Thursday 22 May 2014

Back to Front Bow

I spliced two thin Ash off cuts before I went to Tennessee, I've just picked the stave up and am messing about.
It will have the bark side of the tree as the belly, which will be wide, the back is ring followed and any tillering will be on with or from the belly.
It is so narrow I will leave the tips stiff like the levers on a Mollegabet bow. The glued stave has some deflex and it's hells own job remembering which is back and which is belly. I'll add some recurve just before the tip get thicker for the levers. Not sure what it will be classed as, maybe an entirely new bow type an English Long Mollegabet maybe? I'll just call it the needle bow for now as it's so skinny.
My mind is in "bow-verload" as I have too many bows either on the go or floating round in my head. The problem with this situation is I may well rush and mess them up. Even though they are experimental they need to be done properly. A sloppily done experiment merely yields worthless results.
I've got an Elder reflex deflex I've steam bent, a Yew primitive I've roughed out and the needle bow. I also have an idea for a bow geometry with forward canted limbs.
The pic shows the Needle bow to right lying on it's belly so you can see the wide belly narrow back trapezoid cross-section.
The Yew is on the left, belly up, the Elder in the middle belly to the right, the Elder will need some steam bending to align the limbs and remove twist once it is roughed out and starting to flex.

The needle bow is 79" long. I put it up on the tiller rand the shape isn't too bad, mind it's only 20# at 28" draw! I shall take about 3" off each end and reflex the tips. It can then be tillered to a decent shape and might get up to about 35# which will do for a kids/ladies bow. It is just experimental after all. It will be interesting to see what I can get from this starting point.
In the pic you can see the farriers rasp I got from E-bay, (compare it to the cabinet rasp on the edge of the table) it was only £9.50 including postage, it's not as good quality as some of the ones I saw at the Tennessee Classic, but it certainly OK for the money and really takes of material. the main criticism is the smoother side isn't such a good cut as it could be.

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