Hello everybody
Six years ago I made an ELB, a childhood dream of mine, that I was really proud off, but which came in way underweight and twisted in the hand when drawn. Then I put bowbuilding aside, mainly because it was not practical in my small city apartment.
When I saw that they had cut some yew trees in the local cemetary though, I could't resist asking whether I could take a couple of logs home, and made a shady deal with a gardner involving the exchange of a large quantity of Danish pastry for his lunch.
When we moved out into the country last year, the "bug" returned more strongly than ever, and I took out those yew logs that I had almost forgot about, and now after a year, my latest bow (definately not the last) is finally done.
I couldn't have done this without the generous help of various members here (none mentioned, none forgotton, as we say in Denmark), which lead me to name this bow 'Assistens', meaning 'assistance' in latin (even though I can't help but feel that naming your bow is slightly pompous)
Incidentally, that is also the name of the famous graveyard in denmark where the yew wood came from (some famous Danish people are buried there, like writer Hans Christian Andersen, and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard).
I'm really proud of this one, even though it has its fair share of mistakes, scratches and flaws. More importantly, I really learned a lot from this one. I'm definitely doing a simpler design the next few times.
Here are the stats:
The bow is 64" NTN, and is 53lbs at 28"
It is around 1 3/4" wide at the handle fades, tapering to 1 1/4" at the lever fades.
Brace height is 5 1/4" from the grip belly
The levers are reduced as much as i dared on the first go, being 3/4 wide at the fade, tapering to 3/8" at the tip. They taper from 3/4 to 1/3 " thickness.
I wanted too see what a complex handle was like to make and shoot. it ended up being a little small, but still quite comfortable. Next time I'm definitely going with a simpler handle style, with no cut-in shelf, and a simpler shape.
Nocks are ebony wood:
Top
Bottom
Finished with 9 coats of true oil.
Handle wrap is leather from an old leather jacket and a handbag, which I harvested from deep within their natural thrift shop habitat.
The bowstave had some natural deflex in the middle third and in the levers, and some prob twist. I removed the deflex with dry heat when the stave was still around 1" thick, But it came back in the middle section (at least, that is what I think happened) just after it started bending, and I decided to just go with it.
Right now it has around 1" of string follow on the top limb, and around 2" on the bottom. I can't remember how much deflex it had originally, but I estimate that it took 1-1.5" set on the bottom limb, and maybe 0.5" on the top. It has maybe 0.5" more set on both limb just after unbracing. The limbs are equal length.
Unbraced
Braced
Right, sorry for the novel, here's the one everyone want's to see:
Full Draw:
Left
Right
Feels great to shoot again!
It's my first time shooting this heavy a bow, but it feels pretty fast. Arrows make noise against the bow, but I have to get some better groupings before I can really narrow down the correct spine, I think.
Anyway, thanks for looking!
Nicolas
