Weird Heart/Sap Boundary (& Emails)

I've been reducing the sapwood to pretty much follow a growth ring, but came to a point where I'd pencilled 'LEAVE' on the sapwood.

There was a faint dark strip showing along the length of the back as if the heartwood was peeking through.

Weird, as there is plenty of sapwood when viewed from the sides (see pics).

Hmmm, You can only work with what you can see so I sawed it in half! (No! just kidding!).

I thought there is no point just thinking there is heartwood there, I need to know (on the 'better the devil you know principal).

I continued working down to the sapwood ring I was chasing, but allowed the back to crown up a tad towards the dark streak which slowly became exposed. The sketch show what I think is going on inside the wood, the heart sap boundary doesn't always follow round a growth ring as you might expect (and as you will see in many illustrations).
Yes it looks like heartwood, but as it's running along the length of the bow it shouldn't be a problem. It will be become a 'feature' and maybe the bow will aquire a name from it like Ridgeback or some such. Let's just hope it's not 'heartbreak ridge'.
I've been at it all morning now and the back is looking clean, the sapwood is pretty thin in places along one edge and rather thick in places along the other edge, but overall it's looking like a decent bow and will soon be ready for flexing with a long string on the tiller, once I've been along it getting the thickness to a fairly even taper.
It will doubtless be way over weight but it will be good to see how it bends. Don't expect I'll get that far today. Slow and steady wins the day (other platitudes are also available).
Update:- The taper wasn't far off so it didn't take long to get it done and pop it up un the tiller on a string just long enough to slip onto the bow. I winched it back to 50# and tips just came back about 4". It looks quite pretty with a hint of reflex to the stave, which will doubtless pull out during tillering. There's plenty of wood to take off belly and sides* now, but at least it's roughed out to a decent starting point. That's my lot for today, I accomplished more than I expected and hopefully I've overcome the tricky sapwood issues.
Leaving it a bit wide at the tips will allow me to adjust for any twist induced by the uneven sap/heart wood.

E-Mails:-

I'm one of those Email addicts who checks every 10 minutes, but I've recently been trying to contact a couple of guys with no luck. (I've finished a bow for one of 'em).

If someone doesn't want a bow or has some more urgent business, that's fine. You don't get to 60years old without realising that there are more important things than bows and E-mails.

It's not a problem for me as I'm happy to hang onto a bow for myself, or if it's still unclaimed in 6 months I will have no trouble finding it a home.

The real point is I don't want anyone stressing out, least of all myself! I won't start a bow until I make contact. But if someone no longer wants a bow, just let me know... not a prob' at all.

I just make 'em for fun.

A Visitor bearing Yew

My visitor Martin turned up with his Yew. I was a bit worried at first as there wasn't much heartwood, but it was deceptive, there was a fair bit when viewed from one edge. A bit of careful laying out of the bow with a taut string tying to minimise the wiggle in the grain whilst maximising the heartwood eventually allowed me mark out where to saw. (30mm wide at the grip and 20mm at the tips )

Once run through the bandsaw there was a good amount of heartwood to play with. The back was nice and clear of knots. The perfect stave?... Ah, well, real wood isn't quite that well behaved, there is a lot more sapwood visible on one side than the other and the situation reverses to some extent at the other end.

I've taken off a lot of the excess sapwood with the draw knife and it's begining to be clearer how to get the bow out of the wood.

We spent some time shooting too, having tired of hacking off sapwood.
I put up a scrap of paper 2x3" on my target foam at about 10 yards. Martin tried most of my bows hitting the scrap of paper a few times especially with the two flat section primitives (Ash and Hazel) which is a testament to both bow and archer. We shot a few different arrows from  the bows so he could feel how a better matched arrow felt. The Chinese Repeater and primitive crossbow had an outing too... blimey he even hit the scrap of paper with 3 out of his 5 bolts from the repeater!

It was great to meet someone interested in everything from the tree to the actual shooting and having started on the bow I may have trouble putting it down.

The Yew is fairly typical, coarse grained in part, yet fine grained in others, the colour is quite nice and it felt good under the draw knife. Hopefully I can produce a fine bow. I might just test the off cut from the end with my moisture meter just to see what it's like.

There is plenty of wood to play with, as we cut it to about 76"

Backstop Net

I hung the backstop net which I'd bought, but it was a daft size, 2m x 3m with the long side vertical. This didn't cover enough of my garage door so I bought some eyelets, fitted them along the long edge and hung it the other way.
For stowage the net can be drawn across to the right and put on a shelf and the wire then unclipped.
The second pic shows the view from outside the garage when I'm shooting.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow as a guy is visiting with a couple of Yew staves which he cut over a year ago and he wants me to make him a bow. Should be able to get it roughed out so he can get an idea of it.

55 Pounder Finished and some Yew spotting

I've finally completed the 55 pounder, it's had a fair amount of shooting and now has arrow plate, leather grip and it's own string.

We went down South at the weekend, did some hunting for Yew. We stayed with my parents and I also met up with my brother who gave me a couple of archery books from a friend of his, one of which was signed by the author Glenn St.Charles, excellent!

I popped into DG Quicks to stock up on bowstring material and some arrow stop netting which is damn expensive, but will prevent more holes in my garage door!

We'd driven down on Friday the 13th which was a mistake as it ended up costing me a new battery and tyre for the car (the battery was on it's way out anyway, but the tyre was relatively new)

I'm trying to contact the Head Forester to see if they will allow me to cut the Yew. I expect you can pick out the limb I'm after in the pics, it's sticking up almost vertical and the top has been lopped off at some point in it's past. I'm hoping this will have slowed it's growth giving nice tight dark heartwood. I had a limb like this a few years ago which produced 3 excellent bows, two longbows and 'twister' which is my regular field shooting bow.

Drawknife Wallet

A dull damp Easter bank Holiday, well to be fair, the Good Friday was lovely and we got some work done on the garden.
On the Saturday I went up to the club to help out with the have a go archery, but there weren't many visitors. I'd taken along a stave and my drawknife to work away at and give a bit of a demo if needed.
On the walk up to the camp I'd stuck the drawknife into my crossbow bolt quiver where it contrived to snag my hand.
You can see where this is going now, and I set to, making a wallet to protect me from further incident.
I've previously made a cover for my axe head, but the blade tended to cut the stitching and I had to put in a copper rivet to protect it. My brother told me how to avoid this by stitching in a thin strip of leather between the front and back, this provides a buffer for the sharp edge of the blade and protects the stitching.
The end result does look a little twee, but I expect it will have a nice worn appearance in 25 years or so! (I shall kick it around the garage floor to hasten the ageing process).
The primitive crossbow which I took with me http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/detail-pics.html drew a fair bit of interest so I've added a picture of it to my website on the 'Other Stuff' page with a link to the Bowyers Diary entry where I start building it.
I'll be up at the camp when they run their Belatane Festival (May 7th) setting up my shave horse and tillering rig and I'll be working away all day doing demos, tillering a bow and chatting away. If you are in the area (Herts/Essex border) and want to entertain the kids for a day it's worth a visit (the archery club is separate from the camp, but we all muck in and help with the have a go archery and stuff on the big event days). The Owl display is great and Barney the Barn owl is a fave'.
http://www.celticharmony.org/pages/days_beltane_games_festival.php

Yew ELB Composite Picture

I've had a play cutting and pasting pictures into MS 'Paint'. (Double click it to see it big at decent resolution)
The latest bow is virtually finished and nicely shot in, it just needs the grip and arrowplate, it's taken a little more set than I'd have liked, but it started with some slight deflex, and I'd rather have some set than a smashed bow. It seems to have a good cast and nearly made 180 yards up hill into a head wind at the club today, to put that into perspective it was further and any of the other archers there today shot (about 6 of us, one with a horsebow). It compared favourably against the 65 pounder I finished last month.
The pics show some of the features of the bow, I particularly like the concave dip in the sapwood central upper pic near the lower left corner.
The two central pics show the tip with the patch, it looks pretty good when you look back and see how it started out.
I'm rather pleased with the bow, although there is a slight imperfection where the Yew shows as a blush through the horn nock, (bottom right), however it's above the string nock and isn't a problem and just goes to show how deep the wood penetrates into the horn nock.

A Mistake and a Steel Crossbow Prod

I walked up to the town through the woods, the sloe bushes in the hedegrow were in full bloom and in the woodland the bluebells were coming out.
I got home to discover I'd stuck the horn nocks on the wrong ends of the longbow! Fortunately I hadn't completely finished shaping them and there was enough bulk to file to the desired shape with the top nock fancier and more elegant and the lower nock more stumpy and rounded.
One of the guys I regularly E-mail was asking about pictures of steel crossbow prods, I recomended the Ralph Payne Gallwey book and then remembred I'd had a go at forging one about 30 years ago. A friend and I had bought an ex MOD portable farriers forge from Exchange and Mart, presumably left over from WWI when they had loads of horses still. The forge wasn't really big enough for the job, and I didn't have a proper anvil. Anyhow I had a go and worked out how to fold the nocks like a real medieval prod (see pics).
The problem with modern ones is they are too skinny and don't look right for a reproduction medieval bow. They use modern steels and are lower draw weights. To forge one you need something aproximating to medieval steel (I used EN8, which prbably has a different classification by now) and then you need to harden and temper it afterwards, which needs a big oven. So you see it's not easy which is why most people buy one or make one from an old car leaf spring. The one on my website is made from a car leaf spring with collars brazed on at nocks to try to make it look right.