Ozbow

In my early days, when I got staves from the bush, I had great success with an acacia locally known as Silver Wattle. Rarely grew bigger than 3" diameter, but that didn't matter. A fantastic peculiarity of this species is that often, the trunk would grow with a flat surface on one side. Who'd h...

As long as it was clear. If it were possible to maintain vision of the beautiful grain, it'd be a shame to waste it.

How thin does clear glass come?

If I might suggest an alternative method of drawing a circular tiller at full scale that takes into account brace height (but not string stretch): http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=49475#p49475 In that link, I show how to plot a circular tiller for a bow that has a rigid handle section. Ex...

Tonight I finally got around to testing a sample of White Cypress Pine (Callitris glaucophylla) off the back of Nezwin's success using the wood. I got four fence palings from the local hardware shop. I managed to find some that had at least a short section of straight, unadulterated grain. I cut one...

I think people in the Northern Hemisphere have a different perspective on timber to us in Australia. To them, a wood with a density of 0.8 is fairly heavy. I'm not sure I'd bother with some species if I found a sample under 0.8. I've made bows from Ironbark that were about 1.3! Similarly so with spl...

I would say, based on Perry's comment above, that people have indeed made bows from White Cypress before. I reckon we should press him for more details.

Perry? Anything to add?

It's good to see you back on the boards, Dennis!

I've read that Turks, Mongols and the like would leave their bows strung in the dry months. I can't remember where I read it though so there's no credibility in the claim, for the moment.
As long as you're shooting it when you can and not leaving it in the corner, eh?

Thanks guys, my understanding has broadened.

To anyone who would/might know:

If I send a PM, and that message sits in my Outbox for ages, has it actually sent? It is pending delivery until such time as I see it in the Sent items?

Dave

A couple more questions on this bow, if I may:

How wide is it, and how much set has it taken?

Does this timber plane at all well, even with the very twisty grain?

I'm not sure exactly what species they are. They were sourced from Ballarat. From this, my first guess would be one of the English elms.

What a dream to have a board like that. I almost shrieked in horror when he called the middle bit 'firewood'. Nezwin, consider this thought-experiment: Imagine having a propeller. It is twisted along its length, but not warped across its width. This propeller will of course not sit flat on a surface...

Hence my search for a really straight grained piece. Might be impossible to find, but I'll look nonetheless. If I can't find a straight piece, I'll back it something. Thin layer of bamboo or timber or some such. One way or another I'll test its elastic modulus and working strain (appropriate to a bo...

What a great work of art.

What's the draw weight/length?

Can we presume that you'll be using a thumb ring and shooting from the 'off' side?

It's certainly a possible explanation. However I've made dozens of bows with a narrower bamboo backing than the stave, and with higher draw weights too. This one was only going to be c.45 lb at 28 in, and by this stage the wood underneath was fairly thin. Nevertheless, my Mk.II is a slightly narrowe...

That timber looks almost delicious. Like toffee and caramel oozed across a flat plane. Would this be the same species as that seen in the fence palings at Bunnings and whatnot? I'd always dismissed it out of hand for being 'too piney'. But with a success like that, and with early indications showing...

Overkill in what respect? Took about an hour to knock up, and uses scrap. I built it to get within 0.5 mm or so when sawing lams (for whatever) and kerfs (for recurves). The idea is to saw a lam on waste material, against the fence, measure, then adjust the fence as appropriate to saw the desired th...

19 mm should work. Your limb's thickness, where it starts to work, likely will be around 12 mm thick or so. Taking it up to 19 mm makes it about four times as stiff. This is a good base on which to build a riser, but the riser doesn't have to be substantial in order to give a (functionally) perfectl...

I agree with Perry's assessment. I think what many bowyer pups don't realise is that gluing on a bit of extra wood to make a built up riser should not comprise the totality of the riser. Rather, the added wood should complement a riser which is built up from the stave's own material to begin with. L...

I finally got around to reading a book on bandsaws I bought a couple of years ago. In it is a description of a jig that acts as a fence, but has micro-adjustment. Thinking this would be useful for sawing kerfs and laminations, I decided to have a go. In essence, it's two tapered components that when...

So I thought it was time to diversify my bowmaking, and recurves have taken my fancy. I've dabbled with steam bending, but recurving with kerfs and lams seems to be particularly appealing. So I had a go. 62" long, brown coloured ironbark with red coloured ironbark lams. I put two kerfs in each ...

Yep. Gorilla glue can work wonders, but it's a binary thing: it either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you could potentially lose a lot of work and materials. Titebond 3 will work. Should work. Smooth On EA-40 is were it's at. It's the world standard in bowmaking adhesive. But if you can't get t...

I was going to say: there're plenty of bowyer in Qld who'd be happy to help. With bowyers there's bow wood. Qld is ripe for it. There are a couple of thousand species of eucalypt. The quality for bowmaking purposes range from 'superb' to 'might as well use pasta'. Unless you can identify the species...

true dat. Try having about 200 different hobbies to spread your time across.

On a very long bow, a whipped tiller is essentially a conventional elliptical tiller with a long straight bit spliced in the middle of it. The reason a whipped tiller is better for 'not heavy' arrows is that for big bows like these, the bows have a lot of mass. If the bow was tillered more circular,...

In what state are you, Shrimp?

I don't do glass bows, but how about fishing line instead of wire?

Dennis, that lead on acetal is brilliant. I think I will try it. I had a student on one of my bow courses this year who is a prosthetist, and a dab hand at it too. We were discussing the possibility of making a generic mould and casting horn nock blanks imbedded with fiberglass, but just using some ...

I will continue to disagree than linen cloth backing protects a bow's back, and the evidence for it is in this very thread. A linen backing will prevent a bow from shattering it's true, but it will not necessarily prevent splinters from lifting off the back. We've all had that happen. Here's why: Ve...