It takes two to "tango"
This is the mating piggy back to a heartwood selfbow I finished a couple months back. It is pretty neat to see them together knowing that the belly of this one fits to the back of the other.
It is 50" long 1.5 inches wide through the handle/fades straight taper to half inch tips. It does bend through the handle slightly, and pulls 47 pounds at 26 inches. The wood has extremly tight rings. The tips were bent with the heat gun and oil, which proved to be way way easier than steaming. I'm sold. I also heat tempered the belly, which i like to tell myself is why this one took less set than it's mate.
I had a knot very near the edge of the bow which was staring at me kinda funny so i wrapped it in thread and saturated it with duco, doing the same on the other limb for symmetry. The handle I build up with a bulbous off cut of yew, and wrapped it with linen string to hold it in place and allow bending. I placed a thin strip of leather between the bow and the handle to eliminate the unnerving creaking that happened on the last bow.
The arrow rest is a carved sliver of yew, held on outside of the leather wrap with sinew. and the string is continuious loop linen.
I have shot about 200 arrows through it so far and it shoots great. It is amazingly light in the hand. I had near heart failure around arrow 100 when a self nocked arrow split with a kaboom. It was espescially interesting as only minutes before I removed the sinew reinforcing wrap around the nock as it was starting to fray. It was a cheap lesson as far as i'm concerned.
The arrow rest is located approx 1 inch above centre. which has proved to be interesting. On the tillering tree I was resting the bow on centre and it looked very even, and now that the handle is located slightly below that it seems to me the bottom limb is bending a touch more.
anyways, enjoy
and let's hear what you think
cheers,
Jamie
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