Old Osage build (tillering)

[seminolewind]

Ok, so the last time I made a bow was about 12 years ago. I am now at a point in my life where things are slowing down enough to where I can build bows and do the things I enjoy again. I do 6 month rotations with my job going to Afghanistan and back when I am home its go time !

I met Eddie "mullet" on this forum who lives near me and he gave me an OLD Osage stave he had in his shop. I think he said it was cut in 94 ! and its 68" t2t Its not the prettiest thing but I dont have anything seasoned yet so here we go !

Ya'll are welcome to watch me on this thread lets hope it ends in a sucessful bow !

[seminolewind]

Thats not a snake its the stave !

[seminolewind]

I have some straightening in front of me !

[Gus]

I'd like to see her done...



-gus

[seminolewind]

I had to build a jig since I want to make this a sinew backed recurve, also had to make a block jig to get this thing straight. This is the first jig I ever built so in hindsight I would have made the holes a lot smaller so I could get my C clamps closer together. I ended up fighting the bend a lot because of this and actually had to drill more smaller holes later on.
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[seminolewind]

Heres the front of it. My plan was to bend the tips from the front back.

[seminolewind]

I read that steaming was a great way to bend sage so heres the setup. Its just a pot covered with tin foil to hold the steam in.

[seminolewind]

While she was steaming I tried to knock one out, went for one last serration and SNAP...

back to the bow 

[Barefoot_Jake]

Lookin good brotha! that suck about that arrowhead, cant wait to see that bow finished

[seminolewind]

Ok so here's what I learned about steaming old Osage... DONT DO IT ! after the first time on the pot it bent well, but I noticed a couple longitudinal cracks forming on the belly. I have since learned that this is from the moisture being re-introduced into the wood and it drying out relatively fast. From here on out I switched to the heat gun which I found to worked nicely. With the heat gun I was able to direct the heat at very specific parts of the stave that I wanted to bend, That was very helpful with this particular bent up limb. One thing I did notice is that with heat the stave was a little harder to bend than the steam but I no longer had the checking issue...

[seminolewind]

No joke I fought this limb for hours and had to come up with some pretty ingenious (ghetto) ways of gettin the darn thing straight. It required a lot of reheating and tweaking. I do have a question for everyone though. Is it possible to heat/steam a limb too much ?

[seminolewind]

So it was time to flip the tips so I busted out the jig and quickly learned some stuff. I tried to bend from the front back but almost immediately saw grain start lifting so I stopped immediately. I then decided that I would make my bend starting from the back out to the tip tightening down the clamps slowly as I heated up the limb. I decided to put olive oil on the limb as well to help curb scorching...I hope this doesnt bite me in the ass when it comes time to glue on the sinew. Any suggestions to get rid of the oil so the hide glue adheres well let me know !!

[seminolewind]

So here is the end result after fighting with this thing for a good while  ...tips alligned, propeller twist gone, and good sweeping curves with no lifted grain !

[seminolewind]

Hard to believe this is the same limb pictured at the beginning !

Well, this is as far as I have gotten as of now, Its floor tillered and ready for the tip overlays. Since I am backing this with Black Racer snake skins I want to make the tip overlays out of either bison horn or a black cow horn (If anybody wants to work a trade for some horn I'm all ears !)

As always any advice or input is appreciated !

[Joec123able]

Wow 19 year old stave Its definetly dryed out looks good so far