Character Osage Build - Now a Takedown - Finished!

[gstoneberg]

I'm relocating my character osage bow build from the Bows forum over here.

Here's the stave I started with, the tree was felled in Feb 2009, the stave was split out in Jun 2009.



 Here's day 1:









Tough stave, lots of weather checking and insect damage.

George

[gstoneberg]

Day 2

I didn't have too much time to work, primarily tried to remove the weather damaged wood in the bent section:



Normally I would finish laying out the bow and use the band saw to cut the excess width away so I don't have so much sapwood to remove.  However in this case I'm not that confident the damage to the stave isn't fatal.  So, I'll start work on the bows belly and make sure there'll be enough wood left for a bow before I put in the effort to follow one of those skinny growth rings.



The darker wood was so hard I used a sawsall to remove it.  It was honestly like cutting bone.  You can see there are some serious cracks to contend with.



George

[jturner]

Good luck on this one, I started workin one almost identical to that. It was standing dead, and hard as a rock. I made a scraper from a thin bandsaw blade to work the rings on the curve. the rings in osage around here are thin anyway but they were like paper on that one. Scraping it sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. it made its way to my "someday" pile you got me thinking about working on it some more.

[gstoneberg]

Day 3

Finished cleaning up the bend and used the draw knife to take out most of the weather checking.  Ran into some insect damage in the sapwood.  Hope it doesn't affect the heartwood much:



There are still some cracks under the bend that are troubling.  Hopefully these will be removed as I thin the limb at that point.



Next will come the bow's back.



Good luck on yours jturner.  There jury is still out on this one for sure.  I'm amazed at just how hard that old dead wood is.

George

[gstoneberg]

Day 4

I started on the bow's back tonight.  The ring I chose for the back ended up not being deep enough to get rid of the wood borer damage:



The next one worked out, and though I ran the draw knife until my arms about fell off, I didn't get much done:



I'm out of shape for sure.  As an aside, a friend of mine is doing some work on a car in my shop and he brought over one these harbor freight halogen lights:



I have never used a light so effective indoors for illuminating the bow back while chasing a growth ring.  It was nearly as good as being outside in the sun.  I was surprised.  It also kept the area warm, nice for this time of year.

George

[riarcher]

I've got to watch this!
I've never made a bow, thinking about it.
I'll bet there'll be tons for newbies like me to learn on following this.
Already tons of questions, But betting you'll be answering most if I just watch and learn.
Thanks to all you bowyers for taking time and posting these build alongs.

[gstoneberg]

I finished the bow's back today.  There are 3 challenges in this stave.  First, the character bend itself is troubling because of how hard the wood is.  It will be right in the main bending part of the limb and I'm worried it'll fail there.  Second, there is a crack coming out of that bend which was completely through the stave back to belly.  I have it removed from the bend section but it goes right down the center of the limb.  Third, there are 2 wood borer damage spots in the straight end of the stave that are going to be in the bow's back.  Here are current pictures.

The weather damage:



Borer damage:



A small knot:



I marked where the center of the stave (and the handle) is:



This is the stave's current look:



George

[medicinewheel]

This looks incredible already! - hope you'll succeed, this is the most demanding stave I remember seeing...

[HatchA]

This looks incredible already!

Agreed!!  Hard to believe it came from the limb in the original pic's.

Best of luck with the rest of it, man.

[gstoneberg]

Thanks guys.  If this stave makes a bow it'll be a miracle.  I didn't get much done today.  It seems I'm doing everything out of sequence in this bow because I'm so skeptical that it'll actually work.  I layed out the bows' basic shape and cut the limbs down to 1 1/2" in width (except for the handle which is still wider so I can clamp it in the vise).   I narrowed the tips a little, but will do much  more later.  Then I worked the crooked limb to see if I could start to get a bend.  Here's what it looks like now:



It looks to me like all the darker wood will need to be removed.  I got it to bend just a little against the floor and it popped a ring loose on the belly.  There's just a little left through the bend but there's quite a bit at each end of the bend.  I'm most concerned with the outboard end of the bend.   I'm afraid I'll be close to a hinge by the time I get the dark wood out.  I did leave the limb a little bit wider there.   I'm going to use the sanding drum to remove wood in that spot because it splits out so bad with the draw knife.  That limb is the most difficult to run the draw knife on I've seen.  It wants to dig in no matter which direction I go.  Sure makes it tricky.  That weathering crack is annoying.  i'm afraid I'll have to let that crack be in the fade out where there will be no bending.  That means there's quite a long non-bending fade-out off the handle in that limb.  I'll also have to leave the handle a little wider than normal to keep the crack from running out the edge of the handle.   This bow will probably get a wrapped cord handle to add some strength.  O well, the wood dictates...



George

[gstoneberg]

I worked for awhile tonight but the bow looks barely different.  The limbs are thinner and the crooked limb is beginning to bend.  The other limb is still a club, though I thinned it a lot.  This is the slow part of the process, but my favorite part.  Still, there are problems.  After each time I floor tiller the crooked limb a ring on the fade-out pops loose.  Unless the light is just right you don't notice.  I'm not sure whether it's a fatal problem or not yet.



Definitely going to be some heat bending on this one.



Gonna start to reduce the tips here pretty quick.

George

[rattlesnake]

wow,,, that is going to be super cool!!....snake

[bobnewboy]

There's character, and there's character  .  You sure are one crazy guy to take on such a distorted piece of wood.  It will of course be amazing if you can pull it off though, and so good luck!

[gstoneberg]

I've been a little hesitant to go much further because it meant I had to make the crooked part bend.  Well, since it snowed here in Texas today and the ladies decided to watch a Lifetime movie marathon...I was motivated to go out to the shop.  I'm to the point of cutting nocks and putting a long string on the bow for tillering.  I hadn't used the tillering setup since we moved and I cannot find my stuff so I'm putting off more work until I can go get a pully and do it right.  I did take a couple pictures, though there isn't much change at this stage.  I brought the bow in to show my wife and took the pictures in here.  She declared my odds for success at close to zero.  Don't you love positive support like that?  I'm even more motivated now...maybe that's why she said it??



This bow has an odd feature on that bent limb, there's actually fade-outs going both directions in that crook.  The wood rings seemed to stack up there  but so far I'm nervous about removing the excess under that knot.   As I thin that portion to get it bending it cuts the growth rings in the transition out into the limb.  It's odd, and visible in these shots.




I think the fade-out in thin growth ring bows is has a unique beauty, I couldn't help but take a picture.  Looks like I have to get those last 2 rings back in the center of the limb.



Hopefully, the next pictures will show tillering.  Both limbs are bending on the floor, but it's impossible to get a feel for how even the crook bending is on the floor.  Not sure I'll see it from the side either, but I'm hoping.

George

[woodstick]

have faith. i do in ya i wana see a pic at full draw gana be saweet.