Maple Bow For Eagle Scout

[Peacebow_Coos]

Awesome story and beautiful work 

[ajooter]

Another beautiful bow as usual.  I like the tooling on the handle.  How do you tie the stitching off on the front of the handle and hide the knot at the bottom?

[adb]

Very nice bow! Excellent all around.

[Arrowind]

Arrowind, I don't understand what "trapping" means. This is a very nice bow and I like the way you shaped the tips. I think the young man will love and treasure it!

Swatch - First of all.  THANKS for your kind comments!

Trapping is a term used when shaping the back to resemble a trapezoid shape. (cross section).  "Trap"-ezoid.  This is basically beveling the edges. 

Usually if you have tension strong wood and want to ease the pressure on the belly or especially if you have backed a softer compression wood with a very tension strong backing such as bamboo, hickory, white oak, etc trapping can help reduce the danger of fretting.

It is also used to reduce mass over all and therefore improve performance.  It's a fine balance because too much trapping can be well....too much and cause the back to fail.  I'm not an expert by any means but I hope this helps to explain "trapping" and some of the reasons one might consider it.   Others on this site can easily go into far more detail.  Also if you read the mass principle section in TBB4 I think it mentions something about trapping.

Oh and... I just think it looks cool too.  Thanks again!

[Arrowind]

Another beautiful bow as usual.  I like the tooling on the handle.  How do you tie the stitching off on the front of the handle and hide the knot at the bottom?

ajooter - Thanks!  -  think about serving a string and finishing off the serving.  If you take a loop of string and lay it down then serve over it several times leaving the loop end hanging out in the direction you are serving and the tail end to the other side.  You cut the string you are using to serve the bow string and thread the tail through your loop then pull the tails of the loop to bring that end string through and under that last bit that you served.  Then cut off the extra.  Kinda wordy I guess.  It's hard to explain with out pics but I used the same technique when finishing off the stitching on the handle.   The stitching starts at the top with no knot but in the middle of the string used to do the stitching.  The one knot used is at the bottom and pulled under the handle wrap as described.... I hope that makes sense. 

Thanks again!

[Arrowind]

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

[rps3]

Darned nice bow, I like the color scheme all the way down to the string too.

[dbb]

beautiful bow and top shelf attention to detail and finish as usual from you.
hmmm i need to improve on that part myself 

[PaulN/KS]

Great looking bow! A fine piece of Craftsmanship.
Congratulations to the young fellow who earned it .

[soy]

That is great!!!! Pass on a great big congratulations from a fellow eagle scout....very fine job on the bow 

[Arrowind]

Thanks again guys!

Soy - lebhuntfish - nice to hear from some other Eagle Scouts! I can't claim to be one as I never finished my project. (long story about immaturity)
I have been a scout leader for many years however.....   Yeah sometimes I wonder why they keep asking me to keep doing this (not being and Eagle myself) but it's fun and I love the camp outs and high adventure stuff!

I gave the boy his bow tonight and I have to say I was a little unprepared for the emotions.     I don't think I have ever felt so proud and so good to give away a bow.   I've known this kid for several years and he is not a very expressive guy but he came up to me after the court of honor and gave me a big hug and said thank you.   Later his dad did the same thing.    Word's can't express it.  I just love being able to give a gift like that.   It's worth every hour and minute you spend sanding and scraping and tillering and etc etc....

Though one guy asked...."So are you going to make a bow for ALL your Eagle Scouts?..."  What have I started...?   I'm sure I will.  It was just too fun to do.   

THANKS again everyone for all the kind words!

 

[H Rhodes]

Awesome bow and a magnificent gesture. 

[lebhuntfish]

That's awesome Arrowind, I too enjoy the boyscouts very much. I have just recently put in at my local council for a scout master position. Maybe I will make a bow for an eagle scout one day. Hopefully when i'm better at it. Congrats and well done again. Patrick

[Arrowind]

Hrhodes- thanks!

Lebhuntfish -  Awesome! Boys need a lot more positive influences in their lives these days.  Nice to hear you are giving back.  A true Eagle!  It was actually working with boy scouts that got me into making bows.  we were planning what we were going to do one year and one of the boys said.  "lets's make our own bows!" so I had to learn how to do it.  It's been a wonderfully addicting hobby!  Thanks again.

[lebhuntfish]

That's cool Arrowind, it's funny I'm just starting to make bows here recently. But my first bow was made at scout camp when I was 15. That's what got me started recently, I ran across it at my folks house one day when I was helping dad in the shed. Patrick