Ozbow

Cheers mate, thanks for the vote of confidence!

Hi all, long time no speakies. I've been far too busy with work and family and such to do much bowyering lately, but last weekend had the pleasure of teaching a couple of guys how to make longbows. Laying out: http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m98/dg2clarke/archery/2015%2007%2024%20longbow%20cse/20...

What's the grain like in those boards? I've had it convincingly argued to me that a thin linen backing is not as effective as people would believe, and that most of the protective effect is from the glue itself, not the linen. Good work on those bows. You're making good time! Still a little way to g...

I think Veritas might be exaggerating things a bit. I've steam bent limbs from kiln dried wood after a couple of days of soaking. So have literally hundreds of other bowyers. A couple of points already made that I will echo: - The amount of recurve is too extreme - Massarabundah makes nice bows, but...

I feel I should have this typed out somewhere saved to just copy and paste. I recommend that for a first bow someone should either use a split stave or a bamboo backed milled timber stave. For selfbows, those made from one piece of wood, I have successfully used Ironbark, Spotted Gum, Tasmanian Blac...

Mikaluger has the right of it.

With a bamboo backing, you can buy it sight unseen. The grain no longer matters.

What are some woods you have locally available?

And a lot of the threads in this sub-forum:

http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=33

Where abouts are you located Preston?

You say you haven't had success yet. What have you tried and what went wrong?

Aha. Not sure which picture exactly, but it was a picture of a bow tillered to the same shape as the plotted path...more or less.

I pull the tail tight and clip it flush with fingernail clippers. Cuts super short, doesn't risk burning or nicking the string.

But a soldering iron is a good solution too!

Wow, this is a blast from the past!

Preston, can you see any of the pictures?

According to TBB I, a well made standard selfbow, shooting 10 gpp, should shoot 100 + draw weight (in lb) feet per second. So yours is pretty much spot on. Since the publication of that tome, standards have increased and now most bowyers shoot for 'standard + 10' fps. I'm happy to get standard when ...

I'm not a superstitious person, but there is something sinister in 'tas oak'. I've had I don't know how many bows inexplicably snap, even with perfect grain, even with 75 mm thickness with only 30 lb draw weight. The only successful bow I've made from tas oak was backed with fiberglass reinforced ta...

The bow snapped because the wood fibers on the back were not strong enough. This could have been down to a number of symptoms (depending on what you've done with the stave): * The wood might be weak in tension. So the solution is to make a bow from a larger diameter tree, or decrown the back. * The ...

That is a classic, textbook tension failure. It would have broken across the back first, with the fracture going to about half the limb's thickness. Then the wood would have started to split longitudinally from the neutral plane, with a bias towards the belly. Thus, you have the very wide, flat tria...

That looks nice. Far more golden than the samples I have. Are those waxed? Red Oak is the opposite in terms of its grain structure. You can take a sample six inches long and 1/2 inch square, put one end in a glass of water and blow air through the other end to make bubbles. Not even an air compresso...

Sounds good Daryl. Looking forward to seeing it.

Did you pay any mind to visible grain, or saw away with reckless abandon like our forebears reported?

Can we have a picture of the whole thing? I struggle a bit to discern what we're seeing in the pictures posted.

My blackbutt bow is backed with just webbing. I think it might be too weak in compression to really be a match for bamboo, unless you trap the back.

Keep trying though.

You made a compound? Wow! I had a lot of luck with Silver Wattle (scientific name unknown, but that's what it was known in in and around Parkham/Elizabethtown, so you might know what I'm talking about.). I found some of the bigger saplings, up to 3" diameter often had a flat side to them, up to...

I was looking at one made by stihl that was about $50 I think. Made for those that cut firewood I think.

Sorry, I misinterpreted your post. I thought you meant what had been 34# in Maple was only 22 # in Lemonwood.

Dave

I've been wanting to get one too. Not necessarily because my turnover of timber is that high, but I think it would be interesting to know...just so that I'd know...what the moisture content was. Like you, I'm pretty sure that by the time I use wood it's at equilibrium. But then on the other hand tes...

The pleasure's all mine Daryl. Happy to repeat for any other samples you may have. Actually I'd be interested in trying some Red Ash if ever you come by any. Was that bow made from the same piece of wood that yeilded any of the test pieces? For those reading along at home, Daryl sent me nine samples...

Are the instructions in that book for a selfbow or a laminated bow?

Not bad for the price.

I wouldn't do it with boo. It'd overpower Juniper. TBB is still one of my most prized collection of books. I don't care what criticisms people have of them now: without those books, the great majority of those bowyers would never have made bows. They were written a few decades ago now. Concepts, und...

Daryl (Greybeard) has recently come into some Lemonwood, and he was kind enough to send me some samples to subject to bend tests. I first read of Lemonwood when I was about 14, and just starting to make bows. I'd read about it in Adrian Elliot-Hodgkin's 'The Archer's Craft', and I spent some conside...

That was a nice little video. I too liked his field-expedient bow clamp.

I didn't think there was any forest left on Ireland.

As for how easy it was to scrape that wood: I think I've had harder butter! That guy would be in for a shock if he tried some of our properly hard woods.

Do you mean to say the books are criticised, or Juniper is highly criticised? I'm sorrry to say I have no test data, nor personal experience with Juniper to know how it might go.

If memory serves, Ishi the last Yahi Indian used sinew backed Juniper for his bows.

I'll echo some of the above comments and say your bows look most splendid!

Absolute top notch.

Are any of those FNQ timbers available commercially up there?

The grain in the timbers look spectacular.