Heat Tempered HHB D-Bow

[Digital Caveman]

Here is my latest bow.  It is a heat tempered Hophornbeam D-bow with antler overlays.
60" long, 1 1/4" wide at the center, 13oz mass, about 5/8" set right after being unstrung.  It settles back to virtually none.
The string is flemish twist FF.
It pulls 44# @ 24".

This came from a very small diameter stave I cut a little over a year ago.  The stave warped sideways, so I had to cut it short in order to lay it out straight enough.  I have been working on it for a while; I recently reduced the draw weight to about 30#.  After I tempered out 2" of set it was back at 44#.  Good by me!  The finish is one coat of stain and two coats of polly; it brings out the grain really well.

[Digital Caveman]

More Photos

[Fox]

simple. beautiful. nicely done.
-Fox

[Pat B]

Now, that's a bow!     Well done.

[Morgan]

Good job on that one. Definitely becoming my favorite style bow to make. Simple, functional, durable, and fine to look at. You can get all that from a very small tree. Cannot see any downside to it at all.

[Digital Caveman]

Good job on that one. Definitely becoming my favorite style bow to make. Simple, functional, durable, and fine to look at. You can get all that from a very small tree. Cannot see any downside to it at all.

That is a great summary of my work in any material  

I'm really starting to like these character bows.  They're a challenge to tiller, but they are so much more natural than recurves and lam bows.  It's only a bending stick, but it's a very good bending stick!

Heat tempered HHB is now defiantly my favorite material.  It is very elastic and the grain practically glows in the sunlight.

I was a little skeptical of the accuracy of a short bow, but it does as well as any of my longer bows.  I think this is my new favorite stump shooter/squirrel hunter.

Here are more photos.  I hope you see why I like the grain so much on this one.

[Digital Caveman]

I'll bring this back to the top in case anyone can't find it.  Please vote for January BOM

[Black Moshannon]

Love it. This is my favorite bow design. Did you heat treat close to full draw? I notice a lot of dark stuff still on belly. This is a challenge for me. I often scrape a lot of it off

[Digital Caveman]

I heat tempered this after I was done tillering.  It had more set than I wanted, so I gave it a shot.  On other bows I generally temper after floor tiller and again at full draw.

This was really just a marginal piece of wood I decided to do what I could with.  It has bit more set after unstringing now, but fully relaxed the set is still les then 1/2". 

This splinter did not go away during tillering.  It's so small I'm not concerned about it structurally (I glued it to be sure), but I may wrap it with sinew and stain it for looks. 
 

[Hamish]

Lots of nice character in your bow. Well made.

[bradsmith2010]

very nice, congrats,, 

[Santanasaur]

Very nice. gotta love how hhb looks after heat treating.

[Pappy]

Good looking bend on that one, nice job.
 Pappy