slowly crept back. So, we jigged it up and gave it a good dose of dry heat with the hot air gun and a light basting of cooking oil, once it had relaxed and could easily pull across we continued the heat to lightly brown the wood and hopefully harden the correction in place. We also applied a little twist correction to help get the nocks realigned. After a lunch break we removed the clamp and there was very little spring back.
When it was on the tiller we could see the upper limb (the one with a big knot was a bit too strong compared to the lower limb, so we eased it off somewhat by rasping some of one edge of the belly from the edge on the opposite side to the sideways bend... e.g. it will tend to bend towards the weaker side, so you ease off the opposite side.
Mean while I've also done more to the scruffy Italian Yew stave and settled on 80# @ 29" as a target draw weight/length). I've started back on the 10 push ups night and morning to regain a bit of fitness too. The horn nocks are fitted now and it still needs a bit more work, it is currently at about 80# @ 26"
I'm also working to make a twin cot for my new grand daughters. It's a long thin cot so they can go in head to head, rather than the more usual side by side double cot... it's just more convenient for the size and shape of their room. I'm just making it of kiln dried pine as they will doubtless out grow it fairly quickly. I'll make sure it's all nicely rounded and sanded and I'll finish it with Danish Oil which is "food safe" (I'll double check this), as they will doubtless start gumming on it at some point! :-)
I have 2 or 3 bows on my waiting list, but it's a matter of matching the timber to the requirement and also factoring the urgency/enthusiasm etc.
This week I have mostly been building the twin cot which is now finished. The base (6mm MDF which is varnished) lifts out and each end comes off by removing 4 screws. The screws are long and bite lightly into the end grain before meeting a dowel which has been glued into a hole drilled through the rail. They can really tighten into the cross grain of the dowels, which are off cuts from the bars. The legs are a tight fit up into a plate of 3/4" ply, glued in for security. I expect they will have grown out of it before too long, so I haven't gone mad on materials or finish. I've given it a couple of coats of Danish oil which is food and toy safe to BS blah blah blah.
I'm pretty active on line and keep an eye on Archery Interchange, it's mostly about target archery predominantly Olympic recurve and compounds, but I watch out for newbies so that I can point them towards field archery and wooden bows, I also look out for people interested in making bows. A bowyer popped up on there who I hadn't seen online for years, he was selling off some of his bows and stuff... including a part finished horn/sinew bow, Adam Karpowicz's book (Ottoman Turkish bows manufacture and design) which is no longer in print, a pair of water-buffalo horns, some horn tips, and sinew. As you can imagine I jumped at it, he only wanted £50 plus postage (£16), but when it arrived I was so impressed I offered £100. We settled on £80 which satisfied us both. I think he was pleased that the materials would be used and the project hopefully finished. I'd actually already bought the book in electronic format for my kindle, but it is almost unreadable like that, it's the sort of book you need to dip into over months if not years to slowly absorb the information. The whole project is something that can't be rushed, and I'm not picking it up immediately... It'll grab my attention when the time is right.
My mate JT came over yesterday with a bow that he/we had made back in May 2018 It hadn't been shot for ages and when he strung it, the nocks looked about 45 degrees on the skew and it was trying to bend sideways! At first glace I thought maybe easing off one side would help, but once we put it against a straight edge we could see about 2 1/2" of sideways bend. I think we'd had to correct a sideways bend when it was first made, and maybe that had been done with steam and had slowly crept back. So, we jigged it up and gave it a good dose of dry heat with the hot air gun and a light basting of cooking oil, once it had relaxed and could easily pull across we continued the heat to lightly brown the wood and hopefully harden the correction in place. We also applied a little twist correction to help get the nocks realigned. After a lunch break we removed the clamp and there was very little spring back.
Yew rather knotty and been roughed out. The original owner probably realised he didn't know what to do with it next. I can see why, as it's been roughed out a bit thin and narrow at one tip and it has a fair bit of twist and is knotty. Rob thought I'd know how to make it into a bow :-) ... I quite like this sort of task as I haven't had to source the wood or agonise about marking it out etc... it is what it is, and my task is to tease it into shape. What appears to be too thin is probably fine, it's just that in proportion the rest of the stave is too thick! The twist is more problematic, but it's a matter of compromise allowing a bit of twist in each direction distributed along the bow. Failing that, steam will take it out. Rob has also made me a couple of arrows with medieval style forged heads... V nice... the big swallow tail head is prob best kept for demo rather than use! I've made him a peak hold needle assembly for his tillering scale, which can be fitted next time he's over.
I've been taking videos of the progress and may cut it all into one video (speeded up in parts) once it's done. My other videos don't really give an idea of the flow of the progress, so it should be fun to do a sort of time lapse vid.
