Well here's some concluding notes and pics.
the bow is now called
Artemis (imp-child is a big
artemis fowl fan).
we failed to find any hay so were compelled to attack a pumpkin instead.
My daughter and i are in total awe of the many beautiful zen sticks on this site (v.reminiscent of japanese raku pottery, i think) so even tho
Artemis is a lowly board bow we nevertheless wanted to keep things minimal. we just gave her a few coats of olive oil and beeswax-terpentine polish and then went over her from nock to nock with a large smooth portland pebble to compact the wood-cells. finally for the grip, we decided to use hemp flashed with some red cotton to re-enforce the area receiving most hand contact and bound in a rest made from the end of an old belt. i wanted to add some more red cotton flashing at the top but the imp deterred me from doing so and also deterred me from trimming-off the bottom flashing (; so yes that is a deliberate um, tassel ;).
Caveats:
the rest needs to relax a little (or be re-positioned grr) as it looks clear from some of the pics we took, that the arrows could do with being a little closer to the center of the bow. the static limbs are almost certainly carrying more weight than needs be. i tried to make them blade-like so they pretty-much taper to nothing top & bottom. &so for that reason i left them deeper: about 1" tapering to 3/4"; i'm sure they could be less deep & still remain stiff. And those arrows we were using at the time were way long even for me, at 32"
About the arrows:
they're some cheap-as-chips test arrows i got online. i phoned the good folks up and they suggested *not cutting them down to size as we'd sooner or later break the tips in any case. & so we did. probably sooner rather than later, lol. so while all the arrows were initially the same; 32" long and with the same field point, we did end up with several different lengths. i have no idea what the spine would be but here's the specs afaik:
made from scotts pine and have no taper.
5/16" diameter
125 grain field point.
shortest: 27" ~> 450 grains total weight
longest: 32" ~> 550 grains total weight
Shooting from between 15-30 yards, the best length arrow seems to be the shortest one @27". The tips of the heavier long arrows are able to punch right through an old shed door that's used as a final back-stop in the garden, 25+ yards away.
About the set:we have now thrown easily over 1000 arrows and while it did reach nearly 2.5" one evening (was a rainy day) immediately after we had finished, happily, the
set recedes to about 2"; &maybe gained about 1/8" (during final exercises she was settling to just under 2") but it's hard to be exact now since the grip won't let me lay her flat like before..
Overall
Artemis seems to handle quite nicely really. no shock, verrrry quiet, arrows flying straight and speedwise we think she's in the 150fps range.
i don't have a fancy arrow chrono-thingemybob but using an ipod, we took some video of us trying to kill the pumpkin @22m (i measured it the next day). we then loaded the video clips into
kdenlive: in one clip where an arrow kicks up some wood chippings, it took 14 frames from release. so since the ipod takes 30 frames/s i reckon that one was about 155 feet/s. Can anyone say what sort of max range a bow like this should be capable of? i was able to fling a couple of blunts weighted with bullet cases over 100m but we were not in a suitable place where we could totally go for it..
fin.
note: regretfully, some pumpkins were fatally wounded in the making of this post :(btw: thank you MoNative! ~and just so i don't keep bumping this post,,, a pre-emptive bIg thX to anyone else that wants to add nice words. but you know you've all got me already with the damn bow-bug lol,, & even biGGer thx to anyone with constructive criticism/thoughts, i can only hope to learn from those that know telling it how it is,,
As time permits i hope to make some more board-bows and then /dreams/,,, have a go at a knarly ol zen stave with a wealth of horrid knots &ting. wahey ;) &just had some terrific gales a few days ago in southern uk so i'm on the lookout for any fallen sycamore or ash that i can squirrel away for a six months or so,,
ps, couldn't resist : our cats with opposable thumbs (= 4Del-the-cat =) they may look cute but it's a trick...
