Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Steve Milbocker on December 19, 2010, 07:06:11 pm
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I just received a bow blank from Gary Davis. It is glued up out of billets and there is a big difference in the color and weight of each half. You can really feel the difference in the wood when working it, one is a much denser wood. The balance point is 2" off center if that tells you any thing. My question is how will this bow behave when tillered with such a difference between limbs?
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steve if ya need help with one of garys stave s call gary i know he will bend over backwards to help you brock
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Steve, your bow should finish out just fine if you do your part. One thing I would suggest is to keep a center mark (dimensional center of the bow) as you tiller the bow out to maintain equal limb mass. The denser limb will wind up a bit narrower than the other limb. But I always get that anyways because I build my bows "as they stand in the tree" where the bottom is always a bit denser. Good luck and keep us posted...........Art
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I'm with Brock,just give him a call,I know he goes to a lot of trouble to match his billets and close as he can,if he felt it would cause much trouble I am sure he wouldn't have spliced
them. :)
Pappy
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I'm with Brock,just give him a call,I know he goes to a lot of trouble to match his billets and close as he can,if he felt it would cause much trouble I am sure he wouldn't have spliced
them. :)
Pappy
That's pretty much the conclusion I came to also Pappy. He builds them for success for dummies like me ;D I think I will be staining this one though, the difference in the color of the wood is very pronounced. Any suggestions for a stain for osage? I've tried some on scrap pieces and it acts like it doesn't want to take very well.
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I wouldn't say that you are a dummy,but yes he dose. :) :) He will be down next week for
several days,I will ask him about it,I'm sure he will remember the one you are talking about. :)
Pappy
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Fiebings leather dye or Rit dye in alcohol will work on osage. I believe Gary used shellac on his bows while he uses steam to do the straightening, etc. You will have to remove the shellac first before the dye will take. The color of the wood might be closer after the shellac is removed.
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Steve ,
You know Gary will be glad to send you a differant one if you don't like it.
As for color if you get that yellow wood in the light (after you make a bow out of it) it will all turn chocolate anyway so don't worry about it !
Guy
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Back when I built billet bows I came a cross the same thing twice. When you tiller the limbs even though the one is denser wood. It will only matter in weight. When you tiller it likely you'll end up taking more wood off the heavyer(denser) limb.Which wiil help with the balance some.It may be a little off but mine wer'nt nearly as bad as after it was tillered.
I used leather dye to even out the color one one the other that was like that there was'nt to much difference.
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Fiebings leather dye or Rit dye in alcohol will work on osage. I believe Gary used shellac on his bows while he uses steam to do the straightening, etc. You will have to remove the shellac first before the dye will take. The color of the wood might be closer after the shellac is removed.
Pat, removing the shellac is the first step when you begin working Gary's blanks. I now have this bow floor tillered and ready to long string. The dark side is straight grained and the nice yellow side is full of burl,very pretty. It's almost like working white wood on one side then switching to osage on the other. This should be a good education for me if nothing else.
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steve i know for a fact gary uses shellac but tell ya what was me im a guy likes the color of osage
older it get darker prettir it gets my suggestion i no dye let it age it will darken with age guess i aint so picky i care more about how it shoots than looks brock
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"steve i know for a fact gary uses shellac but tell ya what was me im a guy likes the color of osage
older it get darker prettir it gets my suggestion i no dye let it age it will darken with age guess i aint so picky i care more about how it shoots than looks brock"
It's not the shellac guys, it's the wood. If the halves even came close to matching color I'd leave them. The dark side almost doesn't look like osage even though it is.
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Worked it quite a bit today, got my targeted weight to about 24". So far so good. Had to take a lot more off the dense limb to balance things out at 1/8 positive tiller.
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Steve I wouldn't worry about the color difference. In a few months you won't hardly tell the difference. I made a 2 piece take down osage bow this summer. One was brilliant yellow and the other the dark brown and now you can't tell the 2 pieces apart Dean
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Any pics ?
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I always use radiation to stain my osage bows. Sunlight turns them naturally to the most beautiful color imaginable. Funny how they start off such a nasty pee-in-snow color but improve with age.
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;D I like the pee in snow color and only take my osage bow out at night to shoot so I can keep it that way ::) Nah, but I do like that bright yellow ;)
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Always wondered if someone was to use UV resistant Spar Varnish on a 'sage bow if it would stay that whizzy color?
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Don't you have a stave to test with?? ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Hit targeted weight at 27" but also heard a tick :'( Couldn't find anything at first but then I felt it, a small diagonal splinter about 3" past the fade in a heavily burled section of the dense limb. Might have to chalk this one up to lessons learned or further my education by sinewing the back. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
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Couldn't you wrap it with decorative thread there and then do a matching wrap on the other side to make it look good? A single course of sinew would also save the bow.
George
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Thats a good idea George. Will regular thread be strong enough? I guess I don't know what you mean by a single course of sinew. I know that this is the last time I'll try missed matched billets, the weight difference makes it feel like my old Oly bow with a 36" stabilizer ;D
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Yes, I think so Steve. A tight wrap of thread is extremely stong. Others will have done that more than I have and I would defer to them, but I usually walk into my wife's sewing room and ask her to pick a nice color for me. I'm pretty sure I use a poly-cotten blend and I super glue it down. Certainly there are more primitive options, sinew and linen (flax) thread being the obvious ones. I like the color options in modern thread.
Course just means layer when you're talking about sinew. Normally, when I sinew back a bow I put 2 layers of sinew down being very careful to overlap the bundle ends. However, in this case where you're holding down a sliver, if you make sure the problem spot is in the center of a bundle, you could get by with just a single layer of sinew. That means you will pound/process less sinew. On the other hand, if you're also wanting to hold some reflex or flat out guarantee the back is bulletproof, do a normal 2 course sinew job and you'll never have to worry about that bow's back failing.
I wouldn't give up on putting different pieces of osage together either in a takedown or a spliced stave. I do it all the time. Normally I find that different weights in osage billets are caused by different moisture contents. Are you sure both pieces were dry?
George
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They were marked about a year and a half ago,I'm sure Gary would not have sent them otherwise. Also the bow still maintains about 3/4" of reflex.As for spliced billets, I wouldn't have a problem with them if they were closer in physical weight. I just don't like the unbalanced feel. I took a magnifying glass and looked at the "sliver". It goes a little deeper than I thought. Do you still think a wrap will work or would sinew be a better choice?
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ID SUPER GLUE THE SPLINTER AND THEN WRAP IT WITH SINEW THREAD OR ARTIFICAL SINEW BROCK
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Hmm, sure sounds like they were dry. Very interesting.
Any way you could post a photo of the problem area? I've not had a sliver raise that I remember going deep. Is there a knot or some other wood imperfection there? A picture would really help.
George
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I have trouble posting pics and the camera we have will not show enough detail.I actually have to use a magnifying glass to see it very well,thats how I knew it went deeper than I originally thought. The area with the crack has a lot of swirl to the grain and it is on the edge of the limb. I'll get some 420 LocTite Brock and give it a go. How do you super glue thread? Wrap first then apply over the thread? How far on each side of the crack should I wrap?
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Strongest thread I've found is the upholstery thread Steve. Jean or coats/buttons threads are pretty strong also. Color selection isn't the greatest though.
For super gluing, saturate your wrap well and take a folded (about 4 times) paper towel, and as you rotate the bow, wipe off the glue. But there is a little trick to not smearing the glue. You must constantly keep a dry section of towel in contact with the glue at all times to prevent spreading the stuff all other the place. In other words, when you finished, you'll have showing on the towel a strip of glue about as wide as your wrap and about 3-4" long instead of one big glop on the towel. Clear as mud I'm sure..............just do the best you can. Art
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steve do as art says but go to wally world or harbor fright get a cheap tube of glue heck no need to spend 15 bucks for loctite haha if it blows ur not missn much more that way my way of thinkin why put more money in it if it dont make it lol
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Thanks for bring that up about the cheap runny SG bcbull. That's just what I use. It does a much better job then the thicker glue.......Art
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I used sinew to repair a splinter on the edge of one of my osage bows. Worked like a charm.
(http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee207/deltonn/IMG_3935_1.jpg)
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Thank you everybody for your help.
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RIP :'( I filled the crack with 420 Loctite. Seemed to be doing the trick then blam. The bow broke well below the obvious crack. The inside of the limb was pretty snarly. I probably should stick to easier staves at my level of inexperience. My first 2 bows were great successes, I guess I was just lucky. Oh well, back on the horse.
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Bummer, hate it when that happens. Sometimes the wood just won't be a bow. I wonder if you could save the good limb and make half a takedown with it? I've never tried that with a spliced bow, but I've done it with regular bows.
George
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"Sometimes the wood just won't be a bow".
If the two limbs weren't polar opposites as far as grain were concerned,I think I would have been ok. That snarly grain looks great under clear glass, in furniture and gun stocks. I'm not too sure about self bows though.
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I sent the bow back to Gary and asked him to do a postmortem for me so I would not make the same mistake again. To my surprise he told me I had done nothing wrong and said it was the swirl of the grain that was the culprit. He is sending me another blank. The man is "top drawer" in my book.
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Told ya so !
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yep tol ya garys a stand up guy brock
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Good to hear !
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It maybe one billet is'nt as seasoned and has more moisture than the other.