hey everybody. I just wanted to post my progress on what i hope to be my first couple of successful bows. You may remember a couple posts i've made, asking advice and tossing ideas. This is my current status. after wasting a couple good pieces of red oak, i picked the best one i had left and got started on it as well as one of my pieces of ipe.
one of the posts i made earlier concerned silk backing ipe. i decided to do it. i'm not expecting top performance, but i can feel some speed in these limbs. the ipe sure has some spring to it and the silk i bought is choice material for backing. the weave has almost all of its fibers running in one direction. i read somewhere that silk can sometimes increase performance, and that it can also over power some woods. in my case, i think it will help. we will see
the red oak bow started as one of the straightest boards i've seen. due to a mistake at the wood shop, i got the section of the board with mediocre grain. one limb is straight and the other runs off and has sap wood in it. i'm using the same silk with this board too. we'll see how that turns out too. anyway here are some pictures before the backing was applied. i'll post more later as well.
here you can see the grain run off on the bad red oak limb. the other limb is super straight.
here you can see all my current projects. i have set aside the two with zebrawood blocks. please ignore that hideous black thing and focus on the osage stave
also note the turks head handle wrap experiment on the oak bow.
i couldn't help myself from shaping the handle area ahead of time. i like it alot.
same deal with the red oak.
hope you enjoyed it. i'll post more later as well. thanks for all the help.
