Bow Night Starts Again with New Blood

[tom sawyer]

The straightened billet and the pair.  The closeup shows the piece we cut off that is laying under the straightened billet, just to show what one heat treatment can do.  I'll tweak this billet (and the other which is basically straight) another time or two but its usable right as it is now.

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[tom sawyer]

Roger, I did the heat straightening on the billet because the dogleg is on the handle side and I didn't want to heat treat a glued splice.  I figured why not go ahead and put in the reflex.  I don't think this will cause any big problems when cutting out the splice or gluing, having some reflex in the billets.  My form has almost no reflex near the handle anyway.

We got lucky, the weather warmed up some and enough snow melted off the driveway that I could wheel the bandsaw outside to use it.  It was cold but it kept the mess out of the garage.  We have a 10' (thats foot not inch)  patch of yellow snow out there now.  Somebody's going to think we have a really big dog.

[venisonburger]

I haven't spliced billets yet,what are you using for glue URAC?  I also want to make a takedown, so many choices so little time
VB

[tom sawyer]

I believe I'll use resorcinol, about the same thing as URAC.  Two part catalyzed glue with wood flour for enhanced gap-filling properties.  Really I want to start making more billet bows, theres probably five times more wood that is clean for 36" as opposed to 66".

[DCM]

Looking good.

I think Sparky was saying that by reducing the width profile, you've limited yourself on correcting tip misalignment in the splice.  But there's 8 ways to skin a cat so no harm no foul.  I generally leave billets extree generous in width till I get the splice finished.  I have taken staves that would make a bow, and reduced them to billets to make a better bow.  Easy way to take a stave that looks like C and turn it into an S.

[tom sawyer]

Well why didn't he say so?  Good thing I have you to interpret.  hehe

I see, so its good to leave the billets full width out to the tips until after you splice.  I can see how that would be safer.  This wood has taken a bend really well so I'll correct tip misalignments that way on this one.  Now that you've got me worried, I'll also pay close attention to aligning the thing when I glue the splice.  A little twist of the splice in either directtion and you can get a change in tip alignment and still have a reasonably tight joint fit.

You guys think of everything ahead of time.  I think of everything after its too late.

[tom sawyer]

Straightened up the billets a bit with the saw, then laid out a 4" z-splice for a straight handle (not bulbous).  I cut them out and sharpened the points with a rasp.  I did it because its tough enough to saw them in daylight and at 40F, waiting until tonight would mean darkness and 20F.  Plus I already had the mess made from trimming/thinning up the billets.  Tonight when Jimmy comes over we'll glue them up with resorcinol.  We'll probably glue a cap on the splice (next time) as the billets are only a little under an inch thick in the handle.  Might be enough but he wants 60lb out of this baby so I don't want to take any chances. 




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[tom sawyer]

Glued it up last night.  Next is to glue a handle piece, straighten it up one more time on the form, and then next time Jimmy comes over its time to rasp.



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[tom sawyer]

One thing I forgot to mention on the splices, was that I tried to be careful about making the splices even as far as the two limbs being in the same plane and aligned.  I did this by hand and eyeball but you could make a jig and it would be safer.  When I was through cutting, I did have the bottom of my splice tips a wee bit thicker than the knife edge of the top.  This didn't allow the pieces all the way into the joint so I simply used a rasp to narrow the thicker areas on those tips until the whole business fit to the full 4" depth.  The limbs are aligned pretty well, although as Roger and David predicted I will have to heatgun the whole bow just a bit as the tips are just a little off (1/2", I can easily get this in line).

One more tip, I cut so that I'm removing most of my pencil lines on these splices.  If you cut completely outside and leave the pencil lines, the pieces are a bit too thick to fit together properly and it takes more work to get them reduced with a rasp.  I used a fairly thin blade, even so the kerf is slightly larger than the pencil line.  I cut so that the pencil line just disappeared, meaning the blade was just a little outside the line but overlapping.  That was clear as mud huh.

[Otoe Bow]

Thanks for the post on the splice.  Did you stack the two pieces to cut them at the same time or did you do them separately?   I've got two 36" mullberry staves that I've got curing and even though I've read about splicing in the TBB, this sure helps to visualize the process. 

You may have mentioned it and I missed it, but are you going to add a riser behind the splice? 

Thanks for sharing.

Otoe

[tom sawyer]

I cut them separately, I suppose you could do both at once but it'd be a load on the saw.  And I'll add a handle piece on this one just because it isn't quite thick enough, one of the billets was a little skinny so I cut them both to even thickness.  I'll probably only need 1/2" piece on the inside to have enought thickness.

[tom sawyer]

Bow night was this afternoon as it turns out.  Jimmy was anxious to make progress, and I'd glued a handle on the blank and straightened it another time so he would be ready for rasping to floor tiller.  He came in, I gave him instruction on the use fo a rasp, and away he went.  We marked lines down both sides and he rasped to a point midway on the belly, then removed all the crown down to a nearly flat surface.  It is now floor tillered, he's coming this Tuesday afternoon to tiller his bow.  I didn't get in-progress photos, just a few of the floor tillered bow.  Even had the mess cleaned up before I took the pics, he made a fine pile of sawdust this afternoon.  I'll do another round or two of straightening just to tweak the profile a bit, its straight enough now and just needs little more of a nice sweeping reflex.  The bow is going to be a nice one if we make weight.  He wants 60lb, I'll be happy with anything over 50.

I also split the last two pieces of that hedge post I bought, cut them all to length and shellac-ed the ends.  There's eight decent 6' splits in the driveway now.  So I kept pretty busy today.




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[tom sawyer]

Tweaked the reflex on the blank earleir today, got a nice sweeping 2" to start with.  Jimmy came over and pretty much tillered the bow in about 3 hours.  We had a slightly skinny spot near one handle that determined the poundage, which ended up at about 50lb@28".  We'll cut off an inch or so from each end, and heat treat the belly to give him as much poundage as possible.  In any case, he did a good job and ended up with nearly an inch of reflex right after unstringing.  I'm sure we'll lose that with shooting in but its a good result as far as I'm concerned.  He has a good touch with the rasp, and caught on quick to my suggestions on how to proceed.  The bow is in the hot box now, drying out in preparation for next session.  We'll pike the bow, shape the handle and tips, then sand, then heat temper the belly and shoot it in.  I'll probably have him finish it at home, then we'll put a leather handle wrap on it and take some final photos.  He's going to hunt with it next year.

Here's a pic of Jimmy using the Ultimate Bowyers Rasp (Torges' custom rasp), a tiller tree shot, Jimmy drawing the bow to about 28", and a just-unstrung side profile shot.


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[tom sawyer]

Oh and if you see something obvious wrong with the tiller, feel free to speak up.  We can still make changes at this point although we are running out of poundage to give.  The tiller tree shot is a little off-center, he was pulling while I was photo-ing.  From having the yard-stick sitting on the bow on the tree, I can see that we are getting some slight movement right to the fades.  And the bow is taking set in a uniform and minimal way, so I think we have a decent tiller so far.  Thanks in advance for any advice.

[GregB]

Looks to me like yall did a fine job on the tillering, and the bow is still holding some reflex.