I finally got around to making a bow. This was to be my daughter's 15th birthday present.
There were a couple of knots which I could not avoid but managed to place symmetrically in the stave.
I steamed some recurves and shaved the limbs down until they were pretty thin, this was to be a light bow.
Made some nock overlays from beef bone and glued them on with Araldite epoxy glue.
I didn't spend a huge amount of time tillering, it was never going to be perfect with these knots but I got it looking pretty nice.
Got some rawhide from a big dog-chew, stuck it on using wood glue and sanded the edges smooth when dry.
Using a hobby plotter I cut a vinyl design and stencilled onto the bow in mix of scrubbable emulsion wall paint and acrylic tints.
I used Osmo poly wax oil to finish, one coat of clear on the painted rawhide back and two coats of white and 'terra' tints on the rest.
Linen cord whipping was wrapped at the transition points.
Wet-moulding was used to shape the leather handle but in fact it was soft enough that I really need not have bothered with that stage.
Found an old dacron string hanging around from decades ago from a cheap take down recurve (I didn't try to get rid of the knot).
Finished bow is 20 pounds @ 26" which what I was aiming for although maybe I should have made it 5 lbs heavier for her to grow into.
The design was based on plant cells, knowing that it also hinted at stylised animal scale. But my daughter insisted on it being brown not green so it's ended up looking quite African which is fine by me and she likes it which is all that matters.
I feel lucky that my first effort came out nice and didn't break (I presume breakage is a bit less likely on very light bows but maybe it's all relative.) I enjoyed the process and will probably have a go at more bows soon.
We've had a bunch of storms here in the UK recently and there's a big yew down nearby which I found yesterday. I harvested a limb as heavy as could managed to bring out of the woods on my shoulder which could make a couple of staves although one will be gnarly. I think there's about 8 feet of straight trunk laying there which is more than a foot in diameter.
