St Judes Bamboo Backed Yew Buildalong

Add horn belly,snakewood underlay and final tiller - John Sturtevant

Every year the TradGang at tradgang.com has a little auction to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.  There are always lots of bows.  here is a special one made as a team effort.  Get out your checkbooks in June and be prepared for mor than a couple zeros.  All parts and labor were donated.

The goal for the bow is a Bamboo backed, osage or yew, right and left handed, R/D, 50 #s, 64", exotic handle, power lam and underlays.

Here's the order of donation/work

1) Yew board - Mike Byrge/Tim Clark
2) glue up with Tonkin Bamboo Back - Mike "Wingnut" Westvang
3) tiller to 40s flat belly - JD Jones "Genesis Selfbows"
4) Add horn belly,snakewood underlay and final tiller - John Sturtevant
5) horn tips with string keeper - Tom  Leemenas
6) Leather L/R arrow rest - Dave Bulla
7) Timo - carp skins - Tim Ott
8) finish work - Curtis Kellar
9) Bow sock and string - Dan "Dano" Gren
10) Self nock arrows - Chuck "Skinny Little Runt" Denofrio

February 7, 2006 

We’ll start by sorting thru the horn pile, then splitting them on the bandsaw.

Pile of horn after being split.

Sometimes you can discover cracks in the horn that are not noticeable from the outside.
We won’t use anything but the best horn we have for this special bow.

This is what I’m looking for. Fresh horn that is nice and clean inside.

This is Gemsbuk / Oryx horn. But if we want to call it Unicorn to drive the bidding up, then so be it.
Had a much bigger pile before bow making season started Tom.

Need to clean up the outside of horn before flattening. Dang this stuff stinks.

Before and after clean up. Need to get rid of all the ridges in order to flatten.



Heat gun and a good vise will have the horn flat and the shop smelly in no time.
I like to flatten a small section at a time, and keep the area already flattened in the vise under pressure. If you reheat a section that is already flat it tends to want to go back to the original shape.

Horn flattened with heat, ready for the second round of grinding.

Cleaned up and thinned down some. Need to shape to the limb profile and finish flattening when I have the bow. I’ll pick this up again later when the bow gets here…..and hope we don’t screw it up.


The bow made it, but I’ve been gone hunting. Finally had a little time to work on the bow a bit yesterday.

Now we’ll see if I can keep from screwing up the fine work of masters Westvang and Jones.

This is what we're starting with.


Will record the tiller and make sure I get it back to something kinda close.


Unbraced


Braced

At 28”

Horn after cutting to the bow profile, and thinned ready to glue.

Decided to add a very thin layer of bloodwood, roughly .0314587 thick.
We will be adding weight with the belly lams…..but losing weight when we shape the flat belly into a nice round profile.


We’ll use slime-on for this glue up. I love the way it always ends up on parts of my body that it shouldn’t.

Some of the supplies and tools needed for the glue up.

We’ll use a pressure strip of ¼” polycarb.
2” clamps every 2” or so.

All clamped up and ready for the hot box.


March 2, 2006 - After the initial clean up…..ready to re-tiller.

First bracing with horn.


First pull...Drawn to 24”, weight is 50#

Drawn to 25” after a little more work.

57# at 27”. More work to do this weekend. Mike wanted it between 50-55 I believe...and I think we can do this. Still want to work on the outer limbs a bit to bring them around.

Comparison of where JD had the tiller pre-horn.

Another view.....



Page 4 - Sturtevant's Work Page 2