Saturday 21 May 2011

Roy's Bow and Stringing Jig

I've been working hard to get the bow finished for a shoot tomorrow, but I'd got my dates in a muddle, it's next week! At least it means I can try it up the club tomorrow instead and get it shot in.
I forgot to put my tab on when posing for this pic and the string was rather cutting into my fingers, hence the slightly short draw (well that's my excuse!)

The red grip and serving is rather handsome and contrasts nicely with the Mother of Pearl arrowplate. I've kept the nocks small to keep the overall bow length down and keep the tips light (The bow is 70.5" tip to tip). The lovely dark heartwood and creamy sapwood shows up well in the close up shots. The draw weight has been tested with my new spring dial scale, it read 62 lb first time, but then as I let it down I noticed the zero had shifted, this shows how even a spring scale spring actually stretches slightly with use, but at least this one has a zero adjustment.
I reset it and measured again, 58lb this time, of course winching it back slowly affects the draw weight, so I'm happy it's 60 lb. As an illustration, if you winch a bow back to full draw and it reads 50, if you wait a few minutes the weight will drop by at least 2 pounds and maybe as much as 4 as the wood relaxes.

The Stringing jig is made of odds and ends I had lying about, and a couple of wire fence tensioning bolts (modified a bit) from the gardening section of B&Q) It works a treat allowing me to get a nice lot of tension on the string when serving the loops, this stops a ugly gap opening up at the start of the loop when the bow is used.

2 comments:

  1. Brilliant bow man! I live in Washington state where beautiful Yew trees grow but I've yet to get my hands on some. Someday! Again, great bow!

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