Re: My New Bow

26
I am really enjoying this thread. Thanks so much. Making a bow is something I have always wanted to do.
All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty.-Henry Clay
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.—Aristotle

Re: My New Bow

27
Here is the first third of the first half. I would have gotten a cleaner split had I started at the bottom. Lesson learned.

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Plenty long.

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Next, de barking and marking. Then spokeshave city. Maybe a hatchet, Ishi style. Still thinking on that.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

29
Do you use a froe ? I have a friend who makes them from old car leaf springs.

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This is just my opinion, yours may vary and is no less valid.
- Me -

"I will never claim to be an expert, and it has been my experience that self proclaimed experts are usually self proclaimed."
-Me-

I must proof read more

Re: My New Bow

30
Here is the beginning of the debarking.

I say "beginning" because I used to make my living doing this shit back in 86-92. I was a younger man then. Holy crap, this is work! An old man squatting over a draw knife is not a pretty thing, I tell you what.

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I have learned some things so far. Splitting after the dry. The split spot has to be chosen carefully. There are little knots from time to time that will spoil a split, so watch out for those. Read the log more deeply before choosing the split. Read the end grain.

I think I wrecked one blank with an ill-chosen split. The one I messed up can still make great stuff, just not 65 inch long bows. This one here will work out. There's a knot also, but I planned it in.

I'm going to take it down to leave the most heart wood before I begin to tiller it--which is quite a few piles of pecan shavings into the future. But if I know that's the goal, I can make choices at this stage that could save me a few pulls on the draw knife or spoke shave in the future. Final adjustment likely will be made with a tool I used on the organ project, a custom spoke shave that uses a cabinet scraper blade. Hella trick.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

31
As luck would have it, some weeks ago the neighbor's garage caught fire. Totaled. Insurance settlement replaced the fence, which necessitated the downing of another pecan tree, about the same age as the project tree. It's much cleaner, though, very very straight. It has been down for a week or two, and we've hard a lot of rain. More rain this afternoon. So, I began to split it. Very clean split, so the surface I get will be very consistent. Each little sixth will break out very nicely.

You can sort of see down the split here. It used to live just behind the compost pile on the left there, in the corner, which is now a new fence. It dropped, and we slid it into my yard, then they put the fence up. Primo. Now I have a dozen more bows. When it's split, I'll drag it down in the basement.

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Plenty of branches and so on left over. Love those outdoor chores...

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

32
Nice fence. But it looks like untreated pine ?

Sent from my LGLS770 using Tapatalk
This is just my opinion, yours may vary and is no less valid.
- Me -

"I will never claim to be an expert, and it has been my experience that self proclaimed experts are usually self proclaimed."
-Me-

I must proof read more

Re: My New Bow

33
dandad wrote:Nice fence. But it looks like untreated pine ?
I had no input. This yellow pine fence replaced a cedar fence that was here when we bought it in 92. Still in good shape, gray from UV, but mostly intact. Easily repairable. But these new neighbors, like two years, are from the city and come up here. They sort of want to Better Homes and Gardens their place, got insurance bucks from the unfortunate garage fire. Bucks-up yuppies. Da woist kind. They took out two pecan trees--sure, I got logs. But they'll have hella sun. We'll see if they fry back there. But, yeah. Pine--stained, which is happening--will last a good eight ten years. Pish. I wonder if I'll live long enough to say you shoulda repaired the cedar.

But here's the last crack of this new log. Now I haul it downstairs like a wasp with a tarantula--way bigger'n me, but I gotta do it. I may shorten it a tad. I'm not making bows for Paul Bunyan or anything.

Image


CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

34
Wasp with a tarantula. Lol

Or like a trap door spider with a fire ant..

Sent from my LGLS770 using Tapatalk
This is just my opinion, yours may vary and is no less valid.
- Me -

"I will never claim to be an expert, and it has been my experience that self proclaimed experts are usually self proclaimed."
-Me-

I must proof read more

Re: My New Bow

35
I was working on this today. Milling it. Now, recall that this is split, so all the fibers are intact along the length of this blank. So I'm using a nice cross cut saw, right, across the grain, and the blank is supported at two points, the two halves of log that resulted from a neighbor's falling my other pecan for me. As I cut, a huge resonance came from the blank. Hear me out.

I worked for nine years as a tracker organ builder, building two organs in the 17th century style, on site, using period tools and techniques. When we made the wooden resonators for the large reed pipes, the walls of said four sided pipes were tapered, so as to provide the most superior resonance. Point is, my ear is tuned to wood in this way.

Splitting along the existing pathways keeps the timbre intact. There are no dead ends where vibrations travel along a fiber and zoof off into space without exciting the entire piece of wood. Waste of potential acoustic energy. Splitting the blank along the grain preserves the integrity of the wood, I think, in a way that will give me a lighter, quicker bow because it will require less mass to achieve superior vibrations. Superior vibrations are efficient, so less wood mass will deliver performance of other bows not so split. Very resonant piece of wood here.

This piece is about as tall as I am. I can see the line of heart wood right down the middle. I will try to leave as much of that as I can, taking off the younger wood. The younger wood can take stretching so doesn't store as much energy per unit of mass, whereas the older wood compresses, stores, then releases energy. If the whole bow were old wood, it'd break. If the whole bow were young wood, it'd last about forty seven shots, when it would stay bent. A balance is struck. I'm guessing it'll take more than one bow on my part.

And that is how things stand.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

41
I continued the bow project today. I used my trusty homeowner's 3 HP McCulloch electric chainsaw and hack off big hunks. You can see the delicate stylings of the precision cutting surfaces here.

P1010331.JPG

This cut took off the bark and the last two or three years of growth--on a plane. Remember this is a section from a cylinder, hence at the edges there will be a few months' growth off, and in the center a few years. The core good wood is the heart wood. I'll plane down to it from the outside of the log then tiller the bow from the inside as well.
P1010329.JPG


The next crude cuts will turn the blank into a five sided figure. Then I plane from the top until time to tune it from the other side.

P1010330.JPG

The best 72 inches will be selected from this 84 inch blank, so these checks will be cut off. I must say, pecan is one tough wood.

I may hit this again next week.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

43
Thanks for the poke. I've been involved in real life so much I keep saying that the wood continue to cure well. Must attack with hand saw to rough out blank...

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: My New Bow

49
Seems reasonable.
https://www.wood-database.com/pecan/[url][/url]
Pecan has slightly lower strength values than some of the other species of Hickory, but it is still among the hardest and strongest of woods native to the United States. The wood is commonly used where strength or shock-resistance is important. As the common name implies, Carya illinoinensis is the tree responsible for producing Pecan nuts commonly used in snacks and cooking recipes, and is the state tree of Texas.

Pecan falls into the Pecan-Hickory grouping, which tends to be slightly stabler but weaker than the True-Hickories, and is considered to be a semi-ring-porous wood. The strength characteristics of Pecan are somewhat influenced by the spacing of its growth rings. In general, wood from faster-growing trees, with wider spaced growth rings, tends to be harder, heavier, and stronger than wood from slower-growing trees that have rings which are closer together.

Re: My New Bow

50
Oh, my, guys. I have been sittin' on me friggin' arse on this. I could say the wood is still curing--technically true. Fact is I've not put my mind to it. Lemme think on that. Thanks for the poke.

With respect to pecan, yes, these things are true. This particular tree came from our backyard, which for the tree's 25 year life had grass around it. This means it grew quickly and will be harder than slower growing ones.

I'm not going to make this a war bow at 90 pounds or anything. It will be around 50 like my others. When I finally do it, it will be to do it. Maybe the bow will rock. Maybe its lack of an arrow rest will prevent me from enjoying it. Hard to say. Pandemic thinking has made me look at old things in new ways.

CDFingers :oops:
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

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