Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: AndrewS on May 04, 2007, 09:49:27 am
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Hey, I wanna present you a bow I made of Osage. I like the Holmegaard bows and so this one is a Osage Holmegaard!!!
She is 63" NTN and pulls 49lbs @27". She is backed with cherrybark, the handle is cherrybarkwrapped and the last 4 inches to the tiny bone tips are also wrapped with cherrybark. She has obviously no stringfollow and she is a good shooter I think.
Hope you like her....
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More pics:
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Nice one I really like the look. Can you explain the bark collecting and appllying procees. I tried to wrap some nocks once with plum bark,and it didn't come out anything like that!
Ralph
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More like regular flatbow to me (nice shape though). Why did you wrapped the bark on tips, when the purpose of this tip shape is actually to make them lighter?
Jaro
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Hi,
welch 2
you have to harvest the bark around the tree. It works fine from a dead tree. Normally I put the bark flat between two boards so it can dry flat but for wrapping a handle or the tips the bark dry in my shop without making anything. The bark then looks like a spiral but in this fact it is easier to apply around the handle or limb.
I have cleaned the bark with a scraper and steel wool and then i glued the bark with epoxy (in this case, other glue will work fine also) around the wood. At the start I overlapp it a little bit and then clamp it for fixing the bark. I wrapped it around and fixed the end with a clamp also. Next day I remove the clamps and clean the bark with steel wool.
I finished this bow with several coats of tung-oil.
sagitarius ...
or more a Mollegabet-design? ;)
I had wrapped the bark around, cause there was failure in the wood of the upper limb that I want to secure. For optical reasons I had wrapped the other tips the same way.
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hi andrew! - really dig your bows!
for cherrybark i did the following: in winter, i looked for trees of wild cherry that had the sort of bark i want (for quivers in this case) and i did a cut in the bark alongside the stem. now that the trees are growing, they build new bark underneeth and throw the cut part off. checked it the other day and saw it works out this way!
i learned that's how the indians did it.
frank
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Frank;On a live tree without killing it? Just one cut all the way around ? and how deep did you cut?I got several cherry trees ,collecting bark without killing the tree sounds cool.
Ralph
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Nice Job on your new Holmgaard. Got you bookmarked for May! Self Bow of the Month.
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hi ralph! - not AROUND the tree; ALONG the tree for like 30" and not very deep. not even down to the wood!
frank
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Hi Frank,
that way sounds cool. I will test it next time I look for cherrybark.
Hi Don,
thanks!
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i'll try to take pictures of it, soon.
paperbirch can be harvested the same way i guess!
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Andrew do you all your bows have to be so damn nice ;D
I love the look of the cherry bark gives the bow a natural camo effect.
Frank sounds like a good idea to me, will it work when the sap is up.
DanaM
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dana! - well i have not enough experience, but if you do it early in the year it should work; if not it'll probably come off next year!?
frank
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looks great... hope to see them all in real some day...
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HI comix,
you mean in 2 weeks, when you say some day,eh? ;D
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Sweet! Good looking bow.
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HI comix,
you mean in 2 weeks, when you say some day,eh? ;D
Jep. Hope you'll taken 'em all with you... big car then you will need ... ;)
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Very cool bow, that bark is a nice touch. I can see the skinny tips, more modest than some people's versoin of the Holmegaard but I think the actual Holmegaaard was not so pronounced in this respect. In any case you thinned the tips and left them stiff, this to me is the advantage of a Holmegaard. And you worked with osage, which let you do a relatively short bow for additional cast. Very nice job.
What sort of failure of wood did you experience? Was it in the area that went from bending to non-bending in the area of the outer limb? I've had trouble with that area on this design myself.
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Hi Lennie, thanks for your compliment!
The problem was a crack running lenght from the side into the limb. After working down the limb to the dimensions of the bow you see, the crack was still there. So I insure the small limb (near the nock) with the wrapping of cherrybark.
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Great looking bow Andrew.
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Very nice! ;D
Thats a great design and that bark really gives it a cool look.
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Nice bow Andrew. I like the Holmsgaard style bows for their efficient design. I have made a few that shot well. In my corner of shame though I have a hickory backed ash that has a hinge where the limb narrows. This is a copy of one that Hillery did in a past PA magazine. One of these days I'll drag her out and do the necessary repair.
I like your cherry bark accents. How is it as a handle wrap? Pat
ps. Marius will be teasing you with all the bootie he's bringing home! ;D
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Thanks guys!
Pat the cherry-bark handle feels good ;D
P.S. I will see Marius next in 11 days on a tournament here in Germany. It is a long time of waiting ;)
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Andrew, nice job. Great tiller. Jawge
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thats a bow!
very nice my man, very nice.
you dont see too many like that anymore.
bravo
jamie
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@Jamie
Thanks!
I am fascinated of cherry bark since I have seen my first bow backed with cherry bark. It was a yew longbow from John Strunk in the middle of the 90th. My first bow I backed with cherry bark was build 5 or 6 years later - and I am still looking to find more of this stuff ;)
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Very nice bow Andrew, shows lots of skill and craftmanship! I have some wild cherry tops where I recently had some woods timbered. Never have attempted to use wild cherry for anything but firewood I'm afraid. :)
Please say hello to Marius for me, and check out the bow I gave him...it's the one that took "two deer", he'll know what you mean! ;D
Oh, Justin probably hasn't had the chance to send the bows to him yet...
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Greg, The cherry that Andrew is using is different than our Black Cherry(Prunus serotina). The stuff I used was called choke cherry but I don't know the botanical name.Once that bark is scrubbed with steel wool it is hard, shiny and copper colored. Around here it only grows at high altitudes(5000') along the Blue Ridge Parkway and The National Park Service frown on folks harvesting stuff. ;) Pat