Elm Back Violations

[Crogacht]

Thanks for the advice guys,

The secondhand tool place here is pretty small, has some nice things, but the best stuff goes reaaal fast. I should be able to grab some cheap tools though.

I found a nice looking 10" greenlee on the website, it looks very nice, and only $15 bucks, unfortunately shipping is about $42, haha. It looks real nice though, I'll talk to the boss

Pat B, now you mention it, where the bark had come free (about 4-6 inches at one end) the sapwood has kind of a grey tinge to it, whereas the rest of the sapwood is a creamy yellowish colour, maybe it got a bit of fungus or something in it where it had no bark protection. I guess I can either cut it down (but its already short) or I could go down and attempt to chase a ring.... at least the rings are quite thick on this one but I'd definitely need a drawknife for that.

[Del the cat]

A good trick is to remove the bark but leave the cambium on.
It has no real strength and will pop off once the bow starts bending on the tiller. OK it will scare the cr4p out of you but you'll have a perfect pristine back.
It also acts like a strain gauge, it will start cracking and popping where there is most bend, thus giving you a timely heads up.
It will still need some bits taking off, but I find an old pallette knife type scraper gets under the loose edge and pops it off.
Final bit of work with scraper or wire wool dampened with white spirit and you have a pristine back.
Del

[Crogacht]

I like the sound of that Del. I have 3 other staves from the same log, I might try that technique on those. I still need to pickup a heatgun, as these staves definitely need a bit of straightening before I can even string them up, so I'll probably get all 4 staves to a debarked, "bow-blank" kind of stage while I work on getting a heatgun.

[Marc St Louis]

Sometimes the bark comes off quite easily on Elm that has been stored for a long time.  All you need to do is get a sharp instrument in between the wood and the cambium and it comes off in big long strips with just a slight pull.  It best to do this from an end

[Crogacht]

Well, I picked up a cabinet scraper, a cheap heatgun and managed to buy a decent looking 10inch marples drawknife online, should be making some progress in the very near future!

[Bogaman]

Your hooked!!! ;^)

[Crogacht]

Hehe I think so

I had a go with the scraper, didn't like it too much, so I grabbed a nice sharp knife from the kitchen to use instead and I like it much better as a scraper, I seem to have much more control around the bumps, knots and dips with it. I might pick up a nicer one at some point, but this will do great for now.

But the stave has a nice smooth clean back now, and I have reduced it down to 2 inches wide with the hatchet.

The stave is only 60 inches, so I think I'll aim for a lowish draw weight and keep it fairly wide.

I REALLY need to post some pics soon lol.

In fact, I'm not even sure I like the workbench/vice setup I've got. It seems a little awkward for the work I've been doing. One of those nifty shaving horse/bow bench things that you sit on seems to make much more sense now... I'll give it a while yet, but I may sell what I've got and build one of those instead. Seems like it would be pretty sweet for the drawknife/scraper etc.