BBY Longbow Gets a Work Out

The longbow shoots really well and fast too, it was a drizzly day but I went up the club and got some good shooting.
18 3D targets, well 17 really as I couldn't be arsed to do the last as I was tiring and I'd have had to wait to climb up a muddy mound as I was shooting with a group of mates and only one could get up there at a time.

The pic shows my last shot of the day. First arrow inner kill mind it was only at about 18 yards. I took the laser range finder so some of the guys could have a try of it. Not allowed to use anything like that at a real shoot of course, but it was interesting to check out our distance estimating skills, which turned out to be pretty good.
I'll fiddle and fettle the bow a whisker, get it on the tiller to check the poundage then do an arrow plate and grip.

Dunno if you will be able to see the arrow trajectory in the video...
I've had it on the tiller and it's about 44#. I must be below par fitness wise as it feels heavier than that, maybe the early draw weight is high. I'll have to measure the speed, see how it compares with other bows.
I've chrono'd it. I only shot 3 arrows:-
163.9
156.5
166.7
That confirms what I suspected... It's fast.

I had a few shots of the flight bow, it was disappointing, maybe it's over built and is really a 50# bow in disguise, or maybe I was just under drawing it...

First Test Shots BBY Longbow

Whew At last I've got the longbow shooting, I've had endless tweaks to get it behaving, but it seems very fast.
I'll try not to count my chickens before they are hatched though.
I put some masking tape round the arrow pass and shot it right handed, it seemed much faster than the flight bow, but then it it about 50# as opposed to 35#. Seems very smooth too.
I'm leaving it strung for a few hours and shooting more arrows through it to get it shot in.
There's a slight ping on a knot near the grip in the belly of the lower limb, I'll just keep and eye on it to make sure it stays stable. Pinches at knots are fairly common, a knot has a hard core and a thin layer of bark like substance, it';s like a branch growing through the parent wood. The bark has no real strength and will compress causing the wood covering it to buckle and form a tiny ridge. I've seen warbows where every knot had a pinch yet it was fine. Because the belly is in compression it's not a problem. However, if the bow was bent the wrong way the pinch would just crack open, mind bending a bow the wrong way is likely to break it anyway.
I've shot 40 arrows through it now.

I've been working on the flight bow too, getting the limbs coming back a tad more, especially the right one by reducing the belly mid and outer limb, also and taking some weight off the tips. It seems to shoot very true and it would be nice if I could tease it out to my usual draw length so I could use it at field shoots.
I might take it up the club tomorrow and see how how it shoots.

Major Clear Out and Log Prep'

My mate Mick the Blacksmith came up with a haul of Yew from a tree surgeon he knows.
It's been lying on the garage floor and with that and the other stuff I can hardly move...
Time for a clear out. I took all my old golf kit, put it into storage and had a good tidy and sweep.
Then I tackled the Yew logs, I'd already split one short fat one into two nice 4'6" lengths (they are the two on the top).
Some of the others were a tad thin to try and get two staves so ran 'em through the bandsaw taking about 1/3 off the width, cutting away the 'bad' side. Some of the off cuts are clean enough to become Yew sapwood backings. The ends have all been painted with PVA ready to get up on my shelves tomorrow.
Having had a good clean up I'll be able to have a nice clear run at finishing the two bamboo backed bows I'm working on.

The flight bow is drawing about 35# at 23". I'll be easing off the tips and narrowing them, trying to get it back to 24" or maybe 26". I have shot it and it feels fairly quick with my 'standard' arrow. I videoed it, grabbed two stills and combined them so I can see how the limbs move from braced to full draw. It looks like the right (upper limb) needs to work a little more.

The 50# bow will have a good clean up, then I'll start shooting it for about 75 arrows and then I'll look at the weight. (I'm chickening out of putting it on the tiller until it's shot in)I've been discussing (moaning) with my brother who asked about the patch and what the draw weight is. He laughed when I said "I dunno, it is what it is. Nothing I can do about it now!" I'm expecting about 48# but as I explained to him, with most bows you are looking at about plus or minus 5# on the stated draw weight and I've seen plenty that have been plus or minus 10#.


Worst was one bloke showing off his 100# bow at the club, one of us old guys drew it with ease, I then had a go and told him it wasn't even 90#... he later measured it at 80# !

Whew!

I'd got the patch done last night, took the strapping off this morning before going to work and roughed it down a bit.
Home from work I've bended it in, strung it and it looks good, a little work here and there and I went for it a good full draw, it felt smoother and I was more confident. maybe I'm being fanciful or maybe I could feel that small knot binding up before.
Actually there was a pair of knots one going out to each side from the centre. You can still see a hint of the "good" one to the left of the patch.
Lower left in the pic is the start of the grip and you can see the darker wood where it's been heat treated. I didn't get a perfect grain match, but I was keen to use some of my fine straight grained Yew.

I feel I can press on now and get it finished. I'll be sure to give it at least a hundred arrows before I declare it fit for purpose. Once it's all polished and waxed it will look great with a relatively clean lower limb and some nice features on the upper. I Haven't measured the draw weight, but my guess is about 48#. The bow still has some reflex at the tips and a tiny whisker of set on the inner limbs, it seems to weigh nothing and I'm hoping it will be fast.

As it's for a left hander I may make a thumb ring so I can shoot it right handed but with the arrow on the right of the bow (as it will be for a left hander). The thumb release kicks the string the opposite way to the three finger (Mediterranean) loose.

NOTE:-
The lateral bend returned despite all efforts.
In the end I sawed it in half, re-aligned it and made it a take-down, see later posts.

Loads of Work

Both bows are progressing nicely.
The 50# longbow is behaving it's self now and I'm now doing the horn nocks.
My first test after the heat treating and minor sideways correction showed it pulling 40# at 24" . Some arithmetic shows this works out at about 49# at 28".
There was a funny noise coming from the bow, which is why I only took it to 24", but I think it was just the temporary nocks snagging the string, I cleaned 'em up and simply drew it to 28"...
Sweet as a nut!
I'm moving the top nock down about 1/4", it may help the draw weight a whisker and will just balance the limbs a tiny bit better... to be honest it's more about fiddling than logic. It takes out a tiny bit of the knotty area on that limb, which will look rather fine when it's polished up. The top limb has all the character in it, the lower limb is cleaner.

The RD Flight bow is looking good, I still had to do a slight sideways/twist correction one one limb. I have plenty of tip width to play with to tidy up the limbs to match the string line but it's pretty good now.
the pics show it braced, the string line and how I jigged it up for the slight sideways correction. I pushed the limb tip across about 3/4" and after correction it had settled down to about 1/4 - 1/2" shift.
You can see how the side pieces of hardboard contain the heat and direct it along the belly.

Hopefully I'll press on this afternoon and get the horn nocks done on the longbow and get it cleaned up ready for some testing.

Just got the top nock done. I couldn't resist buffing it up to see the feature knot.... mmmm nice.

For pities sake! Some bows are more trouble than they are worth... I put it on the tiller, just working up to 28" and I hear a CRACK! I let it down quick.
At first I thought the sound was one of the handle blocks popping, but close inspection revealed there's a fracture on the belly by a knot. Damn,
The bow is still sound, it didn't collapse, that's the beauty of Bamboo backing, it holds it all together.

I've rasped out the offending knot/crack over about a 3" length and down to about 1/3 the depth of the belly. I'm going to cut a suitable patch, heat treat it and glue it it... one hell of a lot of work. It will be a great bow when it's finished but one that I almost wish I hadn't started!
I've got the patch made and heat treated. I'll glue in on in a minute when it's cooled. I have a theory that maybe the heat treating and lateral correction stressed one of the small knots, because that's the area where both heat treating and lateral bend were done. I'll make sure the bow is clamped up nicely in line when I strap up the patch.
I'm sure it will all turn out fine... it's just odd how some bows almost make themselves and other you have to drag 'em kicking and screaming into a finished bow.

Two Steps Forward One Step Back

The Bamboo backed Yew longbow has gone back a step while I heat treat the belly. I removed the handle block, not without some poor decision making in the process. (Note to self... use bandsaw not chisel!)
It had taken the merest hint of set over the middle of the bow (just 1/8" or so) so I clamped it down with about 1/8" of reflex mid bow just to pull out the set whilst heat treating it.

The main reason for removing the grip block was so that I could get the heat treating right in under the grip, but keeping it off the actual splice. I taped a thin off-cut of Yew over the glue area of the splice and carefully clamped slats of wood to the sides of the bow to keep the heat onto the belly and off the splice.
Anyhow, that was all done and a new thinner longer handle fade block glued on. That's nicely cured this morning, and I'll add another thin build up block for the grip today.
The result of all this messing about is the bow should be substantially stiffer in the centre section and have a more gentle fade from limb to handle. It should make the 50# at 28" that I wanted.
All a lot of work, but I've learnt some new stuff about heat treating backed bows and lateral correction. Someone has asked what glue I use to survive the heat treating... the whole point is you keep the heat away from the glue line... but for the record I use Resintite.
I've added the diagram to show how the side cheeks keep the heat off the glue line and back. The great thing about this set up is that the heat is directed along the channel formed by the side cheeks and gives a more even heat over a longer area, this also speeds up the proccess. You can feel the hot air blowing out at either end of the channel showing that it is going where you actually want it. (in the diagram, Orange is the belly, Yellow the backing and blue the side cheeks, these are clamped on with G clamps)

While I was in a gluing frame of mind I made a former for the RD Bamboo backed Yew flight bow.
It was sawn from 3/4" ply, done as two halves and screwed together with a couple of side cheeks at the join. Blimey what a struggle clamping and binding it to shape, a bit like wrestling a Python. I didn't go mad with the reflex and opted for gentle curves as I didn't want to risk fracturing the belly as it pulled into shape.
The Bamboo backing was taped onto the belly with masking tape to hold 'em together while I strapped it up (visible in the lower pic), a few temporary clamps were applied too.
I had to cut a whole load of extra rubber strapping and I was tired out by the time I'd got it all done, I was also dying for a pee, hungry and wanted to blow my nose.
Once I'd seen to those minor distractions I thought I'll take a pic for the blog... Good call.

It really shows the value of the blog as, while taking the pic I noticed the alignment was all to hell!
The former is rather long and only of 3/4" ply so it has little resistance to sideways bend or twist. The force applied to the rubber strapping had put in about 1/2" of sideways misalignment and a bit of twist.
The glue has a good long pot life of a couple of hours, so it wasn't a problem to fix a clamp to the bench and to pull one end across and into line. A sash cramp at the other end was supported and blocked up to take out the twist.
Whew, what a relief... if I hadn't spotted that, I'd have been struggling to re-align and de-twist the bow.

First Flexing

The pic and video show it flexing to 28" at about 45#, nearly finished.
Hopefully I'll get the draw weight up to 50~ and tweak the tiller to get it a bit prettier.
Here's the story of how it got there.. it was a bit of a struggle!

I glued on some temporary nocks, adjusted my string to give a low brace height and tried to string it.
I could feel there was decent poundage there, but also the bow was trying to flex sideways, groan...
Lateral instability can be a problem with longbows or bows with thin tips. It's not helped by the way I tend to rough 'em out square e.g near the tips the bow is as wide as it is thick so it doesn't really have a preferred natural direction of flex.
I took the string off without letting it go sideways and took a good bit of wood off the corners where belly meets the sides, this removes a little poundage but makes it more inclined to flex towards the belly. It also gives the rounded belly expected on a longbow.
The irony is that at a high brace the bow is forced to bend the right way, or on a long string it is being pulled the right way. It's at a low brace it is most likely to try and flip sideways.

I increased the brace height and it was flexing ok but still trying to go slightly sideways. The upper limb also seemed much stiffer than the lower for no obvious reason.... damn!
Hmmm, all a bit stressful, but fortunately I have a host of tricks and techniques learned over the years which are applied one at a time to slowly remedy things.

Moving the nocks across by rasping away one side at the tip helped improve the string line but the bow was still biased a little to one side. I clamped it up with a slight sideways bend to compensate and heated the belly a little. This worked in getting it drawing nice and straight.
The stiff upper limb is probably due to some knotty areas in the Yew wood belly which tend to stiffen it. Rasping a little extra off got it nicely balanced... Whew!
But now the bad news... groan... the draw weight is lower than I wanted, it's about 40# rather than the 50# I want. Mind a little below 50# will probably be ok if it's a good fast bow, after all it's performance that matters not brute poundage.
Still, no need for panic, there are still a few trick remaining!

I always make bows a couple of inches longer than I really want and cutting an inch off each limb will give me another couple of pounds. This has been done and the video taken... the still is a frame from the video.
I can also heat treat the belly a tad (maybe just on the lower limb).
Heat treating will need doing with great care to avoid heating the glue line of the backing. I have a technique for this where I clamp thin slats of wood to the sides of the bow, this confines the heat along the belly and protects the back. This can give another few extra pounds an stiffen up a couple af areas that are flexing too much.