Shooting this bow in that video there was moisture on the target, my arrows got damp, my hand got wet then my bow got sticky. I was thinking about leaving it bare but thats not an option in this climate.
No snakes round here and skins are not cheap, I only have thick rawhide and shaving it down seems silly. The only rawhide i can but thats thin enouh is double the price of snake skins. I've got some cherry and silver birch bark though.
The birch bark is very thick, 2mm+ and very dry. I got if for making knife handles and its in A5 size pieces and all from different trees. It took a good couple of hours to work out what to do with it. Its colour and texture varied so much ands its properties varied too. I've seen video of people just peeling the layers apart as easily as peeling that plastic cover off of screens but this bark is not that bark.
I tried soaking it hot water which helped a lot, boiling water was better. Some pieces just wouldnt sperate, it was just tear accross layers and split and just be awful, i didnt persever with these pieces. A couple of pieces just fell apart into layers like ive seen before. Some piece tore on the black lines, or left layers behind as i passed some and the couple of nice pieces the black lines made no difference.
Some pieces would only sperate in one place, others were like the pages of a book at the edges. I didnt manage to work with a piece wider than 2" and mosrt were about 1" wide.
The main take away is that not all bark is the same and dont bother if it isnt easy, unfortunaly as i dont know the living conditions of the trees this came from i dont know what to look for in the future. I suspect the colder the climate and younger the tree the easier it is to work with.
I used thick hide glue to glue it on, my thinking being it would tack up harder and hold the bark in place as i worked along. The bark varied in colour so i started with the paler stuff in the middle and moved to darker towards the tips, trying to not have it look stripy. Another factor is that as i didnt have much choise about how thin the strips were i didnt want a thick one nect to a thin one. Thinnest
being one or two layers (thinner than paper) and the thickest being maybe 0.3mm at a guess.
It was very slow going, i was cutting the pieces on three or four sides one at a time, it would have been SO much esier if i just had bark from one tree that was all similar enough and large pieces that i could just slice strips off and glue them on. I didnt have a double boiler i could use where i was working so i kept having to stop and reheat the glue.
I sized the belly as i went and stuck the strips around so i could trim them back. Also it took so long to apply the strips i was having to trim the earlier strips as i went as the glue was drying. An advantage to getting glue on my fingers is i could use the stick to pull the strips tight around the back of the bow and hold them when the glue tacked.
Once it was all covered I trimmed the sides back most of the way leaving a little bit of spare, bushed water over the whole thing, covered it in cling wrap (seran wrap?), wrapped it as tight as i could in self adhesive bandage and then cokked the heck out of it with a hair dryer. Then left it to cool down and removed the wraps so it could dry.
Getting the tips done was just a bit of a faff, it was just a case putting a piece of bark on, cling wrap, hair dryer, wrap and bandage or string and let it set and then put the next piece on. Theres a piece front and back and then a small strip over the end. I could design the tips better to make this easier. Also the heat from the hair dryer softens the bark as well as the glue so it shapes better. cling wrap was good as i could see if the bark was shifting as i applied pressure. There is also sinew wrap under the knocks which made this more difficult
It was a little lumpy so i burnished it which helped blend some of the joints. I then lightly sanded at 600 grit which took care of a couple of edges but id not reccomend that tbh as it changes the looks of the bark.
When the glue is tacky still you can run a knife along the edge of it and just peel off the excess, this was way easier than I expected. As the bark was thicker than i wanted I sanded at 600 grit and then burnished this edge so it didnt catch. I can see the bark delaminating if it got caught on something.
The grip is pig skin lining leather (short on braintan round here) and bark tan rabbit. Its my first rabbit skin and i didnt want to cut it right up the middle to get the best furr as the rest of the hide wuld be less usefull so i took the furr from one of the back legs, It doesnt match up that great and i though the direction of the hair would be less important but its ok if you dont look too hard.
Couple of coats of tru oil.
Now im waiting for the last of the moisture from the bark gluing to leave and i'll string it back up and get some full draw pics.
Pics incoming
