Debarking Pacific Yew

[Bryce]

Dull drawknife for bark removal.

[Aaron H]

Ok, thanks Bryce.  I always keep a dull drawknife, as well as a sharp one.

[WillS]

Falcon, the best bow to use as a model is the Balinderry Bow.  Eirik recently built one, there are pics over on PaleoPlanet and Facebook.  The original is a Viking bow, but has almost IDENTICAL dimensions to the Mary Rose averages.  Say 77" long, 40mm wide and 36mm deep in the handle.  It will come out around 150# if you just tiller from those dimensions so obviously you'll need to make it smaller, but keep the length the same and don't do anything different in the handle.

The basic layout for the Balinderry/Mary Rose bows works like this:

Full width in the handle of course, and stays full width for 20cm each side of the center (so 40cm overall in the middle.)  This you then taper to tips that are just over 1" wide.  Belly taper is straight from center to tips half inch thick.  As you tiller, and the bow reaches brace height, you then taper the last 8-10" to half inch wide tips.  What you end up with is a belly taper straight from center to half inch tips, and a profile taper that is full width for a parallel 20cm, then tapers slowly until 8" from the end where it tapers again, this time more drastically to half inch wide tips.

[Aaron H]

Cool, thanks WillS.  Although the stave I have already is only 72".   

[Aaron H]

WillS, What is this metric system you speak of?   

[WillS]

72" should be fine, you're heading for a much lighter bow anyway.

Yeah, my measurements are a bit....

I like to mix and match, because big numbers work neatly in inches, small numbers are nice in mm and the cm bits are just... In my head.  It's natural to me!  Not very helpful to others I suppose...haha!