Hey guys,
Lately I have been on a bit of a deflex reflex kick with my self bows. Had a piece of yew with lots of sapwood and not so much heartwood which would need a handle build up anyway. So I chopped that into a rough bow stave and steamed it at the handle.
This did not work at all, even though it was not that thick and I steamed it for an hour! So I then decided to cut a piece out of the middle section and bend it there. This bent fine and I filled the gap with a piece of beech I had lying around. (see pic without handle wrap below)
Added some walnut and padauk to the handle to cover the beech insert and build up the handle. I then removed about ten rings of the sapwood but faded them in the handle section to keep some thickness there.
Tillered the bow to brace and cooked the recurves after that. Tillered it to brace again and then added some more reflex just below the recurves with dry heat. Most of this came out during final tillering but I decided to leave it like this because the string tension at brace is already amazing.
Added some ipe tip overlays and a horn arrow pass. Stained the ipe to match the arrow pass and added a black leather handle wrap to match those.
Shot te bow quite a lot the last week and boy is this thing fast and smooth! Going to try some more variations of this concept for sure!
Specs:
Wood: Dutch yew
Length: 62" ntn
Draw weight: 55#@28"
Tip overlays: Ipe
Handle buildup: walnut, padauk
Arrow pass: Waterbuffalo horn
String: 8 strand fastflight
// profiles
// braced
Braced by
// details
// tipoverlays
// arrow pass
// glued in block
// fd
