Primitive Archer

hey sleek, that sounds possible, but its hard to visualize in action. It looks from the pics that the strap is clamped down after the bend is made. Maybe Dave can tell us more about what it's for.

I was hoping you can say more about the "game changer" idea.  What limitations do you hope to overcome?

Here's a video for it likely ship building. Notice the strap on the tension side of the bend.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18RTHTaKwB/

I did that to both sides and then glued with normal wood glue. I don’t fancy experimenting with hide glue on this one.

Next I will do some rough shaping on the grip to see where we’re at. Then I’ll mark out my centre line and fit up the siyahs.

ne of the biggest take aways so far is that heat treating cherry smells DIVINE. One of the best wood smells I have so far experience.

On boo boo I have realised- I have constructed the handle as i have seen in the past, except my limbs are going to be a good bit wider than a horn bow. This means I’m going to struggle to get the handle width very narrow. I should have made the handle section longer, but I was trying to minimise the overall length and so shortened it all up. We will see how that plays out.

The next day I filed and fettled the splice. Ignore the centre lines they have gone out the window.
I took a bit of material off the inside of the limb side of the splice to try and get rid of the oil residue.


Then I took a hacksaw blade and cut in the grooves. I dont know what that’s called. It went pretty smoothly, in hindsight I would have done better with a coarser saw blade or taking an old scraper and cutting teeth into it. I think hacksaw teeth are a little fine maybe.

Either way it went pretty well, and I was sure to take down the limb side, again to try and get past any oil.

Originally I thought these grooves were supposed to interlock but I think actually they’re just to key the surface good and proper.

Glad you’re interested sleek, doesn’t seem to have many views so maybe I should have posted in bows? Anyway, to continue-

I made up a second former, can’t remember the name of them caul? This way I can tweak the curved a bit and also it will be belly out, not belly in as the first former was.

Then I got it mounted under the long burner. I’ve not used this much, I got a better regulator for the propane and a better tap. It maintained its flame much better. Main issue is that any moving air blows the heat away. It gets pretty hot in my shop so I had the fans blowing to keep me cool but it disturbed the flame a lot so I had to turn them off and cook myself as well as the limbs!

I tried oiling the belly’s too to even out the heat. I think it worked but as it was (another) thing I haven’t tried before on a wood I haven’t used before I’m not sure what colour the Cherry should turn after a good amount of roasting.
The biggest issue I had was the oil seeped round into the splice. Gonna have to clean that up pretty good.

After heat treating I have them a bit of a bend and then took another 3mm or so off the thickness.
Of course doing this I’ve taken back some of the heat treatment but I have no reference at all as to how thick the limbs should be.

I leave mine about a week depending on humidity.  You can save yourself some clamps but making a clamp sled.  It s a strip of seatbelt material or similar with glued on sections of 2” wood spaced out maybe 1/4”.  This will save about half the clamps you likley used to do the one limb.  I used this trick on a few and it worked great.  Adam talks about this method in his book actually.