Sorry guys. I just saw your questions...
Oscar: I don't exactly round the belly, or I haven't yet anyway. I leave it flat to even the compression forces as much as I can. I do round the edges pretty deeply in, so it could be considered a mild crown I suppose. Semantics. Anyway, on the other I had knots running at an angle from the belly out through the side of the limb, so I wanted as much wood left around them as possible. On this one, I backed it with linen as that was what I had lying around. Having read that linen is a poor match for ERC, I wanted to distribute the compression forces across the belly all I could, hence leaving it rather flat and smooth. It does not exactly match any particular historical or prehistorcal design, and I make no apologies for that. It works (so far).
Autologus: It is 74" long, a schosch under 1.5" wide at the center of the grip, and I dunno how thick. It takes me forever because I worry about going to light so I start tillering with dang near a log and rasp it down from there, so I've never measured final thickness; just stopped when I got to a good weight. I guess that would be an idea for the future huh??? I'll check and see. Oh, and I cut and split this stuff last week. It had been standing dead on a friend's place for a while, but I don't know how long. ERC takes next to no set anyway, so it can be a good thing to start training it to bend while some moisture remains. Not saying I did that. Just that it could help. I split of a piece and started reducing it. Got it to blank stage and glued on the backing before I went to drill. At that point it was a pretty small piece of wood and I use wood heat, so it was quite dry.
Well, I gotta run. I'll throw up some more pics as (if) I finish it out, and maybe a few detail shots of that one I made a couple years ago, since I have a lot better camera now.
