It's been a few years since I last made a bow. I had this bunch of drying staves lying around in my workshop and attic, but it was a straight grained chestnut leftover bias-ringed board that I sawed recently that just yelled for attention.
The 1” thick board came from lumber that I’ve sawn on my sawmill. I let it dry for a few weeks inside, and starting working it.
Sweet chestnut is a wood I use a lot for outdoor construction work as it’s very resistant to fungus attack, and I a pile of logs waiting to be sawn. It resembles a bit white oak or pedunculate oak, but it’s 20-25% less dense than a typical oak. No idea how well it would hold up as a bow, so I kept it really wide. It looks more like a windmill than a bow
Nice straight grain, so I just planed the back of the board, cut out an elongated diamond shape 1 cm to 9 cm, allowed for a handle section and started tillering. It took me a lot of painstaking scraping to get it where I want it, and I had to correct one section with dry heat just before the tips that bent a tad too much when it was at 50# at 20” draw. No further heat treatment so far.
Specs: Sweet chestnut, 69.3” (176 cm) ntn 52# at 28”, pyramid board bow 8 cm wide at the fades to 1 cm at the nocks. Even thickness across the working sections of the limbs of 12.8 mm +/- 0.5 mm, at the outer 15 cm 14-15 mm thickness. Slightly rounded trapezium back. The mass of the bow is 582 g, which is spot on with Steve Gardner’s expected bow mass. I can still narrow the tips down a bit, though they do bend a tiny amount.
After shooting the bow has 1.5 cm of set.
It shoots really nicely and seems pretty fast, still need to sand it, and finish it. Not sure about the nocks, I might just leave them as they are.
Will post FD pic later.
