OK!
July 4th, 2011 is the absolute last ship date! After that a real good excuse and a few of those fifties will be required.
You can ship your bow when you are satisfied it is finished and shot in well. We want to keep the reciepient suprizes good ones!
I think when folks see other's bows going out and other participants recieving their new bows the juices will really get flowing. I personally want to know who my bow is going to and make the bow that he or she wants. I won't have that info until I find out whose name was chosen for me. Some of us that are familiar with building bows can crank one out pretty quickly. This can be intimidating to the new guys but we need to make it more of an incouraging situation and help whomever is in need.
For the new folks...a picture is worth a thousand words. Be sure your cameras have fully charged batteries.
(don't laugh) Also be aware of the background in your pics. We don't care about your new hedge or your Mustang! Good, detailed bow pics are what is needed for good diagnosis. Make the pics so the bow will stand out.
FULL DRAW pics tell it all but a braced, unbraced and a back profile let us know what we are looking at. Ask questions. The only dumb ones are the ones not asked. How can you find out if you don't ask. That is how I learned.
We have 39 folks signed up for the trade already and we have 12 more days to go with the sign up so we should have a pretty good group for our trade.
An arrow trade is a good idea too but it will have to be seperate from this bow trade. You can see how complicated this can be alone.
I have been collecting arrows from folks as long as I have known arrow makers and have a pretty good collection so I'm always interested is arrow trades.