Hi guys. This post is mostly for turtlecreek who generously sent me plenty of elk sinew to use and this is how I've been using it. I would have posted pics earlier but I was without internet, so here goes.
I was delighted to see this in the post office box!
So I immediately got my hammer and started hittin' and splittin'...and managed to get cussed out by my grandma many times for making so much noise. That board that they're sitting on was not the surface that I pounded them on. I found an old twenty pound free weight and pounded them against one of the ends.
Here we go. All finished and separated roughly by length. I managed to find that one turkey feather one morning when my dog Josh and I where on our 2 hour woods walk.
Here's the baggie of sinew glue chips that I made from the husks.
My next step was to go out and get a stave...
This is what you have to do when you don't have a hacksaw. Good old butcher knife. I later broke the handle on it.
And the shavings....
My dog seems soooo interested doesn't he?
But as you can probably tell in the other pic, the grain on this thing is really twisted. Its even more apparent of this next pic.
This is what made me put this stave in the corner for a while. It was still wet anyway.
About a month or so later I worked up the nerve to try and thin the limbs without causing run-off from that twist. I ended up rasping each of them down. That took about a week of serious doing. But I had nothing better to do
.
There's one limb halfway thinned down to where I wanted them to be. Then I got ready to sinew it up.
My crowded workstation. That old skateboard I'm using I also found on a walk. I smashed it in half later on in a fit of anger.
But that's another story...anyway!
This is what it looked like after a day and a half of drying.
Some time later I put a string on it, and as you can see its got some very stiff areas.
Poor quality pic taken from my phone.
I have since finished this bow and it bending alright now. But I am currently in college, studying hard of course
, and unfortunately, I did't take anymore pics before I left. But when I get back home, I will take the "money shots" and post them up here. Thanks again turtlecreek!
