Leather Grip

After shooting the 90# Yew bow to get some arrows through it (ok I was prob' only pulling it to about 28" so nearer 80#) I went back to my 70# but noticed it was jarring my hand. Now people talk of "Hand shock" and they often talk abouth the bow  being too heavy at the tips or ppoorly tillered... In my opinion that rarely the case.
Why was the 90# ok but the 70# jarring? The big difference is the grip The 90# is made form a stave with a naturally rounded back, also, due to the big

knot at the side of the grip, I allowed extra thickness there. The result is a big well rounded grip. By contrast the 70# is Ash backed Yew and the Ash back was cut flat on a bandsaw, ok the edges are slightly rounded. basically a flat back has corners that jar the knuckes or bones of the hand.
To improve matters I added some thick leather to the back which was carved and rasped to a nice curve. I then added a leather grip over that. The bow feels much smoother to shoot and hopefuuly I'll give it a good work out on sunday.

The bow had never been properly finished and the grain of the Ash had raised a lot. I sanded with 120 grit and gave it a wipe of Danish oil, suddenly the bow went from looking like a scruffy old workhorse to a gorgeous shiny thoroughbred.

Video of fitting the leather grip here :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4ibiymsESQ

Yew Bow Detail

 

I've finished the replacement bow, and after checking with the customer it's at a whisker under 90# @ 31".
What was ostensibly a very clean stave revealed a multitude of knots and features , mostly fairly easy to deal with. What can happen is that a small twig or branck gets snapped off and grow over leaving clean looking sapwood but with the dead knot lurking underneath. Often the telltale sign is a bulge in the sapwood or a patch of discolouration in the wood as you work it down.
Enough chat...pictures!

Pair of Yew Staves

 The last bow I made came out under weight (72# instead of 80#) due purely to impatience when trying to reduce it from 85#. The customer likes the bow, but would like me to make anothre as well, ironically he wants 85# ! (if only he'd said that in the first place).
Anyhow, I was sorting through my staves and found a couple of marginal ones probably better suited to 60 pounders. I looked further and found two gorgeous half logs of English Yew, on closer inspection I saw they were the from the same log, which was about 3 1/2" diameter when I sawed it in August 2019. I roughed them down a bit to about 2" x 2" square to better see any problems. The better one is real warbow material, the other has some knots which will either fall off the side of the stave as it is worked down or will be filled or avoided.

However there is one big knot on the side of the bow at the grip.
Knots on the side aren't too much of a worry, especially when the sapwood is sound on the back and the actual belly is solid. They need filling though, else they could be a weak point and simply collapse. I was careful to excavate any loose, unsound material in the knot, which left just a rounded end of solid wood. I packed epoxy mixed withYew sawdust all around that end and filled the cavity. The filled knot is shown, not the prettiest feature, but it should do the job. I've filled bigger cavities than that on 90# bows with no problem. The are some other knots and one that goes through the sapwood, it's about 4mm diameter, and is about 10" from one end. I can leave a little extra width there to ensur ethat there is plenty of sapwood to take the tension.