Ozbow

Not much to do with the bows but have scored some great wood off cuts recently. So put them on the lathe and turned some mugs and a wine goblet for the old girl.
The wine goblet is Olive tree, the port mugs are of Burdekin Plum, and a piece of Dead finish or Red lance wood to the locals. Just thought you would like the pics.

Cheers Wayno

Lovely grain, both in pattern and colour. The turning isn't too bad either.

I particularly like the red lancewood. The rich red colour is striking. I've read somewhere that lancewood makes a good selfbow, but that wasn't the 'red' variety. I wonder how that would go as a selfbow timber?

Mick don't think it would be to good as have never seen a piece longer then about 30 cm that didn't have a knot or crack or floor in it. Not from this neck of the woods anyway. Although they tell me you can get a lot of different colours in the lance wood but we only get the red in our area. Took a picture with the flash which shows the colour a little better.
Cheers Wayno

Very nice mate

Very nice Wayno. I like the size ratios. A little snoot for the wine goblet and a big one for the port to go in

Cheers.... Rod

Beautiful work! how long did they take to turn up? ...wish I had a lathe now

Love em all, very nice and the lance wood is my favourite too!

Cmoore Im just an hack on the Lathe mate but the lance wood one took me about 3 hrs as the block started about 4 times the size but you know after mistake after mistake it was lucky there was anything left spinning.
Rod bit of a habit when you drink the port by the litres mate.

Cheers Fellas

well done Brother.............................

ole_silver wrote:well done Brother.............................

Gidday Steve, have seen you around the traps for a while. Glad to see your still putting one foot after the other mate.

Cheers.... Rod

yeah Rod,

I am happy bout that too, just cause Wayno has promised a drinkin mug...........

in exchange i'll stop in Bowen n pick him up to get to Gladdy.......

fair deal?

(ps. he always bring some port as well)

cheers..................

Sounds like a good deal Steve. A fine upstanding gentleman such as yourself will probably need a valet to carry your port , especially while you are trying to hit a target with your longbow . Good onya Wayno.

Cheers..... Rod

Wayno, nice work, we need these little distractions to help make life interesting.

Mick, lancewood can make a good selfbow if you can get a good tree.

This is an offcut from a billet a friend harvested.
Daryl.

Nice sample Daryl. I would be interested to know where you would locate the back of the bow in a stave like that?

Cheers... Rod

Daryl nice sample of Lancewood, we don't get that colour in our neck of the woods ( although A fella was selling it buy the pallet load up the tablelands the other day) or the size by the looks of it. I can understand the definite ring pattern for the self bow ring chaser for shore.

Cheers Wayno

rodlonq wrote:I would be interested to know where you would locate the back of the bow in a stave like that?

Rod, that offcut was from the upper part of the tree which was about 5 1/2" diameter.

Without having the billet in my hand the outline is an approximation.

If anyone has suggestions please put them forward.
The belly profile could change during shaping and tillering, perhaps even slightly concave.

Wayno, if you have not already seen the following link it covers a lot of local timbers and also shows photos of objects turned from that particular timber.

http://www.ttit.id.au/timbers_menu.htm

Daryl.

Thanks for the sketch Daryl. It is clear you expect the sap to carry tension better than the heartwood. It would be nice to find an Aussie hardwood species that regularly only has 1/4" of sap. Sometimes ironbarks can be like that if they are in hard country, but they are nearly always hollowed out by termites as well in our part of the world. Perhaps knocking over some smaller ones to make way for a new fence could yield something....mmmm It would be much easier to start out making selfbow if you could just remove the bark and there you have the back of the bow .

Cheers... Rod

rodlonq wrote:It would be much easier to start out making selfbow if you could just remove the bark and there you have the back of the bow.

Rod,

If you can get hold of some Alphitonia excelsa (RHAMNACEAE); Soap tree, red ash you are in with half a chance.
You can strip the bark off and the back is ready.
Daryl.

Thanks for that link Daryl very interesting.

Cheers Wayno

Hello Daryl,

Thank you for that information. I have seen soap trees in the bush and even used the leaves for soap out of interest. In NQ (at least in the drier areas) they tend to be gnarly, scrubby smaller trees much like the black wattles in size and shape. However, it is now a mission to find one with enough straight wood to harvest a stave or even a pair of billets to splice.

Comparing the size of the grip with the width of the fades on the longbow pictured, it appears the limbs are quite narrow. Might this indicate it is indeed an excellent self bow material? As far as I understand, the better the wood, the narrower you can make the limbs to improve performance?

Wayno, That could be just the stuff mate. How good would it be to have a soap tree self bow with matching port mug

Cheers... Rod

Wayno, apologies for derailing your thread.

Rod,

The red ash that I have been using is suitable for ‘D’ cross section and rectangular cross section bows. Both bows were spliced at the handle. When working with red ash its spoke shaving and sanding characteristics seemed similar to hard rock maple.

Although it contains a fair amount of resin it is reasonably kind to sharp edged hand tools.

I have found that it responds well to steam bending however I have not tried dry heat.

Daryl.