Testing the Re-worked Lever bow

 

I tried the re-worked lever bow with some flight arrows, the draw weight is now a bit lower, but the limbs at the splice and levers are lighter. I shot five arrows, mostly at about 280 yards, but one went 313 yards. The best arrows were 27" long at which length the bow is about 60#.
So I'm pretty happy with that distance from a 60# bow. It also shows that the splice can be quite slim and still withstand the shock and leverage. The 28" arrow flew less far than the others, but was a good bit heavier.

Having had one Yew bow explode due to bug damage in the sapwood, I've started another, there are some splits and knots in it, but it's a gorgeous character stave with some natural reflex. I'm going to avoid getting greedy and just aim for 40-45# @ 28", 72" long.

Bug-grrrr

 The big Yew primitive exploded on the tiller while being exercised at about 80#. I was very surprised as a wide thin limb is much lower stress that an narrow thick one.
Anyway I did a post mortem and found some bug damage in the very thin sapwood, there was also an area where the bark had been chaffed through, presumably by a crossing branch, the sapwood there had that blue staining and was noticeably dryer and less waxy than the rest of the sapwood.
I've inspected the other two staves for any bug holes and they seem ok, fingers

crossed.

Big Yew Primitive

I went to a field shoot at Cloth of Gold near Hemel Hempstead  the weather was good for a change (it's been a grim summer so far). As I rolled up there I parked next to my mate Rob who'd brought me 3 interesting yew staves. They were all very nice wood, thin sapwood, nicely defined and dark heartwood, but two were a tad skinny with some tear outs and knots. The third was a half log with a nice waggle in one and and a knot dead centre, that piqued my interest as a big primitive say 80#@ 32" ?
We went off to shoot and I ended up in a different group to Rob, but it's nice to shoot with different people. Our group of 4 had two take down recurves with no sights stabilisers etc, one shooting carbons, the other woodies. The other guy was shooting a Turkish Ottoman style bow using a thumb ring, the bow was glass on wood and very nicely made, ( not one of those cheap Chinese Horsebows, mind they are ok).
I was shooting Twister, my yew primitive.
They all out shot me of course, their flatter trajectories being a considerable help, but when it came to a couple of small targets 6' below our feet and at about 5 yards, I out shot them.
Unloading the staves and having a good look at them, I just couldn't resist starting on the big Yew half log, roughing it out on the bandsaw and then taking the draw knife to the belly. It looked ready for a first try on the tiller, and as I pulled 80# on it the tips moved about 1/4" ! Ha, plenty more wood to come off.

Quick Try Out

The repair to the lever bow has been a success, video here
After that rather long project I felt like a quick try with something that's been on my to-do list for years, a hinged fold up bow.

I bought a couple of stainless steel strap hinges/marine hinges off Ebay and fitted one to an odd miss matched pair of limbs from broken bows. One limb was Ash backed Yew and the other a piece of scrappy Yew, each hinge has three 3/4" countersunk head screws holding it. The purpose of the try out was to see how sloppy the hinge would be and if it would hold a 50# bow. It holds the weight ok, but will need a pin/peg or some sort of locating arrangement to take out some of the slop. The limbs are too mismatched to use as a workable bow, but I may experiment a bit more with ways to get good alignment and maybe grind the hinge down to make it less bulky.

The screws are just "general purpose" but they are twin thread and fairly coarse. I could use a longer screw or go up in diameter.

Smashed or is it?

 I lightened the levers of the lever bow considerably but when I pulled it back on the tiller, the string didn't want to return correctly between the string catcher ears. I carefully removed wood at the tips to get the string returning true and finally tried a couple of test shots. On the third it went BANG... the string had missed the lever and the bow limbs had overshot and bent the wrong way breaking the yew belly. It was a fairly clean break starting at a point where I'd let in a small block to replace a patch of manky black wood on the corner of belly and side. The yew had lifted from the bamboo over an inch or so. Short video showing it being shot successfully, and the detail of the break

On careful inspection I decided to try a repair. The bamboo was sound and the bow hadn't bent too far back, the belly was mostly a clean crack at 45 degrees across. I opened up the cracks by flexing the wrong way slightly and flooding it with Cascamite. By flexing it back and forth the glue was getting pumped into the gaps. The bow was then put up on the tiller and drawn to a slight tension. I could see a slight gap between the bamboo and the Yew so I added a couple of clamps.

The bow has been braced no, but I noticed a little damage to the tip of the top nock. I'll need to re-shape the tips anyway to accommodate the change in string loops which will make the string sit at a different angle.

The Bamboo back was protected with masking tape before I started the gluing, and for clamping I have some plywood blocks that have a nice curve on one face specifically for clamping bamboo backs. The belly side was protected with a scraps of thin plywood.
This morning I tok the bow down and cleaned up the repair, it looks pretty good. I may chisel out a long narrow groove and let in a length of Yew to act as a key across the gap, but maybe not.
I'll probably reduce the draw weight and the experiment with other ways of getting the string to track... longer string loops which run down either side of the levers, being one.

Lever Bow and stuff

 

The lever bow now has horn nock inserts and I've had 3 test shots, it was tough to draw and a reluctance to explode it also came into play... I think I got it back about 25". I was shooting my 11/32" 100gn point arrows and they flew nicely, I didn't measure the distance as it was just test shots, but it looked pretty good. I've since been slimming the tips and the V splice. I took off the binding and re-did it at either end of the V, in the way that, if you were trying to bind two sticks together you'd overlap them and then bind at each end of the overlap. A single binding in the middle wouldn't stop them hinging like a pair of scissors. Video of a test shot

I've cleaned up the Bamboo back, rounded the corners and cleaned up some of the tool marks off the belly. The tiller has been tweaked since the last video in which the left limb was a tad stiff. I can string it with a conventional stringer now which is much more convenient, although the stringer grooves had to be shaped quite deep to allow for the acute lever angle.
The flight arrow I made for a facebook friend didn't seem to do the job being very noisy. My suspicion is that the bow is made for reliability and throwing heavy arrows when roving, rather than flight shooting. Apparently the arrow seemed to match a 90# bow somewhat better.

I've booked in to a field shoot on July 11th which will be my first for over a year, really looking forward to it. I've booked an 8:30 starting slot too, which will hopefully get us away before the compounders start twiddling and fiddling.

The 110# Yew character warbow was handed to it's new owner, but he could only get it to about 27" draw... hopefully by next Sunday he'll be able to work it harder and see how he likes it.

Yew Bow Explodes on the Tiller

 

Damn, having theoretically proved the wood from some logs by making and shooting the billet bow I was working on a slightly heavier one for the guy who brought over the logs. It looked like much cleaner wood but had a waggle in one limb... it turns out the waggle had rather swirling grain and it exploded there at a fairly modest bend at 80#.
Just goes to show you can't really be certain until the bow is finished.

I've finished the 110# @31" warbow and done a nice video showing the character detail