Black locust bendy handle

[Mo_coon-catcher]

I finally finished up another bow. It’s black locust bendy handle pulling 48# at 28”. The tips are Purple Heart and handle wrap is stamped veg tan with lizard skin arrow pass. With about a 500gr arrow it gets about 160fps from my shorter 26.6” draw. I love how light and dainty these flip tipped bendy handles feel, but they still come with decent performance.

Thanks for looking,
Kyle

[dbeaver]

Always nice to see your bows kyle, and always with a grade A tiller.  Keep em comin!

[Pat B]

Very nice bendy handle bow, Kyle. 

[Possum Head]

Very nice work!

[wooddamon1]

Nice bow, Kyle!

[Roy from Pa]

Very nice Kyle...

[Honest Jon]

Howdy Kyle,
Having built only one black locust selfbow myself, did you get a clean growth ring on the back? The only one I built was a devil to chase so I got close to clean, then backed with rawhide to be safe. After probably 200 shots….so far, so good.
Jon

[Mo_coon-catcher]

Thanks guys!

Jon, I’m not sure which issue you’re having with getting a clean back ring. But a common issue I run into is the wood wanting to tear out on the backside of pin knots. Compared to Osage, it’s like Black locust has stiffer but more loosely bound wood fibers that run its length. The way I tackle it, is to chase to the ring above the one I want, not worrying too much about tear outs. Hen depending on ring thickness I’ll use the draw knife to reduce the rings thickness so I’m just seeing the early growth in spots. Then I’ll switch to the scrapers and clean up the ring. Leaving a decent amount of early growth on the back until I’m done with my pencil marks. Then I clean up the pencil marks and early growth at the same time without reducing the thickness of the good ring any more than necessary. And around the pin knots I don’t use the drawknife for that final reduction, I use the scraper for that entire last ring.

I hope that makes sense

Kyle

[Honest Jon]

Thank you Kyle...some good advise.  My biggest challenge was seeing the contrast between the early and late growth.  Plus, the piece of black locust was a bit twisty which made it tough to keep the growth rings in order. Otherwise it was a pretty clean piece of wood with no knots.  The bow I made is quite light at 35# so hopefully not stressed too bad and the rawhide backing does the trick.
Jon

[Mo_coon-catcher]

Spit and a pencil are great tools for keeping track of the early late transition your following. A little spit smeared around will make the early growth roughen up and stand out compared to the late growth, then trade around that with the pencil so you don’t lose track. And the pencil graphite will help with that as well my more cleanly wiping off the smooth late growth and sticking to the porous early growth.

Black locusts biggest issue is the lack of compression resilience causing compression fractures on the belly where it’s stressed too much. Unless the back violations are harsh, you shouldn’t have too much issue with popping splinters before compression fractures show an issue.

Kyle