Monday 9 September 2013

Twister 2 and BooYew Gripped

I've got the arrow plate and leather grip done on the BooYew, the inlay isn't quite as tight as I'd normally do because I didn't want to risk popping off the small sliver of Yew which had been added to extend/make up a lack of wood at the splice.
In contrast you can see the grip on the next bow. It's made from the same leather and has developed a richer colour from use. A wipe of beeswax polish will help the process once the bow has had it's numerous coats of Danish Oil.

Twister 2 has been corrected and now balances on the tiller and is beginning to move 45# at about 13". The right limb now appears stiff of course having been shortened by about an inch and a quarter, but it's starting to behave like a bow.

As I'm thinning the limbs I'm in danger of running out of heart wood. The sapwood is fairly thick, especially on the upper limb so I've taken some of that off using my spokeshave. Some people complain that following a growth ring on fine grained Pacific Yew is near impossible, well it's not!
Having used the spokeshave you can't really see the growth rings, but going across the grain lightly with a rasp and a decent North light soon shows them up. I'm not being too obsessive about following a ring across the back, but I'm trying to get all the lines of the rings running evenly along the bow.
In fact having the rings exposed like that makes it easier to follow one ring along the centre of the back. Once this is done taking the other rings down along the edges becomes easier.
It is like reading the contour lines on a map.
I'll try to get a decent photo later in the build, but it's trick to get it show in a photo and I've done enough for now.

Update:-
Just taken a bit more off back and belly of the upper (right) limb. It looks much more even now and I can string it without using the stringer (which saves a lot of fiddling about) it's 45# at 16" now, which is good progress.
That really is enough for today!

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