Thanks guys....ok Lane here's a lil how to facet along for ya.
I grabbed a rough stave to demonstrate on and to show how to facet limbs down into floor tiller.
Ok so let's grab a pencil and sharpen her up. At this point the back is established and the front profile is in bow shape and the thickness of the limbs is around 7/8" thick. Now take your pencil and hold it steady,and with your index or middle finger(whichever is more comfortable for you)and place it on the edge of the back of your stave and use it as a guide that follows any undulation,humps,and bumps on the back. With a normal length and weight osage bow I start about at a fat 3/8" at the fade and gently squeeze as I travel along to the tips and end up about a hair under 3/8" arriving at the tips. Now with other woods this dimension will change pending on wood density,and type of design and length and desired weight. I don't even measure to start off anymore,I eyeball them since I've done it enough times I just know. Facet and scribe down lines on each side of both limbs. Here's a pic showing the technique.
This ensures that each side faithfully follows the back and maintains an equal side to side thickness,which prevents your limbs from twisting to due to an uneven side to side thickness.
So,next I draw and eyeball a line down the center of the belly. This line doesn't have to be dead nuts all the way down and isn't as critical as the lines scribed and facted down the sides.
So after all lines are drawn it'll look like this.
There you can see the line on the side and the line down the center of the belly
Next I put the stave in the vise and grab my spokeshave. The best tool IMO for this next step. You can also use a aggressive cutting rasp or a surfom rasp(hate those things). My spokeshave rips the stock off in no time.
Now what you wanna do is to cut down from the line in the middle to the line on the side and vice versa which will create a ridge down the center of the belly. Be careful to cut down to the outside of your line on the side if using a tool like the spokeshave. After both sides are cut it'll look like this down the belly.
Next I take the spokeshave and rip down that ridge down the center till I almost get it flat down to the sides. Here you can now and should be able to see the grain feather evenly down the belly(in most normal circumstances). Next I take my nicholson rasp and fine tune and clean it up down to where the line just dissappears. Sometimes the spokeshave wont get down into dips of knots and such,and a rasp will get you there to the line. And another word of caution is is leave it a lil thicker around knots to start off with.
Once rasped and flattened out down each limb the bow will be bending and be into a semi floor tillered state where you can easily commence into a nice floor tillered stave.
This is what it'll look like once rasped. Here you can see how nicely the belly line follows the back faithfully.
You can see my belly here is slightly crowned,but the edge is perfectly in line with the back.
This method is the best for using woods like osage and yew where the back roller coasters up and down along the length as well as from side to side. But I use this with all my staves even if dead straight and clean. Its fast and bombproof once done and mastered.
And that's about it..anyone else feel free to elaborate the pros and whys of faceting, then be my guest.
