Friday 16 August 2013

Skinny Splice and Monkey Bow

I'm using my last two skinny billets of Oregon Yew to try and make a Bamboo backed Yew for Mick the Blacksmith. I'm not sure if there is enough Yew there, but I've borrowed a trick from a fellow bowyer. If you cut the splice, then steam the forked end, push the two parts together and clamp it up, once cooled down you should have a perfect fit.
Now my billets were so narrow I used the thinnest to be the pointed part of the splice and cut the V of the splice too tight, so that when steamed and pushed together it would spread a bit wider effectively giving me a tiny bit more width.
The steam and clamp trick seemed to work very well indeed. I still messed about a fair bit though trying to maximise the width of the bow at the grip.
You can see from the pic that the splice can't push fully in. Once steamed I could push it fully home.

The Monkey Bow... Ah, I was playing with the worst half of the Elder I'd cut earlier in the year, it's short and deflexed so it will need levers spliced onto the tips. Anyhow I cut some of the wood off the great gnarled knots at the grip and ...Well you can see for your self!

No comments:

Post a Comment