Session 4: Floortiller
I don’t like the usual floortillering method very much, because you look on at a steep angle to the limbs. It is a lot better not to look directly, but via a large mirror placed some yards away. This allows watching in a more rectangular (word?) way.
I found another way to do the ‘floortiller’, not on the floor but horizontally.
In the pics above you can see my method of tillering in my vice via leather shoes + cord.
This works well for me, I can immediately react on the stiff points and take off wood with the scraper. This allows fast working, no need for taking off and on the ‘string’ just open the vice and pull horizontally. The cord hangs always in the vice.
Pulling the stave with one hand I lay my other over every inch of the limbs belly sides. I can feel the bending and can feel also how the hollow limb flattens out. It should do that even over the whole bending limb.
Scraping with the gooseneck and using the thumb as a guideline to get even thickness:
This process is done several times, until I get the limbs bending so far enough for long string tillering. And of course the limbs should bend simultaneous.
carefully woking at the nocks with sanding linen:
Btw, I don’t like rasps that much, you don’t feel the grain! I like thick and sharp scrapers, they take off wood excessive without leaving marks and goes with the grain over the humps and bumps. A rasp is a good choice to plane knotty areas, esp. when knots have really hard old or dead wood in them.
This is a good trick for sanding in the grooves over humps. It is a flexible melting stick wrapped in a sanding net:
Here is the leftover from the 4 session
session 5: the handle repair
Finally I decided to do the repair on the handle. My first thought: soak it in super glue and wrap the handle with strong hemp cord. But that crack made me nervous, so I split off the half of the belly to examine how it looks. Catastrophe!
A miracle it stayed together while floortiller and long string tillering. Big damage here, the fungus has made a tunnel of spongy white stuff. Only millimeters of the intact side walls are left, this affords a strong repair.
So what to do?
Next idea: Sand it down and glue on a new piece off intact wood. Thinking over this, I wondered if a take down sleeve would add strength in that area.
We will never know if we don’t try!
making take down bows from billets is ok, but cutting through afull length stave always makes me crazy …. but in this case probably the best
a take down sleeve was quick made out of junk and the two halves a bit carved to get the sleeves on
The sleeve ends of the limbs need a good strengthening. Fortunately I found a matching piece of golden chain tree in my fire wood.
Next step sand down as much as possible to intact wood and glue on a piece of wood in the handle/fade area.
Marking the new 'fade overlays' and cutting out
this are the parts I have now:
Glueing on the new fades:
After a dry mounting I felt again warping sideways. To get that matched, I have to glue on the sleeves a bit out of the line. I will glue on the sleeves separately for most safety, I hope the string is then in line. I want to avoid heating again, when possible. Using very thin Epoxi, filling the grooves and valleys is no problem.
It seems like it does work. We will see. The glued on pieces are looking very ugly, let’s bring them in a nicer shape. First cut off the excess with the hacksaw, then rasping and rough sanding.
Now is the time for more tillering, and cutting the bow to its final length. I go for an asymmetrical, top limb is about 2” longer. I have to decide the final upper and lower limb
I will do the tips soon to get her braced, any suggestions for the tip design? Overlays, pin, self, wrapping, …?
Here is the leftover from session 5 with the cut offs from the glued on pieces
I’ll continue in a few days, upcoming decisions are:
1. symmetrical or asymmetrical bow
2. design of tips (overlay, pin, self, wrapping, ...)
Let me hear your suggestions and thoughts
