This is the account of the making of my second bow, another English longbow-esque red oak board bow from the same board that I used to make my first bow:
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,50836.0.html. I decided to try for a heavier draw weight this time, since I already have a set of arrows spined #45-#48. I am going for #50 @ 29”.
Imgur album of all images:
http://imgur.com/a/EQJHHThe piece of board I started with was 73” long, 1-3/16” wide, and 3/4” thick. The dimensions I marked out on it were as follows: Length: 73” tip to tip. Width: from center, the first 6” are full width, then begins to taper to 7/8” at 12” from the tip. From that point, the limb tapers to a 1/2" wide tip. Depth: from center, the first 6” is 3/4" thick, then tapers to 1/2" at the tip. We haven’t been running our air conditioner lately, so the relative humidity is high in our house, 70%. The board weighed 1 lb. 12.2 oz. before I started working on it.
My first bow has a very blocky rounded rectangle cross section. This one is a little wider, so I felt I could get away with a flat-backed D-shape cross section. Because I don’t have a band saw or drawknife, I used an angle grinder with a sanding disk to remove wood to get down to about 1/16” from my layout lines. I taped the end of my shop vac hose to the handle of the grinder so it would suck up most of the dust as it was produced, which it did. Way less dust in the garage than when I made my first bow.
Then I went after it with my brand-new Shinto saw rasp (a tool I can now highly recommend) to get the rest of the way there. I faceted the belly so that the D-shape would be more uniformly even, then rounded off the facets. I rounded off the corners on the back to a 1/8” radius (is 1/4" diameter “the size of a pea”? Eh, close enough…). After getting to the layout lines, weight was 1 lb. 4.6 oz. After faceting (but before rounding) the weight was 1 lb. 3.3 oz. After rounding everything, the weight was 1 lb. 2.5 oz.
Another new thing I wanted to try on this bow was tempering. I decided to do it after I got the bow to starting dimensions but before I started on the long string. I bought a Wagner heat gun, set a stopwatch on my phone, and started toasting the belly. I started 5” from the tip and stopped at the center line. It took 38 minutes to do one limb. I let the gun cool off for a while, then did the other limb, checking the stopwatch every so often to make sure I was going at the same pace as I did with the other limb. I’m not sure I toasted the belly enough - it is definitely uniformly darker with some dark patches - but it is not the “chocolate brown” that I have read about. Maybe I will heat-treat it again after I start tillering. Immediately after tempering I weighed it again, and it was 1 lb. 2.2 oz. The bow lost .3 oz. of weight to the heat gun.
At this point, I set the bow back down on a shelf and I am going to let it sit for at least three days to rehydrate before I start long string tillering. I will weigh it again at that point to see if it is back up to where it was before tempering.
I think I am going to try not backing this bow. The board has really good grain, so I think it can take it. I figure once I start tillering, if I start getting nervous I can always do it at that point. I know a linen backing would give a little insurance against breakage, but I think the bow would look much nicer without it. What do you think?
Any comments or advice on my progress so far would be appreciated. I will keep posting to this thread as I go to keep y’all updated. Thanks in advance for your input!
