Well fellas I haven't posted a bow in quite a while. In fact I was a little reluctant to post this one as well because it is my trade bow for the 2015 bow trade. But this bow is the absolute best bow I've built to date. Here's the story.
This particular piece of Osage is from the very first Osage I ever cut for staves. Last year I attempted to mentor a young man I worked with. He came to my house and picked out this stave. I helped him down to the point of about 30in of a ring being chased. We sealed the back and stood it in the corner for his next session. Several months went by and almost every weekend I offered him to come over and work on his stave. He always said oh yeah I'll come by for a while. He never did, finally one day at work he told me that he just decided to buy a FG bow and that if I wanted to use his stave to go ahead. I said, well let me know if you change your mind.
When I got my victims name for the bow trade I started looking at staves to build a deflex/reflex bow. I kept looking at this stave with a partially chased ring. So I called my buddy and he said to go ahead he wasn't going to build one. So I picked it up and chased the next ring down myself. This thing is as clean of a stave I ever worked. But it grew a little wonky. I decided that a full bend and a good heat treat on my new caul would be what it got. So after floor tiller I spent a week every night after work with a heat gun and some Osage. After the second session I noticed some prop twist. So the third night I took out as much as I could. The fourth night was string alignment, it was pretty straight forward, a little kick to one side and it was good. The fifth night was a long one. I done a full heat treat of the stave and clamped it in my caul over night. When I got up Saturday morning I took the clamps off. The stave did not spring back at all. I now had a beautiful deflex/reflex bow stave. Then came tillering, I had a new tillering design put together and this was the first one I tillered on it. The mid limbs wanted to fight me a bit but they finally came around. I was out to about 55 at 23 when mojam came around. I thought, I will finish it up there. We'll that didn't happen. But I did get some professional eyes on it and I was humbled by their encouragement and comments. The tip overlays was put on this week, dvshunter used my bow in an overly demonstration. He glued on the top overlay and partially shaped it. I finished it and glued up the bottom one. I did get it to 55 at 26 and put a few arrows through it. Upon the first release, I knew I had something special. After mojam, Onebowwonder asked me to come over to his house and work on some bows for a day. I managed to get it to its final draw specs. Ok now it's time to shoot. It had so much power in the limbs I couldn't string it by hand. I had to use a stringer. I shot the first arrow at full draw and I was so giddy I almost couldn't shoot the second. Anyway we shot a bunch of arrows and took lots of pictures. The rest is in the stats.
Unbacked Osage self bow
Deflex/reflex design
64 ntn 55lbs at 28in
1/1/2 wide to mid limb then a slow taper to 3/8in tips.
Tips are, top white striped ebony,black ebony, a dark red colored wood, white stripe, black ebony. The bottom is the same without the top white stripe ebony on top.
The back is dyed with oxblood leather dye diluted with denatured alcohol and a little mineral spirits.
The leather wrap is buck skin dyed with oxblood dye. With silk thread holding a wind indicator feather mad of a very small primary turkey feather, a small tail feather cut down and a little buck tail all types up in my fly vise.
The Indian symbols are a lightening bolt for speed, a deer track for plentiful game and a thunderbird track for bright prospects. I hope you enjoy this half as much as I did. And I hope my victim makes meat with this one this fall. This bow was also #30 for me. Patrick
