Four friends set out for elk in September in the High Uinta Wilderness Area in Northern Utah. They will hunt the Wapiti with the simplest of weapons, selfbows crafted of osage orange, wooden arrows, and the simplest of broadheads. The hunt will be self-guided, self outfitted, self dependent. This will be the third elk hunt for Kenny and John, the second elk hunt for Steve, and the first elk hunt for Darren. To pay tribute to the occasion, everyone will make something for the trip. Darren is making the arrows, Steve is making quivers, Kenny is making airline carrying cases for the bows and arrows. My contribution is a matched set of osage selfbows.
All the bows will be 66-67" from one string nock to the other. They will weigh in at 60-65# and will be unbacked. They will have rounded bellies, and slightly reflexed tips. They will be somewhere around my 50-54th bows. To see some of the earlier stuff, click the home page link below and go to my "Bowyer Page". The wood for these bows was cut with the friends who will use them last January and February. 3 of the bows will come from the same tree that I cut with Steve in January 2001.
I started the roughout of the bows in December 2001. They were
taken down to one growth ring, roughed out and allowed to rest for two
months. On March 3, 2002, I used a heatgun to induce the reflex and
to straighten out some unwanted curves. Here's a picture of the four
future bows before correction.
We have spliced billets ready to glue up, 2 taken down to floor tiller
and one still in stave form.
I used a heatgun and a bending jig to make the middle two of them come
out like this.
Here's a picture of the process .
The stave you see in the above picture was also taken down to one growth
ring on March 3, 2002. Here'some of that work.
The goal, of course, is to find a bow in the wood. Here's how
we start that, getting centerline. And then drawing the outline of the
bow.
I have 3 young children who seem to want to wake up when I run the
bandsaw at night so that's it for now. Except I need to seal the
back of the stave I took down tonight so that it doesn't check on us.
I use Bull's Eye shellac. This keeps wet wood from drying unevenly
and splitting in places we don't want splits. And even though this
wood was cut more than a year ago, it is still green especially since the
bark was left on.
