This is the latest selfbow I did, finished a few weeks ago and my current shooter.
It came from a pretty rotten mulberry log I got from a friend of mine. Sapwood all crumbly and lots of drying cracks. I managed to split some small staves from it.
Chased to the fourth ring beneath the sap to get a clean back and by then the stave was to thin for a stiff handle so I glued on a piece of ash to fix that.
The stave has a s-bend and had long drying splits on both sides. Could not avoid the split on one side so I decided to keep it centered in the tip, put some CA in it and ignore it for the rest of the build. (You can still see the split in the detail pic of the tip)
It needed some string alignment when first braced so I fixed the limbs with dry heat and flipped the tips a bit at the same time. Heard the split tip cracking more while heating it oops.
After it was finished I did not like the look of the ash handle so I spray painted it. I also did not really trust the split so I reinforced the end of the split with some CA soaked serving thread. The serving did not look very nice on its own so I added it to the other tip and the fades and painted the tips to look like the handle.
This is my first mulberry bow and I really like the wood. Works really easy and is really light in the hand.
Draw weight: 53#@28”
Bow length: 66” ntn
Cheers,
Leon
