started on hickory selfbow

[WyomingWhitetail]

So today I sharpened up the draw knife and started whittling on a hickory stave I've had for years. It's 2 inches wide to mid limb tapering to half inch tips. It's still pretty rough and I still need to finish thinning the limbs down. It has some humps and dips and being a beginner I don't know if I'll be able to make a bow out of it or not. If not it ought to make for an interesting story when it blows up in my face. It's pretty thin through the handle so I may end up glueing on a handle piece or something.      

     

   

[Pat B]

How thick is the handle area? If it doesn't have enough thickness a handle riser probably will not stay on. In that case you can build a bendy handle bow.  I wouldn't do anything special with the crooked tip until you see how it looks at brace. Just start tillering the limbs, exercising as you remove wood and get the limbs bending evenly and together.

[BMorv]

How long is it?  It looks really short (for a beginner bow anyway) in the pictures.

[WyomingWhitetail]

It is 64 ntn so it is on the short side. The handle area will clean up to just shy of an inch thick. The spot that really worries me is a couple inches up the limb. It split kinda funny and dipped down on the edge of the limb so there is a spot right on the edge that's only 1/2 inch thick. I think I will work it into a bendy handle and see whet happens.

[Dan Landis]

Make sure you don't remove wood from the handle area too soon, save it for last.  The bend in the handle area should be barely noticeable.

[BMorv]

You should be able to work with 64 ntn.  It looked shorter than that in the pictures.

[Pat B]

If you want a riser you probably have enough thickness at 1".

[WyomingWhitetail]

Worked on defining this bow a little more. Thinned the limbs down to around 5/8 thick. It's starting to look like a bow shaped object now.  

   

[WyomingWhitetail]

Starting to make some progress on this thing. I got a handle defined and cut the knocks and it's starting to bend a little bit on the floor. I think I'm going to go to the tillering tree pretty early on this one as I can't judge much looking down the limb during floor tillering. It still has a split out spot on the edge of one limb a couple inches from the handle that I'm not sure what i will end up doing with. I'm hoping it will clean up by the time I get down to weight.

[WyomingWhitetail]

     

   

     

I apologize if the pictures are huge. I'm pulling off my phone so I can't really tell how big they are.