Monday 31 January 2011

Odds n Ends

I said good bye to the Yew Lady's bow, she collected it on Saturday with a friend from her club who has a Yew longbow on order with me.
I had a fine time showing off some of my bows and my staves, and the sister stave to the lady's bow was selected to become the longbow which is on order.
They had a go with the Chinese Repeating Crossbow, which is always fun.
I've since heard the bow is performing well and she's very pleased with it.

I've been messing about with the thin Ash longbow I was making for someone at the club, it's a right pain. It ended up thin as there was a split in the stave. I'm heat treating it to bring up the draw weight... I'm only after about 36 pounds at 26" so it should be easy to do, but as we know,
'Easy to do' is easy to say. As I've been heating it a thin split has opened up along one side at a couple of places following the grain along a winter growth ring. This is probably pretty fatal, however it's about halfway through the limb and thus theoretically on the 'neutral axis' where there isn't so much stress... yeah right.
Anyhow, I shall continue with it and fill the crack with epoxy, heated with a hot air gun to help it flow in and then clamp it up, or I may use superglue.
This is going to end up rather experimental so it might end up as firewood or a freebie. I'm not sure I'll want to put my name to it, but if it gives someone a 'learning bow' then that's a good cause.
This isn't enhancing my opinion of Ash, maybe the stave was 'iffy', it's the other half of the piece I used to may the Ash Meare Heath bow which suddenly went out of tiller. It was a great looking stave, but maybe it was flawed.

1 comment:

  1. great stuff Derek, lovely blog, very helpful, keep up the good work.

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