OK folks, I worked on the western community bow today. I cleaned up the back a little more, and then checked the layout lines that juniper junkie laid out on the belly. There was a fairly large defect on the back at one end. Wish I'd thought to take a photo before working on it. The defect appeared to be a chip due to starting the saw cut at two different levels. Juniper's layout assumed that the stave would be left full length, so I didn't want to just cut the affected end shorter and have to lay out the lines all over again. I basically said what the heck, it's only in the sapwood and just thinned the sapwood to below the level of the defect. Then I began thinning the belly at the edges to bring the stave to pretty much a lenticular cross section everywhere but the handle. As near as I can tell from the literature these bows were always thinned at the edges, never perfectly flattened bellies, or round cross sections. By the time I got done the stave was starting to floor tiller pretty good. Attached are some pictures I took before working on the stave. I'm posting email sized versions so the detail is poor, but you can get an idea. I included my latest bow for comparison. My finished bow is mountain juniper from the Mt Lassen area. The finished dimensions are almost identical the the stave Juniper Junkie provided. My bow appears slightly shorter, but that's due the recurves.
I'll work some more on the floor tillering in a couple of days and then I think I'd better send it on to someone else. Ron
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