load of fence post

[RandyN]

The next couple pics show the width of the back of the bow in the problem area. Not sure I have enough width to remove wood where the crack is going off the side of the bow.

[RandyN]

This pic is the overall bow. You can see the twist at the far end off the lower limb where is dog legs to the right.

So far i filled the cracks with super glue. Filled them while the bow was at low brace to ensure the glue flowed to the bottom of the cracks,,,unbraced the bow and left the glue seep out. I will clean this up with a scraper and then prep the back for the rawhide. I have not used rawhide before so this will be a new adventure in bow making. It fit right in with not making a bow from a fence post either.  HaHa!!

[Eric Krewson]

I would remove the crack on the edge, you have plenty of wood. One thing to remember; wood thickness is 7 times stronger than wood width. I add a tiny bit of thickness on my bows and can pull off very narrow but strong limb tips.

[RandyN]

Eric,,,Great advise.
I forgot about the ratio of thickness vs width. I leave my tips thicker and make them narrow but I have never tried it near the handle/fades.
I did nothing on the bow yesterday. I am going to brace it low, around 3", later today and see what happens. It looks like the limb that has the twist is straightening as I move the bow toward brace. That is why the cracks developed in the first place. Originally I was thinking of reducing some of the pressure on the side of the wood that is resisting the limb to straighten. But now I'm not sure. Some more indecision.

[RandyN]

Decision Made!!!! Starting work on some rawhide that I have. It is from a mule deer that a friend of mine shot the fall of 2017. She didn't want pack the hide out so I packed it. Scraped a little bit, salted it down and laid it in the sun to dry. Cut it into 2" stripes and stored it in a paper bag. Pulled it out yesterday and started getting it ready. Here are a couple pics of the process so far.

[burtonridr]

Nice!

Can you provide a little detail on preparing the raw hide? Any lessons learned? Challenges?

I'm considering doing something similar with a few mule deer rawhide quarters I have salted in storage right now.

[RandyN]

burtonridr,,,There is a ton of info on how to process rawhide. But I found very little info on dry scraping, which is the method I used. Thanks to my bow building mentor, hunting & shooting partner, Brad, this turned into an easy project. Thanks Brad!! He told me a couple days ago that it was easy but I had to do the research and see what else was out there.

My last post explains what we did with the hide when it was fresh. From there I took the 2" strips and clamped them to my workmate. I used an old dog clipper and cut the hair off the hide as short as possible. Then I scraped the flesh side to try and get any remaining dry meat & gristle off to make the back as smooth as possible. This might have been easier done after rehydrating the rawhide to place on the bow. Ill let you know about that one. Then scrape the hair off using a knife like a scraper. Make sure and scrape with the grain,,the way the hair is lying. Scrape don't cut. I clamped both ends of the rawhide to do the scraping. I noticed when I got to far from the clamp I was scraping away from, the process became harder and the hide seemed to stretch. Another point is the shorter the hair, the easier it was to remove. Last bit of advice, keep your knife sharp. I used an Accu-Sharp to touch up the knife often. I call it my lazy way to sharpen my knife but it worked great for this process. Don't do this indoors where your wife/significant other can watch. I made a huge mess. Good thing I was outside so clean up was easy.

Here are a couple pics of the tools used and the rawhide ready for rehydration.

[BowEd]

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,63406.0.html.This might help in the future for anyone wanting to make deer rawhide the dry scrape method way.It was on page 2 of primitive skills.
Hides can be dehaired after fleshing too the wet scraped way but the hide needs to be completely water soaked well.The hair/epidermis and all will come off.This is done without the use of lye or lime chemicals.Handy to use for smaller pieces instead of whole hides as smaller pieces can use up quite a bit of lacing to be laced into a larger frame meant for full sized deer or having to make special little frames for smaller pieces.Best dehaired on a good smooth fleshing beam with a cleanly fleshed hide to avoid any bumps you might encounter.Beware of old scars in the hide also.All of these things can make a hole in your hide if not careful when it catchs.A wooden home made fleshing beam will work well too.As long as it is smooth.I've seen 8" pvc pipes used also.A good fleshing blade is needed then too.Using the fleshing knife at the right angle with the right amount of pressure for taking strips of hair and epidermis off.
After smaller piece of hide is dehaired a person can lace it in a smaller frame or staple it out onto a piece of plywood or particle board to dry nice a flat to be cut up into anything you might want to use it for.

[Badger]

  If you get the bow working right up into the fades you can narrow it down quite a bit if need be. You get a lot of inches of draw near the center of the bow

[RandyN]

BowEd,,,Thank you for the link. I like your fleshing beam and fleshing knife. Did you make that knife? Giving others and myself options is always a good thing. Thank you.

Badger,,Thank you for the advise about removing wood near the handle. To be honest I was not sure the bow would hold together so I didn't want to commit to a handle location to early in the build. But now I think I'm good so I can start shaping the handle are.

Finished putting the rawhide on her today. The last couple steps I did to prep the bow and the rawhide are;

Scrubbed both the bow and the rawhide with a small pad that is meant for paint removal. It works great. Used the original, blue, dawn and hot, hot water. It works great as a degreaser. Changed out my dawn mixture a couple times and scrubbed until the water came off the bow clear.
Held the rawhide strip between my thumb and fore finger to get the water out. During this process the strip stretched out.
Checked the rawhide for fit and determined only 1 strip was needed.
Sized the back of the bow with TiteBond 2 and then did the same to the rawhide.
Put a 2nd glue layer onto the bow and positioned the rawhide to the bow.
A little tip Brad gave me was to tie the end of the rawhide in place with a string. That way it doesn't move as you work it down the back of the bow. It worked great.
Wrapped the bow with strips off tee shirt. Learned this tip from watching a Clay Hayes video. Hope he doesn't mind my mentioning it here. He has great videos that have been a big help during my learning curve.

Here are a couple pics.

[bradsmith2010]

the hide has  nice back story, it came from a mule deer up on the mountain last year,, Randy was guiding a good friend to a place he knew about and his friend shot the deer,, I was lucky and Randy gave me the skin,, I didnt have time to really properly process it at the time so I just put a bunch of salt on it and let it dry outside,, a few months later we cut it into strips and it turned out nice, so a piece of the mountain is going on the bow wood from Colorado,, I always love the way those things come togeter in bow making ,,, makes it even more special,,,I have quite a few pieces left for myself and have some projects planned for some rawhide as well,,

[RandyN]

Unwrapped the bow last evening. I wasn't sure what I would find since this is the first time applying rawhide. I have some clean up to do but fo the most part it looks good. The white you see on the sides is where the tee shirt wraps stuck to the edges. Maybe a little heavy on the glue. I will let it dry for a couple days and then continue tillering. Trying to get it finished before Christmas.

[RandyN]

I let the rawhide dry for 2 days. Started the process of cleaning it up today. I have never worked with rawhide before so there was a bit of a learning curve for me. I thought it would looks like Brads finished bows that have rawhide on them. Nope!! Had to call him and ask what the trick was. Now I have it down and I'm happy with how it looks for now. The first one is of a mistake. New guys, you don't want to see the wood. The best way to describe what it looks like after sanding is the texture of suede, only hard. Here is a couple pics of the progress.

[RandyN]

I forgot to mention in my last post that the rawhide feels like suede after sanding it down. I had some spots that I wanted to smooth out a little and that is why I was sanding the back. I used 100 grit sandpaper.

If you look back a few posts The bow developed a couple cracks in the snaky area. So I left the rawhide over the edge in this area to help keep the cracks from getting worse.

[RandyN]

Here is the bow after working on it today. Finally got it braced at 5". There is a little twist from mid limb to the tip on both limbs. The twist in the limb is less with the bow braced. I'm hoping it will go away completely when at full draw. The string favors one side of the handle. It's telling me which limb it wants as the upper. Slow going. This wood is hard and I have been using a scrapper to remove it. I don't want to make a mistake now. I'll keep you posted.