Since I'm doing blended knocks some of this will be left on. It isn't particularly important to get exact dimensions during the initial ring chase since it will probably be adjusted and finished with the rasp and scraper later.
One ring at a time I remove two rings just under the tip of the bow. I don't start peeling down the lever and limb until I'm under both rings, but once I am I do not cut all the way through the last ring of early wood. You should try to use the crunchy early wood to get the edge under the hard late wood and lift it off, more like peeling than cutting.
It's difficult to come off a slope like this without cutting the back a little, but since I was using very short strokes to remove tiny amounts at a time I've gone no deeper than my scraper and sandpaper will go later.
As a matter of fact, this is right after a couple of scrapes.
I continue down the back of the bow toward the handle and uncover one of the other reasons I'm chasing two rings: WORM!!!! It only goes through the early wood, and its point of entrance isn't on this bow anymore (it was right beside a lever), so it's nothign to worry about now.
Here I've done a very light scraping around my rings, which are about ten inches from the handle. The peaks are the easiest places to get the draw knife under and get a good peel going for a couple of inches, after which there will be new peaks to go at.
The best closeups I could get hopefully shows the crunchy, rough-textured early wood going under the dense, smooth late wood. The exposed late wood you see was not cut at all, it was lightly scraped. This final layer of wood should be untouched for as long as possible.
I usually try to go up and down the whole bow without doing any scraping or otherwise making contact with the final ring. This allows me to really baby the last bit of early wood off the surface and have the best possible back for my bow.
I only go to the handle from each direction. I've had issues with weird tear-outs in the past, and going to the middle of the bow was what fixed it. Don't know if it's proper practice, but it's what I do.
Just above the handle is the only pin knot I feel the need to be aware of. The grain was, on the outer rings, very interrupted by this thing, and so it needs to be kept mostly intact to avoid grain runoff in the middle of the bow.
I worked right up to it from the nearest tip, and now I flip the stave over and, using very short draws, work toward it from the opposite direction, just pealing the late wood rings away to reveal the early growth around the knot.
Sometimes I scrape with the machete, sometimes with the draw knife. Either way, this is about what it looks like. Try to angle the edge so you're not getting caught on the wood and apply firm pressure while you drag the edge across areas with early wood.
Scrape this-
to get this.
And so we now have a good clean back for our bow. The tips will be shaped with a rasp and scraper from here, giving them good clean surfaces.
The side profile will need to be fixed. I'm going to steam reflex into the upper limb (which I'm holding here) to give the mollegabet a reflex-deflex profile, which will be slightly easier on the inner limbs and otherwise look pretty sweet.
I've had it by the fire, which would have been disastrous if I hadn't sealed the ends and intended to chase rings. As you can see, none of the exposed ends have checks.
What I'll do now is reduce the limbs to that darker ring you see. I'm not sure what weight that'll give me, but it shouldn't be less than sixty pounds if that were the final fade-limb transition.
