Nearly Finished & Arrow Impact

I got it back to 80# at 29" this morning which is certainly close enough. I've been sanding it down and got the first coat of Danish oil on it. I've shot a few arrows at a full 30" draw which was pretty impressive and hard work. I used my 3/8" 'pretend medieval' arrows. It banged 'em into the target very solidly.
I'll get the arrow plate done tomorrow and try it for distance on Saturday probably. Here are some pics.
It's taken a little set, but bear in mind it started off with slight deflex on the lower limb and a huge deflex on the upper before steam bending, so I feel it's about right.
Top pic shows the overall view and the slight deflex on the upper limb (see also bottom pic). 2nd pic shows a nice pink blush on a knot near the grip and a little of the central pith showing.
The bottom nock looks good with a streak of brown in it. The sapwood is less clearly defined down by the lower nock.

I've been getting nicely into the bow, once I stopped clenching my teeth and gripping the bow so hard it became easier. Also breathing in and pushing out my bow hand gave me more draw and I could watch the arrow back to the 30" mark (a bit of masking tape on the shaft).
I decided that it would be good to video the arrow strike.
This should help put to rest the old question "Can an arrow knock over a knight in armour?", or "knock him off his horse?"

Now before people throw up their arms in protest... yes, I realise this is only an 80# bow and not a full weight arrow... BUT the target boss only weighs 10 pounds. (A bloke would weigh about 170 pounds and you could add maybe 50 for the armour.)
And yes I know it's a very unscientific test.
Now watch how far it is knocked back! Turn the sound up to maximise the thwackosity!

The whole point is that some of the fast serves in tennis are faster than a warbow arrow and the ball is about two ounces (about half the weight of the heaviest arrows). But if we consider a cricket ball, its heavier than a war arrow. and isn't too much slower from the fastest bowlers.

You can play with the arithmetic and physics all you like, but the answer is still no!
Ok it my cause someone to fall over if they are off balance in the first place but it will be more due to the injury more than the physical impact. I could put something more solid in front of the target, but it would just make it harder to extract the arrow. If you don't like my test, pretend it's an un-armoured body not a knight... maybe a politican?
Note:- the piece of wood and foam in front of the target is to stop it toppling forwards and potentially breaking the arrow.

Here's the thing... I know it will be a shock... the arrow does the damage because...
It's pointy!
That's why they didn't have tennis balls on the end of the arrows at Agincourt!

Near as Dammit!

I'd done some fiddling and fettling going over the belly with a cabinet scraper and blended in/narrowed the tips some more, which I was hoping had got it nearly back to 28"
I made a decent string last night and gave it a go this evening. (A great antidote to a day in front of a computer).
I warmed up on the spliced Yew, then my trust old 70 pounder.
Dunno if I got a full 28" draw and it was hard work but it gave the bow some exercise and stretched in the string, mind with AstroFlite it doesn't stretch much, the brace height only dropped about 1/4"
I'd only shot 3 arrows, but it's a wise man who knows when to quit.
I then got it on the scale and there it was 80# at 28".
Excellent!The last couple of inches of draw to reach 30" won't need much material removed as the bow will be setting in. It will mostly be shooting it in to get 100 arrows through it and fussing over it with the cabinet scraper and sanding it.

I've been chatting with my mate JT on E-mail who explodes a fair few warbows and it dawned on me that one problem may be that they are often not really shot in before being handed over.
He had one that lost a huge amount of draw weight and took some set, despite apearing to be perfectly tillered and superb wood... just shows you can't tell how a bow will perform.
I made him a 130# Yew bow a while back and he's slowly worked into it and is now back to a full 32". He's noticed a few little pinches at pin knots on the belly and he's going to bring it over for me to have a look.
Effectively he's taken a year to get it shot in and hopefully it's just slowly settled into full draw as indeed has he!
It begs the question what was the life of a warbow in medieval times? I won't be daft enough to even hazard a guess... there are plenty of 'armchair experts' to do that.
Mind they had a good supply of Yew and very experienced bowyers, still they must have had a few go bang at inopportune moments...
Maybe in battle the cry of "BOW" would bring a lad scurrying along the line with a replacement... who knows?

Nocks Done, Tiller Improved

The picture speaks for itself really... the nocks aren't polished up yet. It's now at 80# @ 26 1/2" at a 6" brace. Back to work for a couple of day, should get it all the way back and shooting over next weekend, looking forward to trying at 30" with a flight arrow.

You can see the tips are slimmer than the last pic, they have been tapered width wise too. It's pretty much an arc of a circle.
I'll just keep tidying it up, and easing off mid limb and tips to let the last few inches of draw slowly emerge.
I couldn't resist buffing up the top nock, it also shows the remnants of the filled knot which is a nice feature. The nock blends into the tip of the bow, and isn't too sharply pointed. I try to shape it to respect the original shape of the horn. The key is that it should be in keeping with the rest of the bow, neither too big nor too small, even the colour is harmonious. A big black horn nock shaped like a damn chess piece would spoil the subtlety of the whole thing.
At a practical level, a well blended nock allows the string to be slipped on easily. Next job is to make a string so I can fine tune the nocks to allows the string to sit nicely. At the moment I'm using my tillering string which has huge loops and is adjusted for length by threading it through the aluminium ring  1/3 of the way along the right side of the string.

Back to 80# at 23"

I got the pond finished yesterday, which was a fun way to spend a sunny day.

It's worked out well as its raining off and on today so I've been working on the bow.
The back has been gone over with a scraper and I've re- checked the string line and narrowed the limbs a bit more. The thickness has been checked along each limb, they've been thinned a good bit and the belly rounded.

The brace height has been increased to about 4 1/2" and it's pulling 80# at about 23".
(last post it was 19" from a 2" brace, so it's moved on a good bit)
The tiller is looking a bit better each time I work on it.
The left (lower) limb is a bit stiff in the outer half, but the right is looking pretty good.
This poundage interpolates to about 110# at 30" so I've still got a fair amount to remove.
Removing wood to get the tiller right will move the draw length inexorably onwards. Once it's near 26-28" I'll put the horn nocks on.

Update:- 4pm. It's now back to 80# at just over 26" which interpolates to about 93# @30" so you see I'm getting closer. The tiller is much better now, the left is flexing more on the outer and the slightly stiff bit mid limb on the right is coming round.
It's taken a little set, but it had some deflex in the middle of each limb to start with, not to mention the big deflex on the upper limb.
Looking good. Might get the nocks on tomorrow.

Bows, Ponds and Wood

It was scorching hot yesterday and a man's fancy turns to messing about in the pond when having a break from the bow. One edge of the pond has old Oak fence posts lying flat along it with limestone boulders resting on them. One of the posts was a tad low to the water and had rotted away to almost nothing, the boulders were in danger of slumping into the water. Excellent fun standing upto my knees in the pod removing the boulders and old Oak post.
In the woods near me there are some fallen and felled trees, I thought two of 'em were Oak... nope, one was Willow, one was Ash, I couldn't tell from the bark and it was only when I'd sawed through I thought it didn't smell right for Oak and was a tad pale.
I finally found a fallen Oak limb, a bit small and a bit rotten round the outside, but it will still last longer than Willow of Ash... mind the Willow would probably have sprouted! It's surprisingly dificult to identify a tree, the clue with the willow was that the two adjacent trees look like Oak until you looked high up into the canopy and saw the leaves, these where down near the stream. The other tree that had been felled was higher up in the woods ... no Willow there, adjacent trees were Oak, but there was a lot of Ash and Maple too. Just goes to show how tricky it is.
A big thunderstorm last night has raised the water level in the pond a good few inches and washed the remaining boulder into the pond.

Enough of my woodland/pond rambling, back to the bow.

I filed stringer grooves in the tips and got it to a low brace (2") it was hard work getting that first brace. The bow is still way over weight, but the string line looked good and both limbs are flexing. I'm narrowing the tips a bit more and reducing the limbs more, measuring up for an even thickness taper and reducing/cleaning up the sapwood.
I don't s'pose there will be startling progress today (gotta go shopping... groan), I've just had it back on the tiller after some work and it's 80# @ 19" from the 2" brace.
I can take the brace height up a bit as I keep working at it.

I'm keeping the bow fairly wide for a warbow look, but it's being slowly narrowed a bit as I progress. One worrying knot on the corner of belly and side has all but disappeared and a loose knot very near one tip is being pegged... I'll try to avoid chopping my finger when I make the peg this time.

Maybe an update later, or at least some more pics tomorrow.

Steaming Ahead.

I did a lot of work yesterday. It's funny how the rate of progress seems to increase as the stave comes down to a more manageable size. It's mostly because there is less bulk of wood to remove and it's also easier to see what's going on. That's not to say I rush at it, some people would probably find my progress frustratingly slow.
The more I worked it, the more I realised the deflex at one end was downright ugly and being asymmetric would make the tillering tricky and bow would look odd. I thought about dry heat vs steam and opted for steam in the end. I got it done yesterday evening which gave it overnight to cool down and settle whilst still clamped up.(An hour would have done, but it's easy to mess with heat bent wood or glued wood too soon... better leave it overnight to prevent impatient fiddling!)

A good deal of care and preparation is required and even then things don't go to plan. I had about 2 1/2" of bend to take out, but I didn't want to go mad and overdo it as the other end has a slight deflex and I wanted it to match.
After half an hour of steam I could push the tip across with hand pressure, so I clamped it across and left it for another half hour (the steamer will run for about an hour before running out of water and switching itself off). I went back later to find the steam hose had come out and was lying on the floor.
Taking the clamp off, I could see I'd taken out about 1 1/2" of bend... not quite enough. So, having got it all set up it wasn't much trouble to put in some extra packing pieces to adjust it so that it could be clamped up with another inch of deflection. I gave it the full hour, and you can see the result in the final pic (the end that had the bend is at the top of the pic).
The whole episode is fairly typical of heat bending, it often takes a couple of goes, and it doesn't hurt to ease the bend in rather than trying to force a big correction in one go.

I've taken an inch off the knottiest end and filed in some nock grooves for a long string. I put it on the tiller and heaved it back to 80#. It looks pretty good, it's certainly flexing. Some people wonder why I heave it to full target draw weigh straight away.
There's a full (but possibly boring) explanation here:-
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/yew-stick-bow-and-draw-weight-to-brace.html

BTW:-
In the pic at the top of the page, you will see a round wooden disc on the floor to the left of the bench.
That's a "tuit"...
As I said,...
I'd do the bending when I got "a round to it"
(groan... sorry... having seen it in the pic I coudn't resist)

Getting to Know the Yew Stave

Funny stuff Yew.
I did a little work on de-barking and reducing the sapwood at the fair the other weekend. One kid asked why is it red? He was taking about the sapwood which shows the grow rings as alternating creamy and reddish pink. I gave him a full honest and expansive answer...
"I dunno. 'Cos it is!"

At one end of the stave the darker rings predominate and the distinction between heart and sap is a bit vague, the sap wood is still definitely softer and creamier than the crisp heart wood, but at the other end of the stave it's much more the typical pale cream and even softer still.
The belly  side of the stave is lovely crisp heartwood with the central pith of the log showing in places. It's always good to that in the centre of a stave , it's a good indicator that its laid out sensibly.
I've roughed it down to a fairly even layer of sapwood that's vaguely following a ring. I can get a better feel of the stave now and maybe mark it out further and reducing it with the draw knife.
One great improvement from working at the show is I've sharpened the drawknife.
Its easy to forget a tool will loose it's edge especially on something tough like Elm or when used edge on as a giant scraper. I've been trying to improve the edge ever since I got it as there was a nick in centre of the blade. I have a really coarse blade on the belt sander at the moment, so I used that to make the bevel angle on the draw knife a bit more acute and to take more off the outer ends of the blade to help get it more even. It had been ground away a bit in the centre where the nick was. I didn't let the belt sander actually tough the cutting edge, that was sharpened using a variety of oil stones.

The stave is a couple of inches longer than I need, but I'm leaving it until I can see exactly where the bow lies. Even then I may leave it, as it's difficult to put it back on once its sawn off.
I'm well motivated with this bow as it will a good weight for me and I noticed the other day that the grass in the meadow on the flood plain has been cut so I'll be able to test it for distance with some flight arrows.
The final pic shows the end with the nicer sapwood nearest the camera. The deflex at the far end is clearly visible. I may take this out with heat once the bow starts to flex. It's much easier to tiller a bow that is symmetrical, mind a bit of deflex doesn't hurt.

Here are some pics. I should make some good progress over the next few days.