Author Topic: Am I thinking about this right?  (Read 940 times)

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Offline ssrhythm

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Am I thinking about this right?
« on: September 01, 2022, 04:59:54 pm »
Ok.  So I have a good many Osage staves that are dry enough to work, but the vast majority of the ones I have left are a little twisty and/or have concave areas interspersed with convex areas on the back...or are flat our character staves.  I enjoy the challenge...or at least I started off enjoying the challenge of turning such staves into bows, but I am really wanting to make a very well tillered, straight-forward, hard-hitting hunting bow that will stand the test of time.  I'm going to keep working some of these staves and doing my best to make the best bows out of them being more meticulous with transferring the back contours to the belly, but I am wanting to build something more straight-forward this winter to become my hunting bow for next fall. 

I do not want to buy a board or buy a really good stave, as I want the bow to be made of wood that I went out and cut.  I love my sinew backed osage recurve I built last year, so I'm definitely going to back it with sinew.  Since I am backing the bow with sinew, how much concern should I have for the growth ring/rings on the back of the bow?  I'm thinking I can take one of my staves...I'm thinking about one very straight and fairly broad backed stave...and have the back and belly planed to basically make a 1/2" or 5/8"  thick board with the width being the sides of the stave as it is currently split.  I would then proceed to lay out the bow as I normally would and reduce the sides down to my rough lines using my drawknife and following the grain however it may snake, my goal being to start out with a belly that is parallel and mirroring the back for more straightforward tillering.

I would glue a block/blocks of wood for the handle section and rough the bow out and thin the limbs to floor tiller.  Once at floor tiller, I could do the sinew job making sure to apply that meticulously and very evenly then finish the tiller in a few months when the sinew is cured.

Am I thinking about this correctly? 
Am I assuming wrong concepts or ideas and missing anything? 
What problems am I going to run into if I try to go this route?

Thanks for any ideas or advice.

Offline Hamish

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Re: Am I thinking about this right?
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2022, 07:03:01 pm »
I would need to see your chosen stave, how much character and flaws it has, before I can assess if your plan would be okay.

Ideally straight grain is what you want. The further you get away from that the more your chances of failure increase, even if you sinew back it.


Offline ssrhythm

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Re: Am I thinking about this right?
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2022, 08:15:44 pm »
That makes sense.

bownarra

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Re: Am I thinking about this right?
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2022, 02:19:37 am »
If you are worried that sinew won't hold together a 'violated' back/none single ring back then think of a turkish horn bow.....the core of a hornbow is very far from being one single growth ring! Violated all over and most importantly right through the bending sections of the limbs.
a well applied sinew back will hold anything together ;)
Don't worry about making a board from your stave.
the only real issue is that grain violations on the belly can't take quite as much compression as perfect grain can - but this is only a minor point as long as the grain isn't all over the place.
your plan sounds good to me.