Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: hoosierf on May 31, 2018, 01:08:06 pm
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I thought this might be a fun topic and perhaps an opportunity to learn a few things to avoid in your journey. I’ll start.
One time i had the brilliant idea that i could heat treat a braced bow just a little bit to stiffen a weak spot. No surprise the limb i was heating folded like a polyester suit. Total failure to stop and think.
Doh!
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just a couple of weeks ago I was cleaning up a stave. I usually clean up all 4 sides so there is no splinters and reduce the belly and sides a bit in the process. I hadn't chased the final ring yet but had the back pretty well cleaned up to take the final ring. I thought I was on the belly of the bow and not the back and I started reducing it. I caught it just barely in the nick of time and all was well.
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Splitting staves without safety glasses. A chunk of steel flew off and hit me right between the eyes with a lot of force. It felt like I had been punched. If that piece of steel had been an inch left or right I would have lost an eye.
When I first started out making bows I cut a lot of osage staves to let them season. I thought a stave had to be perfectly straight with really thick rings. I burnt a huge pile of staves because I thought they weren't good enough.
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When I 1st started building bows I heard that bamboo was good for a backing, so I quickly headed to my nearest box store and picked up a bamboo flooring accent strip piece. I hand planned it down and glued it to a red oak board. Within a few pulls it splintered....Felt pretty dumb after I figured out what bamboo they were taking about :o
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You know how you get in a groove....well I was movin' and groovin', hummin' and strummin', and feelin' the mood. Cut the nocks on the limb bass-ackwards. Saul Goodman, it's all good, man! I laid it out with a few extra inches, we just saw off the tips and SONOFA...YA FECKLESS MOW-RON, YA DONE WENT AND CUT 'EM BACKWARDS AGAIN!
)-w(
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I bent recurves, one up, one down. Made it hard to brace. ::)
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Was multi tasking when I noticed that steam was looking kinda blue. Sure enough ran out of water and burned the tip off my bow.
Bjrogg
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I can second that, bjrogg! :D
Another candidate for the saplingbow-contest suffered the same fiery fate. I steamed in the first recurve and stuffed the second tip under the aluminum foil hood without checking the water level. The pic shows the result...
@JW_Halverson
Reading your post I was actually laughing out loud. Thanks for that - feels good after a rather shiddy day... :OK
Torsten
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Using b55 on first brace for a highly stressed bow.went from a 4" brace to a reverse brace in about 5 seconds!
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For my first bow i chose a VM stave with over 6 inches reflex.
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Ok, ok ill go. I really wanted to do it from the ground up, ya know. Spent an entire day cutting down Osage trees and halving them, i mean a lot of wood here. Sealed the ends and spent all night removing the bark with a draw knife. Wait your supposed to leave the bark on for a while? oops )-w( Probably $1000 in wood dry checked into uselessness, sure did burn nice and hot in the fire. (=) Next week went out and cut more. Some mistakes are made only once in a lifetime.
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I put a BL piece into the microwave to test bend when I had a phone call
My chatting was interrupted by the smoke that filled the house )-w(
now i know it is possible to make charcoal in the microwave
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Well, on my current stave, I worked the back instead of the belly while not paying attention, so now it’s gonna be a sinew backed one, And there was this other time I tried to heat bend a, entire sapling and destroyed my improvised chair vice and the stave of guava in the process.
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Did this several times:
What I did wrong several times before is to leave too little wood on belly thickness taper. When I get to the tillering I was already having too little wood to work with. Because of this several my bows become underweighted.
Maybe it doesn't sound to someone like a big deal, but to me that is the stupidest thing I have done. If I just left a bit more wood I would have been pleased. But I learned since then!
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I burnt a huge pile of staves because I thought they weren't good enough.
it all started as an hilarious thread and now I'll cry for the rest of the day :D
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I don't do center shot bows and cutout arrow passes that often but when I just started bow building I tried it a few times... You guessed it, cut it on the wrong side!
Like Pat I did bend a recurve the wrong direction once, noticed it after bending so stuck it back in the cooking pot and bend it a few minutes later without harm done, made me sweat though!
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I'm still very much a novice but I would have to say daydreaming while rasping the belly. I wound up with an unsightly hinge or a 20# bow... I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but hopefully I'll remember to stay fully focused or give it a rest and come back to it later.
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Where to start..... I guess the one that still haunts me the most is when I cut the most perfect osage on the planet, perfect rings, clear straight wood with no knots or pins and stripped the bark but not the sapwood. I painted the backs with wood glue and put the staves in a closed up outside garage in the summer. When I looked at the staves a month later they had checks from back to belly I could have dropped a dime in.
I have probably ruined 30 or more osage staves by cutting more trees than I could process and leaving the wood out in the weather, it turned into a pile of badly checked twisted snakes.
I have been carried away daydreaming a bunch of times and let my bandsaw go where it wasn't supposed to go, more ruined staves.
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Eric, I have also made mistakes on the bandsaw many time roughing out staves. I quit using it on staves. One moment of mental lapse can cost me $100.00 in a flash. I went back to just using a draw knife and have learned to really appreciate the exercise.
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Even on my cheap 9" bandsaw, I have made a few $50 mental lapses.
I bet you are getting an exercise Steve. I still can't believe how you mentioned that at one time you were pumping out 1 bow a day. That's crazy! :BB
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Ben, I am no where near that anymore Ben, I slowed way down mainly because of the cost of staves. If I had free or low cost access to staves I would likely grind away about 8 hours a day. LOL. I keep developing methods to slow the process down instead of speed up so I can stay busy but use less wood.
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Most mistakes that happen to me a lot of times is coming short in the patience game.Making multiple bows at a time helps curb that a bit.
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Well, let's see now...One of my very early mistakes was in filing my string nocks on a Osage ELB I had made. Cut one, flipped the bow over and filed a perfect string nock that was the wrong way. Sign. Filed the string nock going the right way so I've got a nice X on bow. Always reminding me, double check.
Got access to a property that was being developed into a housing tract. Cut some osage and other hardwoods from the push pile. Had to rent a chain saw. Split them all, and then read that you can use a froe to get belly splits. Coool I gets twice as many staves. Well, not the way it worked out the first few times. Sigh. I learned how to do it the hard way, like most of my life lessons.
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Done this atleast twice. Not paying close attention and during rough out on band saw cut
Passed the fade to center of bow. And yes on a perfect stave it kinda makes you need to pee!
Arvin
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My biggest mistakes come from the drawknife. Thinking I’ll just shave off a little bit more before scraping or rasping the area, but wind up popping a big ol splinter with the knife. Taking the stave from about 70-80# to start with down to about 30 by the time I even it out.
Kyle
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For some stupid reason I put a knee into the back of a glue up and tried to see if it would bend some more in reflex. Yep! separated the limb in the top of the curve. Also screwed up some staves with the ban saw. Now I mostly rough them out with a hatchet.
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My biggest mistakes come from the drawknife. Thinking I’ll just shave off a little bit more before scraping or rasping the area, but wind up popping a big ol splinter with the knife. Taking the stave from about 70-80# to start with down to about 30 by the time I even it out.
Kyle
I have done the same thing, now I put them on the long string at about 100#. I used to get them so close I would just brace them and even them up a little. But cutting it that close has cost me a few bows coming in too light.
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Hee! Hee! >:D >:D - decided to make a self bow! Still trying to get to brace height and keep weight range! This thread needs to be a sticky so we don't make the same misteak twice. Other than trying to brace too soon, I think I haven't screwed up too badly! Going to Turkey Camp doesn't count, I hope. Probably really screw up the second one, 'cause I think I know what I'm doing!
Hawkdancer
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i'm sure that i have done dumber things in the past but the one coming to mind right now is not moving the center mark on a bendy handle bow after shortening the top limb, made tiller a little tricky until i realized what i'd done ::)
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I got frustrated with a HHB that had a hinge in outer 3rd. I decided I would just pull that *7*&$3%@ until it broke. It did break and when it did the tip hit me in the gut so hard it left a ring loop imprinted skin break and felt like what I would imagine a shotgun bean bag would.
I wish I had rubbed a little dye or ash into it and kept it as a tattoo.
Of course that probably isn't the dumbest thing. Kinda hard to pick just one.