Saturday 10 March 2012

Onto the Tiller & Another Knot to Fill!

I put on a loose string and got the bow onto the tiller, I flexed it a few times and winched it back to 40#. You can see the left limb is much stiffer than the right, but there is nothing drastic happening.
I compared the thickness of the two limbs at the six inch intervals and thinned the left limb to match the right one better. I got it on the tiller again and flexed it a bit and winched it back again, it was a bit better so I ran a string down the centre line and marked the taper of the bow again correcting some minor wobbles and narrowing it at the grip a bit from just over 30mm to about 28mm, I narrowed the tips a whisker, but not too much as I want to allow room for any adjsutment of string line.
Back up on the tiller, with a taut string (not properly braced, but no longer actually loose), I winched it back to 45#, took a pic, breathed a sigh of relief and took a break.

Having blown the last bow, I'm a bit nervous and there are still some tiny pin knots which need some filling as they are crumbly.
The last pic shows the nice ripple of knots up the upper limb and the slight natural deflex which give it some character.

If you zoom in on the second tiller pic you can just see I've drawn a smooth curved pencil line along the right limb, this is to help me to see the overall curve of the limb rather than getting distracted by the ripples.

I've been rounding the belly which will generate a bit more movement in the limbs with a view to getting it to somewhere near brace height. I was inspecting all the knots as I went and one big one which seemed as solid as a rock had the tiniest of gaps around it, so I started probing with the tip of a needle file and there was some slight movement.

It soon became apparent that it was one of those blind knots which needed excavating else it would work loose with the flexing of the bow.
I'm begining to loose count of the filled knots on this stave! You can see it barely shows on the back of the bow, but it is a big cavity which penetrates at least 3/4 of the way through from the belly and threatens to appear out the side of the bow through the sapwood!

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