Day Off

My wife and kids have left me all alone for a full 24 hours. Let's see what shall we work on. Laundry? Dishes? Honeydo's? Nah! Let's make some bows!!!!!!!

Here's the goal. Glue the handle on the bamboo backed osage (BBO) on the left. Glue up the wannabe BBO static recurve next. Sinew the pony bow next. Rough out and maybe tiller the sliver osage ELB next and then if I have time, layout and rough out the snaky osage .

3/6/03

1:00

The first step was to cut out and prep the handle piece with a toothing plane blade.

Then I glued it up with some URAC.

It'll cure overnight and then we can tiller it.

2:30

Next I am working on the BBO Static Recurve. I am using instructions provided by JD Jones of Genesis Selfbows. I have always admired his static recurves and he was gracious enough to offer me some advice.
I started by tapering a slat and making the last six inches 3/8" thick. Then I built a recurve form from, what else, a piece of osage :-)

It bends the last 6" into a gentle 90 degree curve. Then I set the slat on to cook. This is one of the reasons that I am glad the wife's not here - hehehehe!

4:30

JD recommends 35 or so minutes. I'll work on tapering the bamboo while we wait.

6:00

After she cooked for 45 minutes, I clamped her up in the jig. I wish I had a picture (or better yet a movie) of me trying to run with a hot piece of osage to the jig and trying to clamp it before it cooled. I used a heatgun to prewarm the jig and metal backing strip and then got all the bend at once. It seemed to have worked well.

I lost about 10% of the bend though.

Still, I am pleased. No splits and it seems to be lined up well.

I spent some time flattening and cutting the bamboo to shape. While I boil the other half, I'm gonna eat and then I'm off to bending the other limb and tapering the bamboo. After that, I'll bend the bamboo with a heatgun and we should be ready to glue her up.

Darren made it over. He's working on a pignut hickory from Flinttim. It's 58.5" NTN and 1.5" wide. Shooting for 55# at 27". That's an agressive goal from a rigid handled bow but it seems to be exceptional wood. We'll see. So far it's looking good and no set at all.

Here's the slat after both sides are bent. I'm getting ready to taper the bamboo and then we'll glue it up.

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