About three years ago I had to cut a some trees to make room for a new fence. One of them was a wild growing apple. It did not really look like it had a bow in it so I tossed it in my “maybe some day” stave pile. After a year or so I split it and found out it had almost 180 degree twist so I quickly tossed it on the burn pile. Somehow I never burned it and a few weeks ago I felt like trying something weird so grabbed this stave and chopped a pyramid shape out.
Worked it to floor tiller and clamped it up to heat the twist out. Well... I heated it pretty darn deep but only got half of the twist out. This apple wood did not really want to keep the heated shape!
The stave also had some funky stuff going on the back with a large hollow area and a dogleg on one side. Needed two more heating sessions to get the dogleg out and got lucky with the string going dead center at the handle area. Handle was a bit too thin for my liking and had a bit of a rotten area so I glued on a piece of maple and yew.
Tried to match the irregular back shape to the belly while tillering. Tiller shape looks really funny with the extreme twist, weird bumps and hollows but got it to 28 and called it done.
There was one knot on the side around mid limb which fell out. I drilled that out and epoxied a cutoff piece of apple in.
The cambium has lots of different layers with browns and even bright red colors in it. Left some of it on the bow and added some extra stain to accentuate it.
To match the bright color I added a padauk arrow pass and a handle wrap from an old purse from my wife’s aunt who passed away last year. She used it for years so it has a nice patina and we are sure she would have loved the new purpose!
It ended up drawing 45@27 and despite the prop twist is a surprisingly smooth shooter! Maybe the twist even adds to the smoothness?
No idea if this will last many shots but it sure was fun to make!
Stats:
Wood: Apple
Length: 64" ntn
Draw weight: 45@27
Max width: 1.8 inch
Nocks: ipe
Arrow pass: padauk
String: 8 strand fast flight
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// braced
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//full draw
