Hey everyone , its me again...
so the red oak board bow i was working on , was going well , had the nocks shaped , the limbs bending much better , and braced at a fistmele just for reference. was doing some tillering and exercising the bow , pulled it back , and it split from the middle of the handle , thickness wise , and launched one of the nocks across the yard. i was left holding the upper limb , and the broken lower limb , with the handle almost perfectly cracked in the middle. after reviewing the pieces , i came to a few conclusions...
A: my lumber was not quartersawn
B: my lumber did not have the correct ratio of early/late wood.
B2:the earlywood had separated , and when i ran mmy hand along the crack , a lot of the earlywood just fell right out...
so today i adventured to the local amish sawmill
(baird brothers sawmill) , and asked to look at the quartersawn oak , red or white. they didnt have any red cut up in 1x2 , so i looked around the white oak bits... i found a nice specimen with about 4 almost 5/8's late rings , and a couple tiny tiny early rings. there is one knot that is across the belly , but its shallow and will tiler out. there was also one that was almost in the middle of the thickness , but i thought it was only on one side. after drawing out according to sam's BAL , i have 15" tapers , down to 1/2" nocks . after realizing i drew everything out on the back , i was tempted to go off those lines only , but instead took the time to redraw everything on the belly.
anywho , after starting to remmove some wood , i noticed that the knot in the middle goes through the whole thing. my concern is that if i tiller through the knot , would it weaken that spot too much?
also , theres a bit of wavyness in one end of the board , but it ends up on each end that it looks like the latewood rings are almost perfectly centered on the ends , so that once done , my nocks will be two wide rings of late wood , and one thin ring of earlywood. should i worry about the wavyness too much? this is such beautiful wood , id rather not cover the back , but if its deemed a necessity , ill do it...
also , all the build alongs seem to do added risers , and i wasnt planning on doing a riser , as this will be for my wife . when doing something like this , would it be ok to take off about a half inch of width radiused in the handle area , to get it thinner , or would this be a bad idea without a riser?
thanks again guys , ill get some pics up tonight , promise...
and holy crap what a difference in weight and difficulty carving something that is solid. not to mention the difference in price between crap and nice wood , was 11 cents...
-hov
Topic: new board bow... (Read 373 times)
