Monday 25 February 2013

Straighter

The stave has been unclamped now, it hasn't taken the bit of reflex I'd hoped for but it's pretty much straight now in both directions so I'm pretty pleased with that.
As I took the straps off it sprung back a good deal and I was a bit worried it hadn't taken out the deflex on the second limb. Looking closely, it's actually the first limb that still has a bit of deflex, mind I didn't bend that one quite so much.
It's tricky heat bending yew as it can have a good bit of spring back when you're bending a fairly thick section.
If you compare the pic with the one from a couple of posts back you can certainly see the difference. You can also see the temporary nock filed in for tillering.

I got a lift up the club yesterday for the end of month shoot, it was bitterly cold but most enjoyable.
The three of us shooting were gong round in an un-spectacular fashion until we had a break and started round the 15 targets for the second time, we slowly seemed to settle into a groove and suddenly we were smacking 'em in first arrow. A couple of times we had 3 first arrow kills with all 3 arrows touching it was uncanny. I always feel it better to start poorly and finish well.  The last shot was a tiger at about 50 yards? we all managed to hit it which was better than first time round.

Update:-Now the stave it's straighter and it's roughly to size i can really look at the problem areas.
It's pretty clean really but there is a knot near one end. I had a chap with the guy I'm making it for yesterday and he's a tad shorter than me, I'm 5'10" so I obviously don't need the full 74" of stave I have at the moment.
So I took the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and sawed a good bit off one end leaving the knot hanging off the tip and beyond where I will re-cut the temporary nock.
On the one hand it's good to have some spare length, but if it's not taken off at some point you find the bow has progressed so far you are reluctant to shorten it and it then is a bit longer than you'd really wanted.
The other pics show a couple of knots, one on each limb, they aren't big enough to be a real problem, but you can see how loose they look, with that ring of black manky stuff round them (presumably that's sort of rotted bark?). So I'll pick 'em out and peg 'em... funnily enough, they are pretty sound, I picked out the ring of black, but it only went in about 3/16" so I've just filled it 'em with epoxy sawdust mix.

I've run a taut string down to create a new centre line too and trimmed it up around that, about 30mm wide for 4" either side of centre than tapering to about 20mm at each tip. That sill leaves me a fair bit of wood to play with.
This afternoon I'll tidy the back a bit and get the belly down a bit, check it's an even taper and hopefully get it flexing to about brace height on the tiller.

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