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My First Bow (Build-a-long)

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Varik:
You take a compound bow shooter, with mediocre recurve shooting ability, with a huge urge to make his own longbow.  Only problem is, I have no woodworking skills or experience.  This IS my first bow.  I have seen my mom's fiance make his first bow, but it didn't turn out, and it was a board bow.  So, here we go.

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So, I take a walk up the hill, to try and a suitable tree or limb.  I figure it needs to be a small tree, because I am not using power tools, and it is much easier to bring down.  So, I see a skinny little tree, about 9 feet tall, that I figure looks suitable for a bow.  Keep in mind I have no skill at all, so I don't know what type of wood it is.  I could tell it wasn't hickory, that's about it.



So, I take my handsaw, that my girlfriend so graciously bought me for valentines day, and cut it down, and roughly to length.




Then I carried it back home, and started on the rest.  I used a hammer and an old hatchet to split the wood in half.  It sounds like an easy job, but you have to make sure that you are splitting it even and straight, and it takes a while, or at least it did for me.  I occasionally used a crowbar to help split in places that the hammer couldn't reach the hatchet.



After the tedious task of splitting the wood, I am left with two crooked staves.  I picked the wider and straigher of the two to continue on with.  So, with a draw knife, I slowly peeled of the bark.



Once the bark was off, I have a crooked raggy-tag crappy looking stave.
I next put it behind my old woodstove in an attempt to rapidly season it.  I will start with the tapering in a few weeks.  Here is my stave.



I will continue when seasoning is done.

david w.:
that always happens to me when i cut a stave and it never seems as good when i get it home.

Did you seal the ends? you probbably wouldnt need to if it is 9 ft.

youre at the right place everyone here is so knowledgeable and helpful

cowboy:
Varik: Be careful with drying this stave too fast. Did you seal the ends and the back? If you didn't It'll probably check and crack all over, especially if you put it in a hot dry place. Best thing I've found is seal everything good and store in my shop for a few months. Then I take em down to roughly a bow and season em a few more months in the house. Central heat/air - dry..

Varik:
What do you mean by "sealing" the ends?

cowboy:
Good question: You have to seal the ends on a green tree you cut down for staves, as soon as the tree is cut it's starts loosing moisture - kinda like you just cut an artery. I generally use some type of white glue (whatever's cheapest) I can't go into detail on why it splits and cracks, but it will. If you take the bark off the back - same deal, your essentially taking away it's natural seal and need to replace it with something else - like glue. I guess the only reason to take the bark off early is to keep bugs from eating your wood and it's easier to debark when it's fresh.
 Some others will chime in with the scientific explanation why it cracks :).

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