It's done!

A few pictures:

Close up of the wrap.

Upper limb "Through Difficulty"

Ben Cruachan - Look it up.

Ignore the goofy look on my face, I was asking the wife if she was ready...

The beauty of the bow, without the beast of, well, me.

Bow undrawn.

The backing didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, but it works. Bow has a fair amount of set, but it's final draw weight is 41 pounds at 28". Red oak, linen backing, finished with tung oil. Leather strikeplate/arrow rest, and a fishing line handle wrap. Now I get to make the next one. Maybe in the meantime I'll post a "lessons learned" or something like that.

Weapons Test

The bow has been fired. I shot 12 arrows with it, and only missed with 2. I think the spine on the arrows is a bit stiff for the bow, but I eventually was able to compensate and hit the damn target. Overall, happy with the performance, but we did experience some structural damage in the handle- See below:

The thick black line is the serving, not a crack. Thankfully.

So, right now I am trying to determine what to do to fix it. I may be able to get away with not having the thicker riser, and just adding a wrap or something there, but I am consulting some folks who know more about this stuff than I do to see what can be done.

Enough of the sadness and worry though: Here's a video of it shooting:

Finally! Some progress!

Lots of news-
Hurricane just barely brushed us, so lots of luck there. Its a shame that the same cannot be said of everyone in its path.

Bow is tillered! It is strung at full brace right now, with a string that actually has serving! Still some work to be done; I need to narrow up the handle, sand the whole thing down to a nicer finish, and then rub it down with some tung oil. I will be shooting an arrow off of it this weekend. Still not sure if I'll back it or not. We will worry about that later though. Here's some pictures:

Full Brace

Full Draw

Serving on the string- bit of glue drying on both ends. Serving jig made this much easier than anticipated.

So, there you have it- red oak, 42-43lbs at 28". I may be slightly south of 40 when all is said and done, but I'm pretty happy with it for now. Also got my Traditional Bowyers Bibles in the mail today- started reading the first, and it is full of good info, highly recommend.

Moving Slowly Forward

Things are still progressing, a little bit at a time. Originally I had no idea how long it would take me to build this thing, and the start of it went much quicker than I had thought. Tillering, obviously, is taking longer than I thought. Again, mostly because I only do it in short stints. I did a lot more this weekend, and have it looking quite good at 12" of draw. However, I ended up pulling a muscle in my back trying to restring it. Pulling on the bow, reaching for the string when suddenly  cat. She started attacking the stringer, so I went to swat at her and must have twisted wrong. So, that will slow me down a little. Like I need that! Anyway, more pictures to come.

Bracing!

I braced the bow. Not at full brace. I think the string is around 68-69 inches, and I want it to be 66. Still tillering my way to insanity. Seriously, I'll pull the bow on the tree; see some undesirable area; mark it and then contemplate my actions. Do I really want to do that? Back on the tree it goes, check again. I need to commit a whole lot more time to tillering  the few minutes at a time I am now. Here's the pictures:

Edit: Also, I roughed in the taper on the handle. That was a nightmare, lot of material to take off. I think I may use a bandsaw for the next one.

Special Guest

Here's a picture of the bow on the tree I took tonight- Haven't worked on it tonight, I've got a few other things on the agenda, but to make up for it; you can see Wynonna has decided to make an appearance. Lucky us!

Wednesday Slump

I am really, really bad about remembering to update this thing...
Made a tillering gizmo, but it needs some refinements. Got a string on the bow, I like tillering with it much more than with the tillering boot that I have- I may need to learn some knew knots or something, because I can't get it to hold without slipping.

I'll post pictures tonight (if I remember) of the bow on the tree and the tiller it is at right now. I know it isn't perfect, good flex near the handle that tapers off toward the tips- probably a bunch of hinges that I don't see.

Anyway, ran into car issues this morning, if they persist I may not be able to get as much done on the bow this weekend.