I finally finished this one for the 2019 trade after four, yes, four failures. It was a long, skinny stave from a 3" diameter branch I had cut and split in half. I made the other half into a pyramid hunting bow years ago, but this more troublesome half sat in my shop for about 10 years, waiting for inspiration. There wasn't enough wood for any kind of flat bow, so I went with an ELB. I blatantly stole the design from a Badger bow he built in the 90's, and which I'm fortunate enough to have in my collection.
One limb was pretty clean and straight, but the other limb had plenty of problems - knots, twists, bends, and a nasty groove dug by a bug. I was able to plug the groove with a sliver of osage and moved on. I heat corrected the problem limb enough to get the tips lined up, and straightened it out the best I could. After very gradual tillering, I got it to start bending like a bow. I've found that I really like tillering with a scraper once I get a long string on it. It's easier to make subtle adjustments, and when you're done tillering, there's hardly any sanding cleanup left to do, so you don't lose that 5# or so once it bends the way you like.
The bow is 70" ntn, and draws 54# @ 29". My T-Rex arms can't draw that far, but I exercised it to 29" on the bench, and shot it in at 25". It's 1-1/16" wide and 7/8" thick at the handle with a D-shaped profile, tapering to 1/2" x 1/2" at the tips. I left it a bit stiff around the big knot, resulting in a positive tiller, so I put the handle right in the center. Somehow, the full draw arc doesn't seem to show this as much as the braced pic, so I guess I did the right thing there.
I added some horn nocks I made from pet store water buffalo horns, a zebra-hide grip and arrow pass, and some black & white beads I made from a possum bone. (I got an old zebra hide from a friend in the antique business who gave it to me cheap since it was a bit tattered.) I added a hickory bark quiver to the package that I recently made after harvesting a bunch of hickory staves.
Sure was glad to call this one finished after all my miss-starts. Any criticism is welcome.
...Tom
