Saturday 10 April 2010

More tinkering

I've been slowly working on the Cherry/Ash bow,it's going to be a weird mixture a sort of 'laminated stave bow'.
A normal laminated bow would have the laminations glued up either as straight blank or glued using a former to give some shape, (recurve at the tips with maybe a little deflex at the handle).
With this bow, I'm tempted to laminate it 'as is' so that it retains the shape of the stave where it was cut to follow the grain (ok I did steam it a bit to adjust the shape) It will end up looking either like a natural stave or a very badly made laminated bow!
I spent an hour or so working the back of the stave with a fine rasp to get it flat across the back (but still undulating along its length) suitable for gluing.
There are lots of small knots which have become lose, I'm poping them out and glueing in pegs made from the same Cherry wood.
The stave itself isn't the best and has a longitudinal crack in the handle area (near where the centre of the log was, longitudinal cracks shouldn't be too much of a problem).
The whole thing could end up being a disaster as I'm aiming for a highish draw weight from a short bow.
Hmmm I s'pose I'd better put some figure on it. Let's say 50 pounds at 27"?
now this is pushing it for a 50" bow (draw length= half the length is a reasonable figure). This is all rather optimistic, but deliberately so, as it will give me a feel as to the limits of the materials.
I seem to have tons of stuff to do and no time, my cold is pretty much dissipated, but I'm still a tad fuzzy.

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