Just finished up this American Hornbeam R/D…..aka Blue Beech…aka musclewood. I have made several HHB bows and wanted to try the other Hornbeam. I couldn’t find a bone straight tree but was able to find a 3” sapling that would make a bow. I removed the bark and sealed the back just after cutting. The bark was tricky to remove and I wouldn’t even want to try it on a dry stave. After the stave was dry enough to work I ran a center line with string and tape. I took the measurement from the string (center line) and laid the bow out. The reason I used the string was because of all the dips and crevices on the back. Using the string was also nice because there was no line to try and sand off later. I followed the highest part of the crown, which is why the limbs are snaky. As snaky as the limbs are the tips line up almost perfectly and the string rides in the center of the handle. The stave had about 1 ½” of natural deflex.The bottom limb had a pretty nasty kink with reflex, but most of it came out with heat treating but not all of it. You can see the kink in the tiller pick. After some tweaking I flipped the tips and things seemed to match a little better. I tillered the bow to 24” then heat treated again. This is my first time heat treating and read it gives the bow higher performance and gains a few pounds to the weight. In this case it gained 2 lbs. It was still looking like I the bow was gonna come out lighter then I wanted, so piked it to 62” and lost some of my reflex….then I retillered. After the heat treating and shooting the bow at short draw I made my final adjustments to the tiller. The bow ended up with 2 ” of deflex (about a half inch of set) and 1 ¼” of reflex. The bow finished weight was 18.4 oz. And seems very fast, but haven’t shot it thru the chronograph yet. The tips were tapered to about 3/8” and I added some antler for looks. The 5” handle is also overlayed with antler. The side plate and shelf is made of thin brain tan. I did a little artwork on the belly and finished with 5 coats of Tru-oil. The bow is 62” long and is 60# @ 27”. I signed the bow on the 25th of October which has always been my favorite day to hunt. I thought it was appropriate to name the bow “whitetail dreams” because of the antler accents and this time of the year is just awesome to me. Took the bow today on its first hunt…that’s where I took the pics. Gonna take more pics later
Jon
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