It's been a good bow-week, all in all. Two Morrison Cheyennes arrive, a day apart & this morning the polyeurathane has finished drying on my John Scifres recurve!
John went over & above the call of duty on this blank for me. I was looking for a short 56-60" selfbow to compete in our Primitive class over here. I already have one stunning longbow by Shawn Webb but, well, you can't have too many toys now, can you! :D
My trouble with selfbows, especially short selfbows, is that I have gorilla arms & a 30" draw. "No problemo" says John. He's recurved the bow & backed it with Elk leg Sinew & it draws sweeeeet & smooth out to 30" No ominous creaks, groans or untoward goings on here!
It was sent to me as a tillered but unfinished blank. I was told from the outset that I may haveto tweek the tiller slightly, but to be honest I've never attempted anything like that before. I sanded, smoothed & polished until I was happy & strung 'er up for a shot or two. Well, I could see that the tiller wasn't 100% but after 100 arrows she shot sweet & shock free, so being the lazy incompetent that I am, I figured that it was near enough!
I applied some scraps of Bocote as tip overlays & then sat & stared & stared until I was cross-eyed, nervous as heck about gluing on the B-E-A-yootiful Bullsnake skin. I studied Ferret's instructions, pored over all 3 volumes of The Bowyer's Bible, sweated, fretted & finally caved to my own self-imposed pressure......
Don't know what all the fuss is about! It's easy!
I glued it all up with TBIII, cleaned & de-scaled & then had an agonising 24hrs wait for e glue to set up before I could start applying the finish.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap........
A brief wipe-down with acetone later, 4 coats of gloss PU spray laquer were thrown on & left to dry.
Fast forward to this morning & a sprint (well, hung-over crawl) to The Workcave & we're done!
Shootable, pretty, smooth, sweet & sexy! For my firstest attempt at anything bowyer-ey I couldn't be happier!
Many, many thanks must go to John for doing all the
actual work & also a huge thanks to a man who's name completely eludes me (Sorry!!) for the donation of the perfect, 70" bullsnake skin.
On with the pics, I suppose!
Topic: A Good Week for New Toys! (Read 346 times)
