Having numbered everyone's post who asked to be included in this give away on small pieces of paper and well stirred in my butchering pot (seemed appropriate) I instructed my lovely assistant to blindly pick four entries randomly to be proclaimed winners in this drawing.
The winners are:
Schmidtster
DVSHUNTER
Ricky Wallace
Deathmaster
Please PM me your names and addresses for shipping purposes.
One thing I did not mention originally. These strips only need a few minutes with a sanding block on the flesh side to smooth out before gluing on. Other than that I hope you have great success using them.
Please post pictures of the end product when you finish your projects.
If I can add one more though: Use these as you want to but I suggest not using them on a first bow but to save them for a bow you are very satisfied with. This is one reason I haven't backed a bow with RH, yet.
But I will!
I've been meaning to do this for sometime but not motivated myself to get it done. But the recent question about rawhide lit the spark so here is what I am proposing:
The strips of deer rawhide in the picture below were cut out in strips of 2 1/4" wide. This allows for those who like to build short and wide limbed or paramid bows. Some pieces have a dark discoloring but that adds to the charactor IMHO.
Starting from the top to the bottom are pairs A,B,C & D. Pairs A & C have well beyond 36" of coninuous, uninterupted surface per strip. Pairs B & D have a mimimum of 33" and 31" of uninteruped continuous surface per strip due to holes in the hide. In other words butted together at the handle the shortest pair will still cover 61" of bow lenght. See the yard stick for comparison.
The nice thing about the extra hide not covering the limb is that it can be used to cover splinters, cracks and such, much like this patch I made a couple of years ago:
I made this rawhide a few years ago when my search for thin clarified calfhide (TTB mentioned it) was unfruitful. I plan on making more self bows in the future but for now my time is spent crafting fg recurves so I have a stash of it on hand and decided to share a bit of my cashe.
If you are thinking MOJO, forget it. I shot this deer fair and square with either my slug gun or muzzleloader, I don't remember. Jesus gets my credit, not the deer. But if you are still interested in procuring a pair listen on.
If you are building a wooden bow or plan to build a wooden bow and are wanting a RH backing put your name in the hat, or in this case the thread, and one week from today I will pick four (4) names from the many thousands responding to be the recipient of a pair of rawhide strips each.
Cheers,
Christopher