Saturday 29 June 2013

Stick Bow Full Draw

Ah yes, rushing a bow is always a bad idea! There is however some purpose to this exercise as I have a couple of long and much straighter skinny stick/staves which will be ready in November.
Having roughed it out I put on a string. The top limb was weak and had all the curve whereas the lower limb just about got out of its natural reflex and back to straight.
Half way up the top limb the distance from string to limb was about 4" but on the bottom limb it was zero! The string line was a mile out and it wanted to twist too.
I pulled it back a decent distance and both limbs were flexing.
I didn't put it on the tiller at all, I just drew it up in front of the patio doors and looked at the reflection, sometimes simple is quicker and just as good.
A bit of luck was that the top limb was a bit too long which was putting the geometric centre of the bow a few inches above a big knot which formed a comfortable natural grip.
However lopping a couple of inches of the top limb made the string alignment worse as the bit I cut off was actually wiggling the right way.
Adding a slip of yew offcut to the tip back and side allowed me to move the string line across a bit. An overlay at the other tip will also help alignment.
I've pulled it back to28" and nearly all the bark has popped off, I've shot it too, pretty slow, but it shoots.
The limbs are on the twist, but it doesn't really matter, it's a bow and it shoots.
Like I say, it's easy to make a bow... it's hard to make a good bow.
It shows how forgiving Yew is and that it doesn't have to take an age to make something that shoots. It also shows that something that looks awful can still be recovered into a shootable bow and that you can do a side patch on a tip and then add an overlay to help keep it together and give you something to file a nock into.
Some good lessons learned. I might even slim the handle down enough to put in some bend to correct the string line.
For the record here are some statistics.
Stick diameter at grip 1 3/4 "
Length nock to nock 60 1/4"
Draw weight 40# @ 28" !
It hasn't taken any real set but the string alignment is awful.

Just got the full draw shot, to be honest it's embarassing how good it looks! i could hardly believe it when I saw the pic'. Other pic tries to give some idea of how the flat of the belly is at 45 degrees to the arrow... but hey, it shoots.






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