A mate at the archery club surprised me with a piece of osage he had lying around at home. It was more like a fence paling that was cut in half!
It was 36" long about 4" wide and 1/2" thick. He said to me "Can you make a bow from this?" , "If you can you can have it". I took it home.
So after much deliberation, I thought, time to make a spliced flatbow. I ripped the billet in half lengthways, then marked a splice. I laid out the ripped billets so that when the bow is drawn, the fades and the tips are opposite each other as they where side by side before the billet was ripped. Hope this makes sense! This kept the arcs fairly even when tillered.
I glued the splice join with techni glue and then the next day, cleaned it up and backed the whole length with 4mm of Hickory, the splice was safely clamped between the riser and the backing.
Bow stats; 68" NtN, 4"handle with 3"fades,Back is 42mm at fades then 38mm/ 300mm from fades, tapers down to 12mm at nocks. Bow has settled at 49lb @ 28". Limbs are 14mm thick at fades then even taper down to 10mm tips. Clamped in 3" of reflex at glue up, from mid limb. First time with Osage, makes a nice bow, a little difficult to tiller.
