Wych Elm Shot In

I took the Wych Elm to be tested today by JD the guy who had brought me the stave, it had a good few dozen through it and was lobbing heavyish regular arrows over the 200 yards with ease. It'd be interesting to see what it did with an out and out flight arrow. It was declared to be a nice roving bow and as such I'll get it finished up. It would probably work nicely as a field shooting bow too.

I'd also taken the crossbow out to try and get some sight marks at 20 and 30 yards.
I was v inconsistent, possibly due to a bit of a back strain, which I exacerbated when pulling out an obstinate bolt.
On the plus side I picked a bag of blackberries.

String Jig

Here are some pics of my jig for making continuous loop strings.
Made from some scrap bits of Dexion, the vertical bit is welded on (badly) but could be bolted.
An S shaped hook of wire (clothes hanger) is also needed to pull one side of the loop down and out of the way while the other side is being served.
Note:- The scraps of string tied to the dexion is just where I've tied the string as I start to wind it back and forth along the jig. It then gets cut off or undone and tied to the other end to complete the continuous loop.

I've just shown one end for clarity, it also shows how the two main lengths bolt together for coarse length adjustment, it will do any string from a warbow to a crossbow prod.
The hooks for each end are wire tensioning bolts with the loops opened up shaped and smoothed.(Other brands are also available)
I may add to this post with more description and illustrations as a resource for people wanting to make one.
I know someone who made a similar jig using that 2 slot shelving support and brackets. (see pic right)
Note fine selection of books :-)

Ha, just found this old sketch from 2011, which may be helpful for anyone who isn't familiar with continuous loop strings.
I don't bother with the masking tape now that I have my jig and my bent wire S hook to keep the two sides of the loop separate
Note:- A couple of extra strands can be laid onto the string where the loops will be whipped, if some extra thickness is required. I do this for very thin flight bow strings which are only 6 strand.

Talking Out Of My Arse!

The patch is done and looks good... but what??? It's on the upper (right) limb???
What's going on??? The lower (left) was the weak one????
A bit of checking of my videos reveals I'd missed out a stage in my explanation, and I was, what's technically known as "talking out of my arse".
The full explanation:-
1. The left limb appeared to have a localised weakness (as seen on the video)
2. I re-heat treated that area, which improved it a bit.
3. Did some judicious re-tillering which got it looking even.
4. Noticed the thin sliver buckling at the pin knot on the edge (mistakenly assuming it was on the lower limb) and glued that.
5. Found the larger buckled area and did the patch.
6. Tiller check shows it looks much better (as per the end of step 3) but needs some tweaking still.


Now all this shows how easy is to get confused as to which limb is which and what you are doing.
I make no apology for this as it is part and parcel of bow making.
It also shows why I so often sprinkle my answers to questions with "In my opinion" and "I don't know, but I think..." etc.

I hope this makes everyone feel better about their mistakes and confusions :-)

Latest video:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alZi4fvO2p4&t=1s

Elm Tribulations

I got the limbs heat treated and the horn nocks done, which narrowed the tips and got the string line just right. Back on the tiller with it and I'm pulling to about 50-60- and the tiller looked horrid the left (lower) limb looked weak just right of centre. I was videoing at the time so you can see it, and hear what I thought.
https://youtu.be/0d1M4mHTpiw

I took it down from the tiller checked everything and it was the right way round ( I had wondered if I had some how reversed it!).
I did a little work to ease off the right limb and get the outers moving more... back on the tiller, looking much better.
Tidying it up some more I noticed a thin little sliver on one edge (about as thick as my thumb nail) had buckled up on the belly, there was a tiny knot on the edge of the bow there where it had started. I squirted some low viscosity super glue in under the sliver, unstrung the bow and bound it tight with rubber strapping while the glue set.
That fixed the problem nicely, I tidied the edge up put it back on the tiller, all was well, until I was again looking at the belly in that area. There seemed to be a blob of glue, or was it buckled wood? Yes, a thin area of the belly was buckling at that point. I was surprised as the bow is relatively low stressed being wide and thin. Had I overdone the heat treating? Was there an existing crack?
Only one way to proceed sensibly and that is to rasp out the area, (including the previous sliver and knot) and have a look.

Yes there is evidence of a crack, a faint line still visible in the rasped out area (running from about 2.5" to the 4" mark on the tape.

Final pic shows the prepared patch (heat treated) lying on the limb to check the fit.

Now this is just my opinion of the cause:- I think there was an existing split/crack /weak point caused when the stave was split.
IMO it shows the value of sawing rather than splitting wood where possible. Personally I'd rather harvest my own wood, but of course we aren't all fortunate enough to have access to every species of timber in profusion! Doubtless the man surrounded by Osage hankers after some  Yew and vice versa :-)
Some wood splits very clean, but even the with the most cooperative wood there will be tear outs and cracks that are generated by the splitting. This stave was pretty thin in the first place (hence the need to build up the belly at the grip)... was the split lurking there, waiting to annoy a bowyer or did it spontaneously spring into being?

In the top two pics you can just see the tiny knot on the top edge where the first sliver buckled up.

I'll update tomorrow when the glue has cured...

Wych Elm Primitive

I've been given a Wych Elm stave to work into a bow. I'm aiming for a wide flat primitive shape with  nice willow leaf shaped limbs, about 80# at 30".
It's mostly sapwood, but once I started working it with a spokeshave I could smell that earthy peppery Elm smell. The figure in the grain also looks like Elm.
It's coming along nicely pulling to about 70# at 23" at a low brace.

I've heat treat it to take out that reflex kink and to prevent chrysalling,hopefully.
Pic on the right shows one limb heat treated.
Note:- The two pics on the left are taken at an angle, so the grip looks left of centre.
There's a couple of videos on my Youtube chanel:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSQasahMT18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VTd3v6kuU&t=5s

Busy Weekend

It's been scorching hot, so I got in the pond, dredged out some of the silt, pulled out some of the Canadian pod weed and cut back some of the reedy stuff. Whilst doing so I found myself staring at a pair of little Froggy eyes... made me chuckle.

On the Sunday I went to the Aurora open field shoot and had a fine time, I was shooting with friendly bunch Joyce, Pete, Terry and my mate Mick the blacksmith. There were two AFBs, an unsighted compound (shot off the fingers) a sighted target recurve and my primitive. They's all shot round on the Saturday already, but two days is a bit much for me.
It was an odd format and scoring with two arrows at each target from the same peg, which is a bit irritating if you hit with the first and miss with the second.
It's hard to judge how well I shot from my score as it wasn't the usual big game system. I think I did pretty well, and actually scored more than Mick, which is unusual, but by his own assessment he was "shooting like an arse".
My best shot was a really inviting peccary/boar/Javelina or some such. The peg was up on the stump of a coppice stool, shooting down into a dip about 13 yards away. Each target had a yellow spot marked to score 11, the inner kill was then 10, the kill 8 and anything else 5. I just knew I couldn't miss as it was pretty much the same range as shooting into my garage when allowance was made for the downhillosity of it. The first shot was a spot and the second about 1/2" away to score 21. Joyce (AFB) was on great form and just kept hitting 'em all the way round. Some of the long shots caught me out as I rarely shoot at those ranges, the damn Lion standing in bracken was very deceptive... had no idea how far away it was and I put two over his back... grrr.
It was pretty hot, but being in a shady wood helped considerably.
Many thanks to the Avalon team for a great shoot all their hard work and keeping us fed and watered. I don't know how they manage to find the energy to run a two day shoot, but they do it with great humour.

On the Monday (or "yesterday" as we sometimes call it), it was scorching hot and I felt at a bit of a loose end. I'd been contemplating decorating the little Elder bow, but din't want to actually copy a Native American (NA) bow. I just went for it with some Acrylic paint doing a simple zig zag on the upper limb and a wavy line on the lower. My wife thought the red was a tad vivid and I bowed to her opinion as my colour vision is a bit off (slight red/green deficiency) and I went over it again with more burnt umber and less crimson. I added a couple of nice blue iridescent Mallard wing feathers that I'd taken from a road kill and a tassel of horse hair gleaned from a barbed wire fence.
I quite like the look, but it's not supposed to be "authentic", it's just a homage to the NA style as us Northern Europeans don't have that tradition of decorated bows (or at least I've not seen any).
Video here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDZlBHcMCE&t=6s

Re-built Bow Finished

The 3 ring per inch Warbow that broke at the splice has now been rebuilt as 60# @ 28". I had some fun trying to see the curve of the bow on the tiller so I had a cunning plan. I stuck pieces of card along the bow and trimmed them to a straight line with the bow unstrung, this gives a good reference for the eye to follow.
I took some video here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0cyp4g9Noc&t=32s
I've also done a video of it being shot into the garage. To get a decent video I've constructed a temporary backcloth which hooks over the guttering, this stops the light sky bleaching out the top of the frame and losing the upper limb. I'd been meaning to do this for ages, and had been looking for a simple solution. An old garden rubbish sack seems to work well to block the light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkC9dNJzbgY
Just out of interest I'll try posting video direct onto here to see how the quality compares.
Ah, the video seems as good, probably 'cos it's all owned by Google now and is actually the same platform... sorry I don't really know what I'm on about but I thought saying platform would be impressive.... platform platform platform... oh dear I've gone all Miranda now... such fun!