Let’s start by telling this bow is a special one for me. I always put a lot of effort in my bows but this one even more! Why: a few months ago I was having some friendly mail conversations with Simon. Now anyone who saw my bows and Simon’s will immediately notice where my inspiration comes from;-) so all of a sudden out of nowhere he mails me there is a package on the way! A week or so later the package arrives and in it where two pairs of osage billets and one of Simon’s signature takedown sleeves! You can’t image the joy I felt for such a generous gesture! So I immediately decided to build an even more Simon inspired bow;-)
Started out with chasing a few rings on the best pair of billets and drawknifing the profiles. I had to glue on some extra wood at the handle/takedown part. Even though Simon even sent an extra piece of osage for handles I decided to use some ipe, walnut and maple for that. The plan was a reflex/deflex static so I had to attach the sleeves in an angle to get the deflex part. Planed the top flat at an angle and did most of the fitting with my drawknife and rasp and finished the exact fit with a sharp chisel. (I only use hand tools for my bows)
Got the sleeves to a perfect fit and started tillering. Tillered it to brace and boiled the recurves in. After that I heat treated the limbs and added a little more reflex to the last part of the limbs. Besides a big scary split at one tip (which went away after narrowing them) the tiller went pretty good.
I then started to narrow and thin the handle. I do this with a rasp and I always start with those facets which I usually round when I am almost done. Somehow they looked good halfway down the process so I decided to keep the facets on this bow.
Shot it about 100 times to make sure the tiller stayed the same and added horn tip overlays and arrow pass. Of course I had to fume the bow so I put it in the fume pipe for about 5 days and for some extra looks I darkened the tips with a bit of water based dye.
I glued a light brown piece of leather over the metal handle and wrapped a darker and thicker strip over that, leaving a small gap so the light brown would still be visible.
This bow has quite an extreme rd profile and in combination with the heavy takedown sleeves is a dream to shoot. No handshock whatsoever and really fast.
So again Simon when you read this: thank you so much, you are the best!
Specs
Wood: osage
Length: 62” ntn
Draw weight: #50@28”
Max width: 1.5 inch
Tipsoverlays: buffalo horn
Handle: metal takedown sleeves
Handle woods: maple, black walnut, ipe
Handle wrap: 2 different colors cow leather
String: 8 strand fastflight
Profiles
Braced
Details
Sleeves
Full draw
