The stave this bow is made from was a gift from my good friend Erik from Pinaka Longbows. He has tons of good bow wood and makes a habit of giving me the "marginal" pieces. You don't hear me complain;-)
This stave was very straight and only has some pin knots. The only drawback was huge rings and about 1.5 inch of sapwood. The sap rings where so big I could chase them easily with only my drawknife, no scraper needed. Left only two sapwood rings on the finished bow.
I wanted a simple, little lighter weight bow for the upcoming 3d season and decided to make a simple flat bow with flipped tips just for looks and smooth draw.
Tillered the bow to brace and after that boiled the tips and set them with dry heat. There is still some minor twist in the limbs but not enough to bother heating it out.
Added horn tip overlays and arrow pass and started shooting it in. Had to tweak the tiller a bit after 200 arrows or so and called it done.
The handle was just a little to thin but I did not want to flatten it (and thin it even more) to glue on a piece of wood so I build it up with cork and sanded that into shape.
The bow came out very clean looking (read boring to me) so I decided to try to fume it. Had it in the fume pipe for about a week and it came out almost green looking! Luckily this changed to a darker brown after another week of drying. I really like that the fuming did not affect the sapwood. I added some extra stain at the fades and the tips and wrapped the handle with 2 different pieces of leather.
Been shooting it for two months already and the profile did not change at all. Now I know there is some debate over small vs. big rings in yew but I can tell you this bow shoots like a dream and has almost no set. So I will take the big ringed lowland yew any time;-)
Specs:
Wood: yew
Length : 64 n.t.n.
Max width: 1.2 inch
Draw weight: 48@28
Nocks+arrowpass: buffalo horn
String: 8 strand fastflight
Handle: leather wrap
Details
Profiles
Braced
FD
