Saturday 8 June 2013

Repair Done

The strapping came off this morning and I carefully rasped the patch down to roughly conform to the bow, then it was a bastard file, 2nd cut file and finally 240 grade wet or dry paper. It blends in nicely.
Inspecting rest of the bow, it seemed in good order, the colour has darkened a bit and it's taken a bit of set.
I shot 5 arrows to give it a test and it felt as if it had maybe lost a couple of pounds, it certainly shot clean and true.
I went over it lightly with wire wool soaked in white spirit to take off any beeswax polish, I'll give it a couple of coats of Danish Oil and then a wipe of beeswax polish. There was a little dink on the sapwood on one edge near the tip, but the old 'back of a hot spoon' trick lifted that out. I also fussed over a couple of tiny marks with a bit of wet or dry paper.
I'll shoot it in a bit more and get it finished, it will look as good as new, or maybe a tad better now it's matured in colour.

The pic lower left shows how the patch has a hint of heartwood in it and you can see how I've tried to get the flow of the grain right to match the undulation in the bow.
The pictures have a dark background, this is because if they are shot on automatic setting the sapwood just bleaches out as white and you can't see the grain. It's quite tricky to get shots showing the grain in the sapwood.

No comments:

Post a Comment