I was shopping in Home Depot one day this winter and decided just to take a quick look a the red oak boards...lol. This 3/4" x 2-1/2" x 6' board with perfectly straight grain on all sides was on the top of the stack. It was a quarter sawed board. I decided that I'd better buy it or I would inevitably regret it later. The bow is 66" NTN, 42#@28", 2-3/8" wide at the fades with a straight taper to 1/2" tips outside the nocks. I put a fair amount of time into making it really balanced, so it shoots really nice and is super quiet. I used Tightbond III to glue on some 6" tip extensions on the back side of the limbs and shaped them into flipped tips. This is the first time I've made these and I am really happy with them. They seem to make up for the inevitable set in the limbs and seem to improve the cast of the bow a bit. I aligned the grain on them so it is really hard to see they were added. The handle is built up on the belly side with a piece of black walnut and built up about 1/8" on the back side. The shelf is 1-1/2" above bow center, making the lower limb about 1-1/2" shorter than the top. I really like the way this makes the bow balance at my bow hand index finger when carrying the bow. It was a little harder to tiller this way, but it sure does balance and shoot nicely. The shelf is made out of a couple of pieces of leather but I really don't like the way it feels. I think I'm going to take it off and replace it with a floppy rest. The tips have buffalo horn overlays that came from knife scales that I bought on Ebay. Even though the back was just fine, I backed the bow with brown paper because I just like the way it looks, plus I'm considering painting on some camo or hieroglyphic decorations with a brush or a template.
I twisted up a 14-strand, red, BCY452x flemish string for it with some material that was a gift from my friend Hank in Iowa. He also sent me a new serving tool that he made for putting on mono serving material. It has a nylon V-block on it so it doesn't put any dents or scratches on the servingl. Like he suggested, I got some 20 lb. Cajun red mono fishing line at Wal-Mart for the serving. It served it up really round and slides off my fingers smoothly. Hank calls this string design a "Satan's Anus"...lol. He didn't care much for the string, hence the gift to me, but I like it just fine. Sorry for the nerdy model with the glasses and t-shirt.
