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Elm reflexed bows...spliced in the handle.

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akila:
I wass just aboute to ask you iff you leave that bilets like that and try to make a bow out of themm, becose the grain has some seriose run ups, so its a god thing that you will back it with something,,,..aniway good luck with this one... ;)

radius:
I must be doing something wrong, because i keep making bows with the grain all over the place, and most of them come out just fine???

radius:
okay, today i epoxied the hickory backing strips on 2 of the 3, after scraping the gunk off the back of the handles and giving a little love to the back of the staves in general.  They all have  ~2 inches of glued-in reflex.  I can't take pictures for you until i get some new batteries:  the damn thing just quit on me today!  But I feel good about this project...

radius:
Progress...of sorts...

After the epoxy cured, i drew the outline of a holmegaard on the back of the 2 staves. 

4 inch handles
2 inch fades
parallel limbs (the bending portion of the limbs:  18 inches each)
outer limbs taper from 3/4" to 1/2"

Then yesterday morning, i tossed those in the back of the truck and went to work early.  I cut them out on the big bandsaw there, and used the belt sander to smooth the edges to make it easy to draw the side profile.  Then, i was surprised to discover we were having a beer day after work and a barbecue, so i stayed a couple hours late and drank beer in the sun. 

When i got home, i laid out the side profiles.

Do you see where this is going? :-\

My lines were good, and this morning when i cut them out i wound up with 2 well shaped bows, looking like primo holmie material...except the inner limbs were too thin.  Including the hickory backing strip, the bending parallel sections were about 7/16".  I took a look at my hickory/osage holmegaard, added a little, and went for it.  But elm is not osage.  The bows were too lightweight for my liking.  I cut the pin nocks at home tonight after work, made a string, and found each stave has a stiff limb and a limb slightly hinged about 6" beyond the fades. 

Solutions:

1.  Go with it, and give the lightweights to some lady hunters.
2.  Add a belly lam.
3.  Add another backing strip.

Having a glue line, I could not heat treat the belly, so I opted for #3.  But rather than just simply gluing another strip of hickory onto the staves as they were, to tiller later, I scraped the bellies (not the hinge!) until I achieved some smooth bending.  Then I epoxied the backing strips on and fastened them into Perry Reflex.  Here are your photos.

The end profile:



The glueline (what glueline!?)




The two staves side by side.



My pee-poor splice job...better luck next time...I should be okay provided i feel no bend in the handle...I may run a couple trenails through the handle later on....


A shot of the two glued-up staves in perry reflex


With pretillering, all you need is a block under the dead center of the handle, and the staves curve neatly down to the tips, even when bent backward!



Excess epoxy showing between the "core" and the new backing strip.


Tip fastened to form with rubber band.



There you go, drunk layout fixed...more to come.

radius:
Well, screwed up again!  Not drinking this time, either...just somehow failed to clamp one tip with enough pressure. 



Here is the same limb ...same side...just shifted the camera over 4 inches or so.



As you can see, there is a huge blunder which eats up 4 inches of the tip...so I cut both tips four inches and re-cut and shaped the nocks.















I like to use the pullsaw first for many things, but i used my block plane alot in trimming off the excess hickory from the sides of the new backings.  Here's what they looked like when the rubber tires came off.




Here's the one with the full-length limb, after cleaning up the excess.





not too bad.

Here is the shortened one ... i may end up extending this tip (which means reducing the length of the bending portion of the inner limb)...but for now it looks like this.




The two together from each end.  You can see by the dark spots of heartwood that these bows were cut from the same boards.






Ok and here is a shot of the shortened bow's reflex.  Pretty good.



PARTICULARS:


The shortened bow is the wider bow.  It is now very stout, but still light.  I look forward to reading about Mass in the TBB4.  Elm is very light.  The osage holmegaard i made draws 45 # approximately, it is 1.5 inches wide, and the bending limbs are maybe 3/8 " thick including the hickory backing.  This Elm was 1 3/4" wide, 1/2" thick including the backing, and drew very little at all.  Now, with the additional backing and glueline and reflex, they finally have decent strength potential. 

i don't know about the elm, though:  i sharpened my scraper big time, and still only get dust and shavings from the belly....

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