Made up a giant killer today: 36" 15lb @ 12" for my 5yo daughter
It has a bit of a hinge in the right limb exacerbated by a twist but I'm pretty happy with it. Couldn't stop laughing at how fast it flung a little kids arrow though, she's a blood thirsty little girl, so the local mice/pest birds might be in for a fun time. It did take a bit of set, but that might have been me pushing it a bit on the tillering tree to see if it would break.
Actually, this was the first serious test of a new timber that I've not used before, a local accacia/wattle which goes by 'bloodwood' but I'll be buggered if I can find a species specific name for it (there are many other endemic 'bloodwoods' so it's not that helpful). Grows fairly straight and branch free for bow sized lengths, and I can get hold of it fairly easily. Outer sapwood is softish and peels off easily but heartwood is nice and dense and generally nice grain of the few staves I've split and de-barked so far. Only a couple of downsides: Borers love it but so far really only seem to hit the sap wood so not much of an issue, but I have noticed that my other timber seems to be sprouting a few more sawdust holes underneath so hopefully I haven't brought in a heap of bugs.... The other is that my sinuses react like crazy to it. I can do a session without mask with osage, 'boo etc. (not good I know!!) and not suffer too much but this is one wiff and my head starts to ache. The upside is that is forcing me to wear a proper mask any time I'm working with timber now, I don't want to end up with allergies later in life and I'm already halfway there (allergies, not age I hope
). Gotta make a start on a full size selfbow now to see how it works at bigger weights as I was really impressed with how well it pulled.
Our turkey got the chop the other day too, so I kept all the wing feathers to have a crack at making my own fletchings. Dried them over the wood fire which worked well.
Steve
Topic: 2020---->What did ya do today? (Read 91244 times)
