After a long period of struggle with massive health problems I’m back. Hope some of you remember me and like to see my work again. I haven’t finished a bow in the last months, but sorted out my staves, prepared now and then some of them. So I came over to a pile of staves and bow blanks thought for bendy handle bows. This collection are more or less short (at least the most) staves/blanks, some of them were laying in a corner for years.
What I found so far:
ash, bamboo, barberry, black locust, black walnut, buckthorn, checker tree, cherry, cornelian cherry, cypress, dogwood, elderberry, different sorts of elm, golden chain tree, hawthorn, hazel, hedge maple, holly, juniper, lilac, mulberry, norway maple, osage, different sorts of plum, rowan, serviceberry, sloe, spindeltree, thuja, tree of heaven, walnut, wayfaring tree, yew.
Except osage and bamboo all others are native growing trees or bush in my homeland. Some of them came out of the bio junk container from our local community.
Of course there are a lot more suitable bow woods, I simply do not have staves from all available.
But still have now more than 30 species to choose from. Perhaps I find more in dark corners of my shop/garage, we will see.
I will do lighter weight bows with different designs, symmetrical and asymmetrical and mostly more or less shorties.
Well, I got started already and work on 20 or so parallel to compensate waiting periods (steaming, glueing, sinewing, heat treating, …).
What a good feeling to be back in the shop!!!
Here is the first one.
Holly flatty “holey holly” 34/28 (No. 109)Some years ago I got some holly (ilex aquifolium) staves donated from my friend Andi (thanks bro!). One of those was split in halves, one half was a good one and made a nice bow. The other half was full of dead branches and I laid it in a corner and forgot about it. Over the years of seasoning the dead branches got loose and could pushed out easily, below and above the knots/holes deep cracks had developed going through the entire wood.
After examining this cool piece again, I couldn’t throw it into the fire wood. I scraped the bark away, leaving some cambium on. The back is an up and down humpy bumpy all the length, I followed bellyside as good as I could.
No steam, no heat, no stain is on wood.
The nine holes gave this stick its name “holey holly”.
ntn: 57”
bh: 6”
symmetrical
mass: 390 gram
w/d: 26/16 mm handle
44/14 mm max
12/10 mm tips
bendy handle
08”: 03,0
10”: 06,5 (+ 3,5)
12”: 09,2 (+ 2,7)
14”: 12,1 (+ 2,9)
16”: 14,7 (+ 2,6)
18”: 17,5 (+ 2,8)
20”: 20,6 (+ 3,1)
22”: 23,6 (+ 3,0)
24”: 26,6 (+ 3,0
26”: 30,0 (+ 3,4)
28”: 33,5 (+ 3,5)
