Had a short stave laying on the pile, which I originally roughed out for a kids bow. It had a diagonal hole starting from the back exiting through the side of the stave from a wood borer. I drilled and plugged it with a piece of ramin wood arrow shaft mostly as an experiment to see if I could salvage the piece.
I'd never made a Holmegaard design bow and since I prefer bows on the shorter side, I thought it would be a challenge to shrink it somewhat and layout a 48" version. During the floor tiller stage, the plug started giving way. With the failure, I was close to running the stave through the band saw but, not wanting to give up on this piece I wrapped the limb section with back sinew and set it down for a couple of weeks. Back at it, the bow survived the floor tiller stage and made it to brace height. I swept the tips back a bit and applied 2 layers of whitetail sinew to the back of the bow to have a better chance for reaching my normal draw length.
My decision to salvage the bow paid off. The little Holmie ended up drawing 45# at 25 inches. (1-inch short of my normal draw length but, I feared drawing any farther might slip the string from the pin nocks). I decorated it with a nice set of Prairie Rattler snake skins and a simple leather grip. Full draw pics are with a 25" arrow. Hmmm, it almost looks like I might be able to get another inch out of it!
