Hunting a Static Recurve Osage Bow

Here's a page about building an Static Recurve. Enjoy
Go to this page to see the thread from the Leatherwall where I get all my advice.
Go here to skip to the Tillering

Well, Mickey, here ya go!

The vitals:

63" NTN Static Recurve Osage
3.5" Rigid Torges Style (bulbous) Handle
2.5" fades
1.5" wide limbs for 6" tapering to 3/8" wide static tips. The tips are gonna have the center of their bend at 5".
Rounded belly.

This stave is the next-door-neighbor to the one that produced this bow. Read all about the harvest of the tree here.

1/26/00 12:00
Here I am chasing a ring:

Not a word about my reced"ing" hairline or we'll just stop this right now. Keep up with the comments and suggestions from the sages on the Leatherwall. Of course, feel free to offer your own suggestions there or by email. Thanks!

She's roughed out and thinned down so the next step is bending the thing. I'm off to get a heat gun tonight and we're gonna bend it like Gary Davis taught me at the Selfbow Jam in Missouri last summer. I'll get some reflex throughout the whole thing and bend the tips later. See ya'!

January 28 11:00
After discussions with the sages, we've decided to boil the tips in lieu of dry heat. Here's the form I'm gonna use based on a pattern sent to me by Will-MO (Steffen). Thanks Will!

I basically just traced the pattern on to my steaming caul and then chiseled it out. The bend is about 60 degrees. I'm gonna bend it this weekend so I'll see ya' back here on Monday. Then we can start tillering after she dries. Thanks for all the help guys!

1:00

She's shaped and ready to go. I'll bend her tonight or tomorrow and update on Monday. See ya then.

1/29/00 4:00
Well I bent her last night. I boiled her in the stockpot ("NOT MY GOOD STOCK POT" encourages the wife) for 1 hour:

And put her in the form, getting all the bend at once:

And promptly raised a splinter on the first limb :-(:

"Well," I says, "at least I left her wide sos I can get rid of that li'l prollem. Plus I still have the other limb and this IS a learning experience." I think it was caused by the thin rings and not strapping it. I'll definitely do that next time.
So I commence to boiling the other half (after letting the first one cool completely), and have a li'l problem there also:

She cracked a little deeper. I'm gonna see if I can rasp it out. If not, I'll wrap it with sinew and she'll survive...hope, hope, hope!
This was caused by a knot being too close to the bend. The grain was real funky there and it just pulled up. I'll keep ya up to date.

We got a little tip aligning to do also, provided I don't break it beforehand :-)

4:45
I was able to pretty much get rid of the problems, I think. I have plenty of wood left 1/2" wide X 1/2" thick after reasping and cleaning them up. I also tried to correct the misalignment and got a little closer.

It seems I lost a little recurve while doing so though.

This is the diagram Will Mo sent me for my form. As you can see, I lost about 15 degrees of bend. I guess I should of held the bend in while I was realigning them.. I need to know if I should try to get it back when I keep aligning the tips?????? At least the loss is even on both limbs.

1/31/00 9:00
I got the thing starting to bend last night. I'm using Dean Torges' method of faceted tillering and gonna have a rounded belly. I heard a slight click the first time she bent so I am seriously pondering sinew backing the thing now. I hate to take the extra time but I'm starting to like this bow and I'd hate to break it :-) Here's what she looks like now:

1:00

Go to Tillering a Static Recurve for the rest of the story.