Heat-Treated Elm Flatbow

[Marc St Louis]

I was thinking a few weeks ago that it's been awhile since I made one of these.  I had some Elm which I had cut a couple years ago and preliminary testing showed that the wood was pretty good, not the best I've cut but certainly fairly high quality Elm.  I decided to try it in a higher stress design to see how it stood up.  The stave I picked had a bit of character, a small kink on one side and a knot on the other.  I heat-treated the wood adding about 5" of reflex, flipped the tips a bit and took out most of the kink at the same time.  The finished bow kept a bit more than 2" of reflex.  It's 65" long overall with limbs 1 5/8" wide and a finished draw weight of 55# @ 28"

Here's a few pics

[bushboy]

very cool as per usual!

[bubbles]

Niiiiice

[SLIMBOB]

Drawn, braced and unstrung, all sweet profiles.  The unstrung is particularly sweet.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Wow, that came out nice!!

[Cameroo]

Very nice profile Mark.  I really like the handle area too.  Looks like it fits like a glove!

[TRACY]

Very nice bow Mark

Tracy

[adb]

Eye candy... as usual!

[Hrothgar]

Nice finish and profile, bet its a sweet shooter.

[Marc St Louis]

Thank you guys. 

I did shoot it and it shoots fast, for a straight limb bow.

[Badly Bent]

   Has the look of a hard hitting and accurate bow that would also be smooth to draw and shoot, very nice bow Marc.

[Bryce]

That baby looks smooooooooth

[Fred Arnold]

Another beautiful bow Mark!! I have a question for you though. I've never cut a shelf that deep into a self bow and see where you compensated in the handle area and also leaving the off side almost straight into the fade opposite the arrow pass side. How do you determine how much wood is safe to remove?

[mwosborn]

Very nice looking full draw!  Have never tried any elm - might have to give it a go.

[Arrowind]

AWESOME