Good day everyone,
I finished off a bow that is a little different than my usual. For those that have seen my work know that I tend to build laminated bows as my specialty. I decided I should give a stave bow a try just to get the experience under my belt.
The build started with a downed black locust log that I found on my family farm back in February. The log had been down for at least 5+ years and the bark had long since rotted off. I cut the log open and found that it had some heartwood rot, but there was some decent wood outside of the core. I split out two staves which I took back home. The first thing I did was cut through the rotted wood on the back until I got down to a good looking ring to chase. I than roughed out the bow on the bandsaw that and thinned the limbs to near bending size. After that I let the bow sit for a few weeks in my shop to dry out.
Over the next few months I worked on the bow here and there. I slowly got the limbs bending and string aligned after several serious heat straightening attempts. I added 2" of reflex to both limbs as I equaled out the reflexed top limb with the naturally deflexed bottom limb along with a light heat treatment throughout. It took awhile but I finally got the limbs in pretty good alignment overall. I added a few cherry laminations to build up the handle area before I went to rawhide backing.
The back of the bow is full of old checks that ran throughout both limbs. I filled all the checks with superglue and never had any issues when tillered out to 22". But I finally talked myself into backing the bow with rawhide just for added measure before tillering to full draw. The rawhide came from a deer that I shot and made into rawhide myself.
After adding the rawhide it was just a matter of tillering it to 28" and finishing out the bow. The final bow specs are as follows:
-64" ntn, 1-7/8" wide at the fades with a mid limb taper to 1/2" wide tips. 50# at 27"
I inlayed a piece of deer hoof for the arrow pass which came from a deer i shot with my bamboo/osage bow this past fall. The rawhide backing was stained with a dark brown leather dye before the entire bow got 10 coats of tru-oil finish. The leather for the grip came from a nuisance raccoon that was trying to break into my quail pen. The string is X-99 material with a bit of B55 in the nocks for padding.
The bow ended up with a flat profile and only takes around 1/4" of set while shooting. It is a nice shooting bow that I have been quite impressed with, it shoots just as nicely as the laminated wood bows I build. The bow got the name "Homegrown" as everything used in the bow came from my family farm and animals that I shot and processed myself. This is my first attempt at a more primitive style bow and I am happy with the results.
Enjoy,
Taylor
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