first hickory selfbow

[walkabout]

working on my first hickory selfbow from a stave that i harvested where i grew up in pennsylvania. its 66"oal, was 68" but i piked each end by an inch. reflexed it by about 3 inches on my caul with a heatgun, but most of it but the tips has come out with set. right now its pulling 50#@24", i have a little scraping to do on the outer limbs, then shaping the handle and finishing. these pics arent up to date with what ive done so far, but ill post more when i can.

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[Josh]

Lookin pretty good so far!  Can't wait to see it finished up. 

[LANE77]

nice

[walkabout]

thanks. this is also the heaviest draw weight ive made yet. it pulls 50# and thats as high as my cheapo scale goes.lol i was going to use side profile scraping to tiller out the last 14" of the limbs, but ended up reverting to scraping the belly anyway. before i piked it the tips werelooking almost holmegard-ish. i love the mixture of the heartwood and sapwood on the belly of this bow too, some of it is literally black in spots.

[medicinewheel]

This looks good; tiller is holmegaardish, too...

[walkabout]

yea ive tillered it out a little better, now it is bending alot better out further on the tips, there is still roughly 7 inches or so that is stiff, im considering just slowly thinning the width off this to keep the mass down, plus i find i like the shape of the thin tips. got antler tips gluing up right now so probably tomorow ill be able to post some more progress.

[half eye]

Very nice sir! Seems that from the pics and your explanations, both....ya got a good handle on things ya should have a very pretty bow when ya get it finished........again, very nice so far.
Rich

[walkabout]

lol, i actually started this bow after reading through the one section of tbb vol4 about efficiency and the mantra bows.  all of the pyramid style bows that were explained seemed like sturdy dependable designs, so i took a few hints from them. this bow isnt exactly a pyramid, with the limbs having a large paralel shape then tapering, but i used a wide inner limb to accomadate most of the set there, and stiffer thinner tips to help with low mass and eficiency. if i get my hands on more staves like this one, i would probably build the full pyramid with an Eiffel tower taper on stiff tips.

[Pat B]

Nicely done Richard. She looks good all the way around.
  You could toast the belly and pick up a few pounds and maybe retain a bit more of the reflex.

[walkabout]

i was thinking about retoasting the belly, but im not sure if i will or not, maybe just to put some of the reflex back into the bottom tip where it didnt take very well. the top limb took the reflex very well, as you can see from the pics it still retained some of it. im thinking maybe the reason the bottom one didnt was that it was still sort of thick and i didnt apply the heat long enough. also theres a wierd dip in the crown right where the thickest spot of the bottom limb tip is, it sorta cuts across the back diagonally, right near some knots that are on the belly. the knots are small and nearly gone now, but they made me nervous at first, coupled with the valley in the crown. i think if i get this one shooting to my liking i will be happy with it, then take what i learned from it and apply it to my next stave, which is snaky and has some prop twist. ill definitly be trying some heat correction, as well as trying my hand at some more drastic reflex toward the tips as this will be a shorter bow, probably bend through handle.

[Pat B]

That is the best way to approach it. Each bow you build will be better than the last! 

[walkabout]

indeed. its amazing looking back at all the bows ive built, even though i only still have a few of them since ive given some away. i picked up and strung the very first bow i ever made tonight, and drew it and looked it over for a few moments thinking" i still cant believe that this bow held up so well being my first one" of course, that bow took close to a month for me to finish, as i went very slowly and carefully being my first.  its also amazing going from building mostly board bows to these hickory staves i have now, red oak is so sketchy sometimes its scary. it was great practice though, and i gotta admit that red oak does make for some nice light in the hand longbows. before long ill be back to board staves, and applying my selfbow experience to them to see what i can come up with. already have a few ideas on the back burner.

[aero86]

you keeping that handle that wide?

[walkabout]

the handle is actually just over an inch and a half wide, its not quite to finished dimensions on the front profile there right now and the pic really makes the handle appear nonexistent. im going to work the handle down a bit, but i havent decided on whether im cutting a shelf or building one out of something else yet.

[walkabout]

well worked on this bow some more over the past few days, glued on some antler tip overlays and have been shaping them. they were thick so i sanded them down pretty good, then decided i wanted to do a little something with the back of the tips since they were so thick, so the top one is going to have a snakes head on the very tip, with the snake extending out into the limb.  as you can see from the pics the heartwood runs down the top of the carving, which is still in the rough stages. also the antler tips need final shaped. made a new 14 strand B50 string for it yesterday as well.

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