This is an osage selfbow buildalong. This bow is being made as a team effort by a bunch of bowyers and artisans that hang out at Tradgang.com for an annual auction held to benefit St. Judes' Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude said:
"Build up yourself upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit;
keep yourselves in the law of God,
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life everlasting."
All parts and labor for this bow are being donated. Here's the list of donors:
Terry Uselton ; Original Stave donation (this one was better suited for a diiferent bow so the bowyers deferred to another)
Shaun Webb; Stave Donation
Mickey "The Ferret" Lotz: Layout,Roughing out to floor tiller.
George Nagel: Final Tiller
Dave Bulla: Super Glue stacked leather handle overlay and rests
Tim Ott (Timo): tip overlays and Grass Carp backing
Brian Hallstead (Bigriver): bow finish
Shaun Webb: Handle wrap
Dan Gren (Dano): Bow Sock and String.
David B Kretschmar: Ferret floppy quiver
Nick Theodoratos : Splined Self nocks on arrows
Mickey Lotz is up first.
January 18, 2006
Here's a couple preliminary pics of the stave Shaun sent
Nice huh?
WHERE'S THE BEN GAY?
Bark off
Dry check in 1 end of the stave
Dry checks in other end of the stave (luckily these were only in the sapwood and not the heart wood)
working our way down the stave in a single growth ring
getting close
1 growth ring end to end
the dry check in the first photo goes into the heartwood...we are going to lose 3 - 3 1/2" off the end of this stave
luckily it's 67 " long so we are going to get mayybe 63" of good wood out of it...enough for a rigid handled bow.
January 20, 2006
Ok Bro Randy came over and confered with me on the stave. We can't tell how deep the dry check on the one end goes(it may only be thru one ring) but we decided to layout the bow on the entire stave as we can always shorten it later
I got to tell you the floppy "Bowyer's Rule" is one of the best things I have ever come up with. Makes layout SOOOO easy.
Here you can see the handle box laid out..handle 4" long. 1" wide with 1 1/2" long fades. Limbs are 1 1/2" wide at the fades
I carried the 1 1/2" width to 9" past the fade and then tapered to 1/2" tips
January 21
Went over to Bro Randy's this afternoon and we cut it out to the lines and removed some of the belly wood with his bandsaw
Bro Randy cutting bow to outline
Bro Randy with bow cut to outline
Bow cut side profile
January 22, 2006
Laying out my facets which I do a little differently than Terry. After getting the limbs 3/4" thick I lay out a 3/8" line on both the belly and side of all limbs (3/8" up measured from the back)
Then I rasp a flat between those 2 lines which creates the facets
