Red elm hollow limb design. 30#@26"

[Josh B]

This is a piece of red elm that I harvested in Illinois 7 or 8 yrs ago.  The sapwood got damaged in transit so I had to chase several rings to clean it up.  I ended up with a Heartwood back before I was successful.  This is my first attempt at an hld.  It has a natural reflex coming off the handle in both directions, but not enough that I tried to correct it.  After it was shooting, my daughter put it through her rigorous inspection and determined that it was nearly acceptable.  She went on to say that she was quite confident that it would be fully acceptable if I would only fancy it up a bit.  So...I glued on my last copperhead pattern cloth strip and finished it up with spar urethane.  It's 60" NTN 30#@26".  There is no one here to do a full draw pic so maybe later on that

[Josh B]

Couple more pics

[Deerhunter21]

thats pretty! FD pics soon?

[bassman]

Nice.

[redhillwoods]

It looks beautiful. I look forward to the full draw pics,

[DLH]

I really like this bow those hollow limbs look wild. You have been on a rampage with bows lately. What do you feel the benefit of hollow limbs are? Did you use a gouge to hollow the limbs?

Daniel

[Hawkdancer]

Well, let's see here - 30#@26" or so!  Hmmm!  Your daughter ought to be able to draw that - or worst case, take an fd of you drawing it!  Really even worse, we might have to draft a volunteer!  I would also like to know how to get the hollow limb done correctly.  Got to be some magic involved! . I haven't advanced that far yet!
Hawkdancer

[PEARL DRUMS]

Man, somebody has been doing some serious catch up in the bow shop! Got all the gun projects cleaned up?

[Josh B]

Thanks fellas.  I got sidetracked yesterday and forgot to get a full draw pic before I hit the road.  Daniel I mostly used gouges, goose neck scraper and a 60 grit sander belt wrapped around a dowel for most of it.  I really don't know that much about the design, this being my first attempt at it.  Simson is the one that could better discuss it's merits.  I tried it because I was afraid I was going to lose too much width and get a lot of set with the high crown and intended low draw weight.  I didn't do any heat treatment at all and it's kept the original 1" of deflex it started with.  That really surprised me with red elm.
Pearly I got most of the high priority gun projects done.  Still plenty of work left on my bench though.  I had to get some bows done because the kids had outgrown their old bows and 4h shooting sports starts up again in a couple weeks.
Thanks fellas I'll try to get more pics up next weekend.

[Parnell]

Looks very nice, Josh.  Fun to see you post up. 

I've done two of these types of bows from Osage staves.  The second just needs a little more scraping.  I'm not convinced, myself, that there is much advantage when it's being "carved out" from a stave.  I wonder if the more sapling types of bows that have some natural curved contour on both the back and the belly flatten out more at draw and give the advantage?  Dunno...

But, looks good.  Wishing you well.

Parnell

[PaSteve]

Really nice looking bow. I like the way you shaped the grip. Looks very comfortable. Great job.