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Building the Vine Maple Bow - Finished

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Gordon:
Using my hand and fingers as a gauge I measure the mid-limb thickness and make a mark the thickness at mid-limb.





I repeat the previous steps at the limb tip.





With the thickness now marked at the fades, mid-limb, and the tip I use my hand as a guide to draw the thickness taper along the length of the limb. As I draw I slowly contract my hand to create a taper while following the back of the bow. If I do it right the taper line should line up with the thickness marks I made in the previous steps.





I repeat this process for both sides on each limb.

Gordon:
I create the thickness taper by removing wood with a hatchet.  I use the thickness taper lines on each side of the limb as my guide.



When I'm done with the initial hatchet work I have a beveled belly along the length of the limb. I use a hatchet and/or rasp to remove the bevel.







I repeat the process for the other limb and I am done roughing out the limb thickness taper.

Gordon:
I'm going to reduce the limb width a bit so using a piece of leather as my gauge, I mark the limb width at 1 3/4".  I then draw an outline of the handle and rough it out the handle using a hatchet.







I use a farrier rasp to reduce the limbs to the marked width. If there are any knots near the edge, I work around them
 




I reduce the tips to about 5/8" inch.





And here is the limb after the width has been reduced.

Gordon:
And finally I clean up the belly with a spoke shave and I now have a fully roughed out bow.





Next up - preparing the bow for tillering.

Gordon:
Now that I have the bow roughed out I am going to work on perfecting the thickness taper. If you get the taper just right early on it makes tillering the bow that much easier. I start by running the limb between my fingers feeling for low and high spots. The human hand is an incredibly sensitive instrument and  is capable of detecting minute variations in thickness. But it takes practice to develop the feel and at first it will seem like you are not able to do it any better with your fingers than just judging the thickness with your eyes. But stick with it and over time you will be amazed at how well you can judge the taper of a limb by just feeling it.



I mark any high spots with a solid pencil and low spots with an "X". The idea is to perfect the thickness taper first and then remove wood evenly from the limbs after that.



A common problem with vine maple is swirly grain. If you try to hog wood off using a cutting tool like a spoke shave or draw knife, the tool will catch on the grain swirls and pull out chunks. I found that the best tool for hogging wood off vine maple is a micro-plane.

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