Glued Up Stave & Bonkers Bow

The glued up stave looks pretty good with a barely visible glue line, and I think there's enough wood there for a decent draw weight.
It barely flexes at the mo'.

I've taken off the outer bark, the cambium remains and I can do my marking up on that. The cambium is horrid bitter smelling dusty fibrous stuff. I don't often bother with a face mask, but I do when I'm scaping that off.
I'm taking it carefully as I want to preserve a flawless sapwood back
I've run a string line down it and trued it up width wise, it's nice and straight, I'll do a bit of work on the thickness later today.

I've also finished of the Bonkers Bow and got a full draw pic.



The tiller on the Bonkers is surprisingly good, it was only really made for the hell of it.
It was virtually finished last week when I noticed a small dry knot on the belly. On the back there was a tiny hole in the sapwood, I poked down it with the tip of a needle file and the knot just fell out of the belly! I filled that and then spotted a dark patch on the edge of the bow where there was a knot just under the surface. The sapwood was rather thin above it and there was a sign of a tiny crack. I rasped that off and added a patch to the edge.

So it's got a back patch a belly patch an edge patch and half a dozen plugged knots. It's also had a fair sized lateral bend put in at the grip... but other than that it was easy peasy!

Glue Up

I've glued up the Oregon Yew Heartwood and English Yew sapwood. It's quite a tough job binding it up with two layers of rubber strapping. Once strapped up, I clamped the middle to a length of dexion steel angle and put a wooden block under each tips forcing it into a slight reflex. Ideally I'd probably clamp it to a former, but that would be tricky with the rubber binding, and I'd have to make the long former.
Because the stave has already been shaped to a reasonably even taper it should take on a smooth curve just by lifting the tips, in an equal and opposite way to how it will form a nice curve when drawn in use.
I expect some of this reflex will spring out when it's unstrapped and some will pull out during tillering. I'm hoping to end up with a nice straight back to the bow when it's finished.
The glue is Resintite which is in powder form, is mixed with water into a fairly thick liquid, I take care to weigh the powder and liquid as per the manufacturers instructions. I use Highland spring water to mix it with as it's purer than our tap water I don't know if it's important, but I happen to have some, so why risk our hard Essex tap water?
The manufacturer says only apply the glue to one surface, but I ignore that as I want to be sure that both surfaces have been thoroughly wetted and that there is enough glue to squeeze a little out as it's bound up (see pic, you can also see the bark is still on.)
The surfaces were prepared by rasping along their length with the rasp held sideways to score the surface along the length rather than actually rasping away any wood.



I've also been cleaning up the bonkers bow, plugging another knot and adding a small patch to one edge where there was a dark stain which turned out to be a buried knot.
I'll blog up the finished bow with all it's patches and fixes when I've finished it. I'll probably put it on my website as an example of the sort of abuse Yew can survive.

Steaming a Sapwood Backing Strip

I've been doing some work on an experimental 'Transatlantic' bow. Oregon Yew heartwood spliced belly and a continuous strip of English Yew sapwood for the back. There's no great reason for the nationality of the timbers other than what I have available.
The heartwood stave has a slight lateral bend of about 1/2" which I've steam corrected. I wouldn't normally worry about a 1/2" bend, I'd just lay the bow out straight, but I have very little wood to play with (width wise) so I'm trying to get it as straight as I can to avoid ending up with a bow as wide as a pencil.
The sapwood backing strip had a huge twist at one end which I've also steamed out.
I did the heartwood Saturday evening and got the sapwood done Sunday morning before we all went out for a Mother's day jaunt.

The twist came out quick and easy as the strip was so thin (about 1/4"). I've left the bark on, this will stay on as long as possible as some protection for the sapwood.

In the pic you can see the heartwood spliced billets in the vice and the sapwood (bark still on) being steamed.
Note the insulation to keep the heat in and the way the bench has been propped up at the far end to let the water run out into that old washing up bowl. As the steam condenses into water it delivers heat to the bow, and the resulting water can be quite cold.
Note:- There are other posts on the blog which explain the set up in more detail...
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/20574

Any heat bending is about heat and time, if it's not hot enough for long enough it won't do the job. There are pros and cons to steam or dry heat, and I use both. Steam gives a good even heat over a decent area, but being less hot needs carefull setting up and can be spoiled if you have to waste time getting the wood out of the heat and clamped up. That's why I try to heat and clamp in one operation if possible. It's always worth the time and effort getting it all set up right, rather than ending up doing it twice.

I was hoping to get it prepared and glued up today, but there are flurries of fine snow and it's damn cold in the garage.
Meanwhile I've been applying the finish to the gold arrow plate longbow and signing it ready for collection.
I was chatting to Mick the blacksmith and I'm putting a grip on the bonkers bow for him as a thank you and swap for some forge/instruction time. He was rather taken by it's mad look yet crisp shooting performance.
It's nice to know it will get a good home and some shooting rather than standing glumly in the corner as a novelty.

Gold!

Had a brilliant day yesterday smelting the gold for the arrow pass. Mick took us to his workshop, it was like an Aladdin's cave, chock full of wonderful machinery that made me drool.

Being rather woodwork based, I've not often got to see the big stuff. This was great, there was all sorts, milling machine, lathe, huge old weird radial arm drill that I had to ask wha's that??? several forges and a power hammer, all the usual smaller stuff. Power saw, grinders, belt sanders welders, sandblasting booth. The sort of stuff that no home should be without.

It was a real blacksmiths/engineering shop with that lovely smell redolent of old railways and traction engines and loads of stock material of assorted sizes and offcuts of useful stuff under the bench. Mick gave us a thumbnail sketch of some of the stuff he does and picked up what looked like a plain bar with something like '240 layers' chalked on it, a quick clean and etch revealed the multiple layers and pattern of pattern forged steel. I could see the necessity for chalked on notes.

Mick hadn't smelted gold before so we'd talked it over and trawled the web and Youtube to find how to treat my nice new graphite crucible.
It all went smooth as silk, Mick tack welded my mould onto a suitable base plate, the crucible was heated red hot and some borax sprinkled in and melted. The gold was cut up an put in and back into the forge, it melted pretty quick and was poured into the mould which was heated dull red. The last small pic shows the resulting pellet of gold being annealed after some hammering.

The gold formed a bit of a mushroom head above the surface of the mould and we worried it hadn't filled it.
Nope, there was more gold than we'd realised!
I'd made the mold on the small size, expecting only a little gold so we took the opportunity to hammer it out to a larger size, knocking down to about 3mm thick with the power hammer. The power hammer was a thing to behold, I'd not seen one in the flesh before so Mick obliged by heating up some steel bar and forging it between the curved section of the die (jaws/anvils) of the power hammer to stretch it. (The jaws also had a flat section and a curved section, the flat section was used for flattening the gold).
I'd forgotten to take my camera but Shaun took some pics on his phone which give an idea of what was done.
Once we'd done it was back to may place for a well earned egg and bacon buttie and a play with the bows and my stuff.

In the evening I filed down the gold to a shield shape for the arrow plate, taking care to collect all the gold filings.

Saturday Afternoon:-
I've done the inlay and the leather grip just got to give it umpteen coats of Danish oil and we're done.

I've just weighed the dust, there's about 4g which means there's about 6 in the arrow plate. Dunno what carrat gold it is, but it's gotta be over sixty quids worth!

Assorted Stuff...

I've been thinkering about with all sorts of stuff, making up a dozen arrows in dribs and drabs. The fletching jig is on the hearth and every now and again I'll stick on another fletching.
I've spliced up my last decent Oregon Yew billets (with the bug damaged sapwood sawn off). The English Yew sapwood for the backing has been cleaned up, but I have two bits, one is wafer thin and the other has a twist. The sapwood is continuous full length strips which should help ensure the splice holds solidly.
I'll go for the thicker twisted bit as I'm aiming for about 70# at 28" but tillered out to a full 32" which should be about 85#.
I'll need to steam the twist out before gluing it up. The Oregon Yew hasn't got a lot of spare timber to play with so I may have to steam a 1/2" of lateral correction into it. When I finally get round to the glue up I'll put an inch or two of reflex into it.

Meanwhile the 55# longbow which I've been shooting in is ready for it's arrow plate... the game plan is to cast some old scrap gold into an arrow plate and then inlay it into the bow and add then finally add the leather grip.
One of the guys at the club Mick Maxen is an ace blacksmith and does all sorts of pattern welded steel, if you google that name you'll see some of his stuff.
He's going to let us play with his forge tomorrow to smelt the gold.
I've bought a 30mm x 30mm graphite crucible to melt it in and I've made a mold from steel plate which can be tack welded onto a backing plate to pour the gold into.

I marked out the plate, drilled out the bulk of material and then filed it to shape, it didn't take too long as it's only mild steel plate. I've filed the hole in the plate with a slight draft angle so the gold will hopefully come out... a 4lb hammer will doubtless persuade it if it's being stubborn.

While I've been in and out of the workshop I noticed the big Elder log I cut the other day had started to split (probably drying out too quickly where I'd taken off some of the moss covered bark. I could see it was twisting so I thought I'd see how bad it was. I used the axe and wedges to split it, but it was like a corkscrew... such is life. Some you win, some you loose, and bearing in mind what I paid for the wood , it was worth every penny!
The other smaller piece looked ok, so I used the bandsaw to cut that down the middle, that should help release some of the internal stress and prevent splitting. I think there's a decent bow there once it's seasoned.

Yew Longbow After Heat Tempering

The bow has had a good rest now so I put the string on at low brace and started pulling it back on the tiller. I was pulling on the rope rather than winching it as it gives a better feel.
Pulling it back and forth working up towards 28" my heart jumped into my mouth at one point as there was this horrible sharp noise, but it was just the string snagging slightly as it moved in the nock.
This raises a point as I've recently seen a couple of bows with narrow grooves on the side of the nock for the string to sit in at brace. This is nonsense as the string moves up and round as the bow is drawn and won't want to stay in the groove. Well I didn't have a deep groove, but the loops on my tillering string are big to go over roughed out staves, and one was snagging probably on the edge of the horn nock.
Anyhow this horrid snapping noise always happened at 21" so I ignored it, and slowly got her back dynamically to 28" where she was about 58#. (target weight is 55#)
Theoretically you should never draw your bow beyond it's target weight or length, but a few pounds is neither here nor there. Those few pounds give me room to ease of the slightly squarish corners of the belly which were looking a bit more American longbow than English longbow. There was a hint of a tendency for the bow to be favouring one side, so I eased off the corner more on the opposite edge to encourage it to settle in line.



I've been finishing the horn nocks too.
Pics show how the deflex has all gone, the pith showing on the belly and the nocks which are so translucent you can see the grain of the wood through them.

Bonkers Yew Character Bow

The bonkers bow seems to have survived to full draw. The shape of the stave has lent itself to rather narrow stiff tips reminiscent of the levers on a Mollegabet style bow. There is some ugly deflex near the tips, but at the lower one I can't risk heat straightening it because that's where the glued back patch is.
I'll probably leave the upper tip alone an see how it shoots. The very narrow grip gives a clean arrow fight.

In response to the question on patching, here's 2 pics of the finished belly patch which was a dead flat join (shows in the 2nd patch pic) just to build up a thin point in the stave. Well I call it a stave, but it was just an off-cut from the edge of a half log that looked only fit for firewood.
The patch also helped to brace across a rather large knot. Top right of the pic you can also see a plugged knot.

I've done the nocks very simply, sometimes you'll hear "don't cut into the back of the bow" this is because it will weaken it. Like all these things, it's a good rule of thumb, but done sensibly on a narrow deep tip it's fine, you can see those tips aren't going to be flexing at all.

The video shows a surprisingly good tiller... well it surprised me! It's pulling a bit over 45# at 28" on a lowish brace height, as I used a string I had lying about. The arrow pass is well above the centre line and the grip about centred on the true centre of the bow.

The longbow I've been working on has it's horn nocks done and will get tested this afternoon, or tomorrow morning, having had a while for the heat treated belly to settle down.
Update:- Ive tried the longbow at low brace up to 50# at about 26" so I'm fairly confident it's gained a good few pounds. I won't take it to full draw until I've gone over it carefully smoothing and inspecting and finishing a bit more, that'll be tomorrow when it will also have had another day to re-acclimatise.