2016 Primitive Archer Bow Trade Sign up and Information

[turtle]

Feel like I've been falling behind. Spent the last 2 days working on a vehicle but did manage to get my dogwood billets glued up today. Think I may have tomorrow freed up to work on bows tho.

[---GUTSHOT--->]

Billets looks good turtle

[---GUTSHOT--->]

This is 48 hrs of fuming the black locus. When I get tiller to a few inches of goal then I'm going to fume it again for 1 week.
Before and after pics

[Loope]

Worked on the red bud some more.  Smoothed off the limbs, rounded corners, and did a little tillering.

I decided I needed to do a little handle work, so I filled the checks in the handle with CA glue, let that cure, and then flattened of the back of the handle.  It was about 1 1/4 inch thick and pretty rough, smoothed it off to about 1 1/8 while getting it flat.

I then took another piece of redbud, worked it with drawknife, hand planes, and sandpaper till it was flat.  Then glued this onto the back of the handle to give a little more meat.  I am at 2" thick now, so plenty of thickness now to work with.

Heading out of town to my brother's house this weekend to celebrate a late birthday with my niece.  Hope to get back to the bow Sunday.

Michael

[DuBois]

Ok, call me ignut but what does fuming do?

[DuBois]

The only fuming I've done is after I ruin a perfectly good piece of wood 

[half eye]

Dang fellas, all of you are some bow building fools

Turtle: is there anything you CAN'T make a bow out of.....thats looking real good right there

Gutshot: Man I'm going to have to try that fuming thing, real pretty color

Loope, looks like you have that under control sir.

A few more days of bein down and I'll get back after it as well....Feel like I'm gettin behind. Is it just me or is everyone building several bows? 
rich

Even after a cabbage dinner?

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Ok, call me ignut but what does fuming do?

Fuming is putting the bow in a sealed container with ammonia and letting it "fume", it darkens the wood and is really cool looking on some grains.

[Swampman]

I had the day off of work so I got some time in my shop.  You would think I would start tillering the birch bow I have floor tillerred but I didn't. Instead I chased a ring on a belly split of black locust.  I also got the shaping done and brought the thickness down to a little over 1/2 inch.  I cut the stave down to 58 inches to avoid a knot and also another area of concern. It looks like an area where the tree grew around a limb.  Here is a picture of that area.



Here is the stave after working on it today.  It is going to be a bendy handle bow.



I also took a walk in the woods and harvested a dozen red osier shoots and a dozen birch shoots.  It was a pretty good day

[Fred Arnold]

I fumed  thin ringed osage matched billets that I'm planning on sinew backing. With my poor eyesight I doubt I can get a pristine back on it. 5 days in the fuming tube made it look like it had been aging in the sun for 5 years. I'm going to try it with ERC that I have access to just to see what results I get.

I've never used white cedar but would like to try it with that and hickory. I'm thinking the hickory would look like aged fence panels but not sure.

Swampman, I'm working on an osage that has those cracks in the riser section. I think they are wind checks. SG'd and clamped them and will know more as I progress. Hopefully not fire wood.

[Drewster]

Turtle, looking good man.  I haven't worked dogwood for a bow, but have seen some that turned out super.  Good luck with that one.

Gutshot, that fuming should make an outstanding finish on your bow.  Can't wait to see that completed.

DuBois, LOL, yeah, I've done some of that kind of fuming too.  BUT, a strong concentration of ammonia in an enclosed area will react with the tanic acids in wood and turn them some beautiful colors......depends on the specie though.  Check out some of the fuming that Simon has done on this site......beautiful stuff.

[PlanB]

I cut some buckthorn branches the other day, big enough for bows, and a branch of bush honeysuckle, sealed the ends and put them in the shed.

Tillered a bit on the plan B bow, even though I had a finish on it started, after looking at a photo on the tiller tree. Turned out the photo had a lot of distortion on the right side (vertical siding on the right side of the photo was angled inwards, though in real life it is plumb) so possibly not entirely necessary, but I do think it improved a little. lost 2 pounds of draw weight but had been over perfect weight by that much anyway, so I'm back to re-finishing it.

Started roughing out a black birch pyramid board bow just for the heck of it, not intended for the trade, but just to have a comparison with my other black birch bows, and because I've never done a pyramid before.

Swampman, Turtle -- looking great!

[dylanholderman]

last night i got the rawhide ajooter sent glued down to my yew branch tomorrow morning i'm going to unwrap it and see how well i did i'll have pics up good or bad, but first i have a question. if i put tip overlays on it should i put them right on top of the rawhide or should i rasp it back to bare wood where the overlay will be

[mwosborn]

DH - I would glue directly to the wood...but I have never tried going over top of RH.

Shot the hackberry the last couple of nights to get a feel for it.  It seems to be shooting fine - not taking any set and it zips an arrow pretty quick.  I still have a little extra weight so may tweak tillering as I shoot it in.

Here are the last 3 arrows shot this evening.

[ajooter]

Dylan....flat surfaces glue the best so just flatten the area down you want to glue the overlay to and stick her tight.  I like to use the overlay material as a sanding block so both surfaces mate as perfectly as possible.