Well, I finally found some time to start my trade bow. For my recipient I decided to make a vine maple longbow – a style that is becoming a Pacific Northwest classic.
I started with a couple of vine maple billets that have been sitting in my wood bin since 2006. They still had the bark on but they were such nice billets that I decided it was worth the trouble scrapping it off (if you let the bark dry on vine maple it is a pain to get off)
I normally use a parallel limb design with vine maple, but I’m making the the bow longer than usual and will give the limbs a more pyramid profile.
Here are the limbs rough cut to width.
I then roughed out the limb thickness with my bandsaw.
Tomorrow I’m helping Weylin fit a take-down sleeve, but I’m hoping I can get these guys spliced and glued up before he gets here.