Sanded the crap out of it yesterday, down to 400. I have not done a lot with Osage, always have a challenge with the stuff. I had to be careful sanding, or the Osage would stain the Maple! As I was sanding, I was thinking about coloring the Tiger stripe and I did mess around with a bunch of dyes. In the end I decided it might not be worth doing a three step process, especially not knowing how ugly its going to be with the sleeve, or even if it going to work! I ended up just doing a wipe with washing soda, gives it a little age. You can see its like a sun tan, compared to some untouched Maple
The other thing I have been thinking on, is how to press the epoxy soaked sleeve onto the bow?
I could pull the sleeve real tight and leave it open to the air, but it would have to be on a spit to keep the epoxy from sagging
I have some heat shrink tape which would work, but its 1" wide and there is no way I'm going to spiral wrap 6' of bow with 1/2" overlap. Plus I would still need the spit to spiral wrap.
I also have some antique shrink wrap left over from my wife's retail business, but I could not get it to suck up tight enough before it started to melt. Pallet wrap would probably work, but I cant get a small quantity.
Then I had the light bulb moment!
Heat shrink tube. Its thin wall polyolefin, so epoxy won't stick. It shrinks 2/1 so I need two sizes and unfortunately my supply house only had the 3/4" in stock. Hopefully the 1.5" will be here soon