Since I’m already doing a buildalong for a guy I train with. I figured I’d might as well share on here with you guys as well. I’m making an English longbow from a narrow stave I recently picked up. I got it fully roughed out in a couple hours but didn’t get any pictures of it fully roughed out before I quit for te day. My goal for the build is to hit 50# at 27”. We’ll see if it’ll do it as it’s a rather small stick at this point at only 3/4” wide.
To start with I clipped an end off with the saw to see what I had to work with as the stave was solid gray. The rings are rather small but a good ratio and the sapwood was still intact. But there were quite a few drying cracks and found some ring separation as I went down. I got rid of those and it seems I still have enough to get it bending. It didn’t take long to get roughed out at this point. I put a few reference marks at the center, 2” each way for the handle, and another 4” past that as additional no taper area. I put another mark at the midpoint between there and the tip.
For the widths I went with 3/4” wide for the center 12” area. Tapering to 5/8” at the midlimb mark, then 3/8” at the tips.
That took about 10 min to get shaped. Then I got the thickness marks. I carried the reference marks from the back around to the sides. The handle i made 3/4” thick, to essentially be a square. Same with te tips, I made them 3/8” thick to be squares as well. At every mark between these points I subtracted 1/8” from the width for the thickness. Essentially to help the limbs track properly.
I stopped once I got the thickness cut out. Which took about 25-30 min.
Next step tomorrow will be to round over all the corners with the belly getting a much deeper rounding. Then cut some nocks.
