The next step is to cut her to length. I look for the best positioning
of the handle and make sure I don't have any major problems in bad places.
This is going to be a 65" NTN bow so I leave her at 66.5" to allow for
the nocks.
Now I make sure I have the right ring by chasing it a little with the
drawknife. I always go for the ring above the ring I really want
first. This way I can adjust for any mistakes later and it's quicker
since I don't have to worry about gouging to much. Later, this ring
just pops off the desired ring with a drawknife held bevel down.
If you try that with too much wood above, you will tear and gouge and screw
everything up. With one ring above, ther is no purchase for your drawknife
to tear or gouge. It just cuts and that's what we want.
Here's two views of the same pic. This is the place we got deepest
with the bandsaw. Inside the black circled area is our desired ring.
The red highlight a portion of the ring 2 rings above the desred one just
to show you what to look for when chasing these suckers. More on
that next.
Again, 2 views of the same pic. The different colors highlight
the various rings. Inside the black is our desired ring. The
blue is the next ring. And the red is the next.
One more time. Everything below the black line is our desired
ring.
It's kind of hard to see but sometimes I get lost. An easy way
to make sure you are working the right ring is to chase it just on the
side of the stave. This part will be cut off later so if you really
screw up, no loss. On tricky rings I will chase both sides and then
work my way to the middle.
Here's what we're after so far. A beautiful stave with a nicely
formed backside. MMMmmm. Lovely, ain't it. You'll notice
a string weighted on both ends being use to find our centerline.
On stright grained staves like this one, this part is easy. When
you have a snaky stave, following the grain is the best way to find a centerline.
I am going to lay this one out perfectly straight. I have the longitudinal
center marked also. I will find the straightest point that bisects
the stave laterally and then mark it at the ends, the center, and the place
where I start my taper on each limb. The center part of this bow
is going to be 1.25" wide. That's 5/8" on either side of the taper
start lines. The tips are 1/2", so 1/4"on either side of the center
line. That's all I have to mark right now. But first I have
to decide which end is up, a difficult decision at times, obvious at others.
I like to leave the fewest flaws in the lower limb, mainly because Dean
Torges told me to. This is Dean's design from the Hunting the Osage
Bow book. Find it at Bowyersedge.com
. Buy it. It's the best $20 you'll spend if you want to make
quality bows.