Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: AH on June 11, 2013, 03:14:58 am
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Some of you who frequent the war bow forum might remember back earlier this year I posted this thread where I was working on a yew war bow attempt, and sort of screwed it up with whip-tillering... >:(
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,38759.0.html
well, that bow sat in the corner for a while as I got pretty discouraged with it. But I was feeling really bad about screwing up such a nice piece of yew, so recently I picked it up again and decided that while it wasn't gonna make a war bow weight like I had originally planned, I wanted to at least make a decent bow out of it.
Here it is, it's 75.5" nock to nock, and 75lbs or so @ 30". It has Jatoba Tip Overlays. It had this pretty(?) :P knot that was getting me at tillering, but I like how it turned out.
Looking back I guess the full draw looks sort of funky, I wish I could of gotten a better pic but that was the end of my brother's patience with the camera.
I also have been working on another yew stave, a nicer one that I got from Carson (CMB) which I am trying to turn into a 100lbs + war bow (i know, I never learn, do I?) I've been working on it really slowly because I don't want the same thing to happen to it as the last yew. It was also my first attempt at horn nocks, the horn which I also got from Carson... ;D Thanks man
Last two pics are the stave from Carson. 19" is as far as I've dared to pull it so far.
I know that the brace height on the big Warbow is really low. That's as far as I've been able to brace it with stretchy dacron.
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oops forgot the horn nocks ;D
and that second photo...well I couldn't resist. That's what I do with scraps of yew leftover from roughing out... ;D and that knife I just finished up too, 5.5" blade with jatoba handle
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Nice work from a V challenging stave.
Del
BTW. Horn nocks are a right pain when you first do 'em, but it gets very much quicker and easier after the first few.
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Nice work from a V challenging stave.
Del
BTW. Horn nocks are a right pain when you first do 'em, but it gets very much quicker and easier after the first few.
Oddly enough, I actually quite enjoyed making the horn nocks, except for one thing....Wow...this horn sure smells......unpleasant, let's put it that way. ;D
Looking back, I kind of think I should of made Sidenocks, since while it's not a Mary Rose Copy I am using the dimensions as a reference...but oh well. these were my first horn nocks and I didn't really know what to expect so I went with the regular horn nock design.
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Good looking bow.Nice work. Knocks look great. :)
Pappy
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Nice work. Extra points for the Bernard Cornwell book peeking out of one photo.
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Nice work from a V challenging stave.
Del
BTW. Horn nocks are a right pain when you first do 'em, but it gets very much quicker and easier after the first few.
Oddly enough, I actually quite enjoyed making the horn nocks, except for one thing....Wow...this horn sure smells......unpleasant, let's put it that way. ;D
Looking back, I kind of think I should of made Sidenocks, since while it's not a Mary Rose Copy I am using the dimensions as a reference...but oh well. these were my first horn nocks and I didn't really know what to expect so I went with the regular horn nock design.
I sorta like the smell in a masochistic way... :-[
Mind I eat sandwiches filled with hide glue... but I am a cat ::)
Del
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Nice work. Extra points for the Bernard Cornwell book peeking out of one photo.
yup, I have become a big fan of his historical novels ;)
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by the way, any critique on the tiller of the big bow so far? I'm really paranoid about buggaring this bow up, especially a bow that came from a tree that was probably 50 times my age :o
there is a knot on the left limb, at that slight swell.
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Difficult to comment on the tiller from those pics.
One pic (2nd down) is at a funny angle (and the top tip is cropped off) which makes it look like the nocking point is ay above center and the upper limb is a tad stiff in the inner 1/3.
Over all it looks like you should be drawing it another 4" :o
the shot on the tiller looks like it's nearer brace than full draw.
Or to put it another way, it's looking pretty safe.. like you say, don't want to risk overstressing a bow with knotty limbs.
Del
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Need to get the center of the bow working more. on a fully bending bow every inch should be bending
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I think you need a thicker, stronger, less strechy string...
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Nice work from a V challenging stave.
Del
BTW. Horn nocks are a right pain when you first do 'em, but it gets very much quicker and easier after the first few.
Oddly enough, I actually quite enjoyed making the horn nocks, except for one thing....Wow...this horn sure smells......unpleasant, let's put it that way. ;D
Looking back, I kind of think I should of made Sidenocks, since while it's not a Mary Rose Copy I am using the dimensions as a reference...but oh well. these were my first horn nocks and I didn't really know what to expect so I went with the regular horn nock design.
I sorta like the smell in a masochistic way... :-[
Mind I eat sandwiches filled with hide glue... but I am a cat ::)
Del
? I eat hideglue when it is flavored and jiggly and chilled, in a jello form, but I never heard of a hideglue sandwich! :o ;D
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I think I am going to be the annoying negative critic here. (Although the bow is still beautiful, and it is very nice work, I have never worked yew so I am always jealous and lustful of yew bows, :) ). But I think the upper limb is bending way too much in the outer limb from the draw photo, it is hard to tell for sure as the tip is cut off in the pic but it appears you might have a slight hinge or beginning of a hinge in the upper limb, or at least the potential as it seems to be working all in one area. It is better to try to get the work a bow does as spread out as possible, as much as you can. Unless you are going for a purposely stiff spot, like stiffer tips or something for leverage. The entire middle portion of the bow looks to me to be doing almost no work at all, and is evident in the in the fulldraw photo and in the brace photo, (although it does appear to be braced pretty low so I don't know for sure). I don't think it's all that bad, but next time I would try to get the middle portion working more, and try to keep any one part of the bow from doing most of the work (in this case the upper outer limb seems to be doing all the work). Thats my 2 cents on the tiller anyhow. Very beautiful though. The character is fantastic. Thank you for sharing your work! ;D
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I think I am going to be the annoying negative critic here. (Although the bow is still beautiful, and it is very nice work, I have never worked yew so I am always jealous and lustful of yew bows, :) ). But I think the upper limb is bending way too much in the outer limb from the draw photo, it is hard to tell for sure as the tip is cut off in the pic but it appears you might have a slight hinge or beginning of a hinge in the upper limb, or at least the potential as it seems to be working all in one area. It is better to try to get the work a bow does as spread out as possible, as much as you can. Unless you are going for a purposely stiff spot, like stiffer tips or something for leverage. The entire middle portion of the bow looks to me to be doing almost no work at all, and is evident in the in the fulldraw photo and in the brace photo, (although it does appear to be braced pretty low so I don't know for sure). I don't think it's all that bad, but next time I would try to get the middle portion working more, and try to keep any one part of the bow from doing most of the work (in this case the upper outer limb seems to be doing all the work). Thats my 2 cents on the tiller anyhow. Very beautiful though. The character is fantastic. Thank you for sharing your work! ;D
As I stated before, I do think the tiller looks a bit funky. I'm not 100% happy with it, but I'm glad it didn't end up in the corner of the shop forever. I am still a newbie bowyer though.
as for the tiller-
I tend to favor a stiffer handle on ELB's although the warbow I'm currently working on is gonna get a full compass (mary rose dimensions reference)
the top limb is a bit weaker than the bottom, I tend to overdo the positive tiller a bit.. ;D
as for a hinge, I think I mentioned on that first thread I started when I screwed up the bow with whip-tillering that there was a little spot of deflex in the top limb.
Also, this is a pretty bad photo, and doesn't really accurately represent the bow's tiller, just that my brother didn't want to take any more photos. He didn't get a shot of the bow at full draw either, it's at probably 27" in the pic. The handle bends just a bit more at the full draw. I am also canting the bow in the pic.
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I think you need a thicker, stronger, less strechy string...
stronger and less stretchy, yes, but thicker, I doubt it.
I find that thick strings always reduce cast, and also--I am using dacron here.
It is a well known fact, at least in the warbow community, that dacron stretches a ton on these heavier bows and you can see how low the brace height is on the big warbow I'm still working on (second to last photo on the first post) when the string is actually five inches shorter than the bow's nock to nock legnth :o! When I first braced the warbow with dacron it felt like rubber band and there was literally no brace height. ;D
As soon as I get my hands on some fastflight...
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Just a quick note - and I'm by no means an expert so take this with a pinch of salt but I've encountered this issue when working on warbows myself - when you say the big warbow is using Mary Rose dimensions, does that mean you took your unworked stave, and drew out the profile of a finished Mary Rose bow on the front and sides, then cut to those lines?
The reason I ask is that I've tried that before, and what tends to happen is that the tips are always way too thin and narrow early on. If you rough out an untillered bow to the exact dimensions of a finished bow, the tips will of course be tiny in comparison, and all the stresses and strains of tillering will be focused straight onto the tips, rather than the whole bow. This leads to hinges and whip-tillered bows instead of nice full compass shapes.
If you're working to a Mary Rose bow as an example, cut the front profile out leaving the tips fairly wide - say 20 - 25mm instead of the 12mm on the finished bows, and much thicker than the bow you're copying. Tiller the bow so that the tips don't even start working until it's 90% finished, then narrow and thin the tips down to get the limbs to complete the full compass. This will avoid any nasty hinges and whip-ends which you may be encountering by trying to copy a finished bow.
The reason the tips on warbows can be so thin is that by the time they're reduced the rest of the bow is already doing a lot of the work, and the wood has been taught to bend and stretch and share the strain. At this point, the tips don't really take much more stress, whereas if the bow is huge and untillered, but the tips are almost at the finished dimensions, you're asking them to take 100# of draw weight just on the tips. It's even more amplified when tillering early on, by using the long string. A long tillering string leads to whip-ended bows if you use it for too long during tillering, so combine this with thin tips and it's a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you may well already know all of this, in which case ignore it completely and hopefully it'll help somebody else out reading this at a later date!
P.s. have you read Cornwell's latest book, "1356" yet? It's incredible! Easily his best so far. I enjoyed it even more than "Azingcourt"!
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Just a quick note - and I'm by no means an expert so take this with a pinch of salt but I've encountered this issue when working on warbows myself - when you say the big warbow is using Mary Rose dimensions, does that mean you took your unworked stave, and drew out the profile of a finished Mary Rose bow on the front and sides, then cut to those lines?
The reason I ask is that I've tried that before, and what tends to happen is that the tips are always way too thin and narrow early on. If you rough out an untillered bow to the exact dimensions of a finished bow, the tips will of course be tiny in comparison, and all the stresses and strains of tillering will be focused straight onto the tips, rather than the whole bow. This leads to hinges and whip-tillered bows instead of nice full compass shapes.
If you're working to a Mary Rose bow as an example, cut the front profile out leaving the tips fairly wide - say 20 - 25mm instead of the 12mm on the finished bows, and much thicker than the bow you're copying. Tiller the bow so that the tips don't even start working until it's 90% finished, then narrow and thin the tips down to get the limbs to complete the full compass. This will avoid any nasty hinges and whip-ends which you may be encountering by trying to copy a finished bow.
The reason the tips on warbows can be so thin is that by the time they're reduced the rest of the bow is already doing a lot of the work, and the wood has been taught to bend and stretch and share the strain. At this point, the tips don't really take much more stress, whereas if the bow is huge and untillered, but the tips are almost at the finished dimensions, you're asking them to take 100# of draw weight just on the tips. It's even more amplified when tillering early on, by using the long string. A long tillering string leads to whip-ended bows if you use it for too long during tillering, so combine this with thin tips and it's a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you may well already know all of this, in which case ignore it completely and hopefully it'll help somebody else out reading this at a later date!
P.s. have you read Cornwell's latest book, "1356" yet? It's incredible! Easily his best so far. I enjoyed it even more than "Azingcourt"!
Hi Will,
I know the dilemma you describe too well. :-[
When I said "Mary Rose Dimensions", I meant that it wasn't a MR copy, i was just using the dimensions as a reference. I actually laid out the bow on the stave two millimeters wider than the actual MR bow just to be safe during roughing out, and then I narrowed it down as I tillered. As for the tips, what I do now after that nasty experience with my first yew bow and whip-tillering, I leave the tips wide-say about 3/4" wide-until I have the bow bending around, say, 18 or so inches on the tiller, then narrow. by now there isn't really a chance of the bow becoming whip-tillered from prematurely-narrowed tips. 18" is when I took a break from tillering that bow and did the horn nocks. ;) then proceed with tillering. at the same time when I narrow the tips, is also when I take out a set of calipers and start narrowing it down closer to the MR dimensions. I take a measurement along every inch of the stave and compare it to the MR measurements.
Concerning long strings,
personally, I hate long string tillering because it used to screw me up so much, but I still do it because I have not figured a way out to not blow bows up bracing right after floor tiller. If you remember a while back when I posted my first hackberry bow, it got sort of whip-tillered cause I lingered on the long string too long. Now when I tiller with the long string, I use a string the same legnth of the bow or even a whisker shorter so that I have to stretch it to get it in the nock--not quite a brace, but it doesn't play the same tricks on your eyes as a longer string.
But take all what I'm saying lightly, cos I still consider myself a newbie at making bows. (actually, when I compare my bows to Del's or Pearly's or Blackhawk's, I just feel plain laughable... ;D)
Here are the MR dimensions I'm using, I got it from this 110# warbow on PP
http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/53298/MR-Replica-with-alot-of-knots#.UbfibvmThRZ
80"
W D
UL
11,5 11,5
17,0 16
21,5 20
25,0 22,5
27,5 24,5
29,0 26
30,5 28,5
32,5 29,5
33,5 31
34,0 31,5
34,5 33,0 Center
LL
35,5 33
34,0 32,5
32,0 31,5
31,0 30,0
29,5 28
27,5 26
25,5 24,0
22,5 21
17,5 16,5
13,0 12,0
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Just a quick note - and I'm by no means an expert so take this with a pinch of salt but I've encountered this issue when working on warbows myself - when you say the big warbow is using Mary Rose dimensions, does that mean you took your unworked stave, and drew out the profile of a finished Mary Rose bow on the front and sides, then cut to those lines?
The reason I ask is that I've tried that before, and what tends to happen is that the tips are always way too thin and narrow early on. If you rough out an untillered bow to the exact dimensions of a finished bow, the tips will of course be tiny in comparison, and all the stresses and strains of tillering will be focused straight onto the tips, rather than the whole bow. This leads to hinges and whip-tillered bows instead of nice full compass shapes.
If you're working to a Mary Rose bow as an example, cut the front profile out leaving the tips fairly wide - say 20 - 25mm instead of the 12mm on the finished bows, and much thicker than the bow you're copying. Tiller the bow so that the tips don't even start working until it's 90% finished, then narrow and thin the tips down to get the limbs to complete the full compass. This will avoid any nasty hinges and whip-ends which you may be encountering by trying to copy a finished bow.
The reason the tips on warbows can be so thin is that by the time they're reduced the rest of the bow is already doing a lot of the work, and the wood has been taught to bend and stretch and share the strain. At this point, the tips don't really take much more stress, whereas if the bow is huge and untillered, but the tips are almost at the finished dimensions, you're asking them to take 100# of draw weight just on the tips. It's even more amplified when tillering early on, by using the long string. A long tillering string leads to whip-ended bows if you use it for too long during tillering, so combine this with thin tips and it's a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you may well already know all of this, in which case ignore it completely and hopefully it'll help somebody else out reading this at a later date!
P.s. have you read Cornwell's latest book, "1356" yet? It's incredible! Easily his best so far. I enjoyed it even more than "Azingcourt"!
Oh, and concerning Cornwell's books,
I have not read "1356" yet, but it's on my to-read list. I have only read "Agincourt" and "The archer's tale", and just ordered "Crackdown". I do really want to read 1356 soon though, I have heard good things about it :)
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Before you read any of the others, read the Thomas Hookton trilogy, Harlequin, Vagabond and... The other one that I've forgotten. It sets up the 100 years war and features more about the making of bows and the training than his other books.
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Before you read any of the others, read the Thomas Hookton trilogy, Harlequin, Vagabond and... The other one that I've forgotten. It sets up the 100 years war and features more about the making of bows and the training than his other books.
Yup I've read Harlequin, I think the american name is The Archer's Tale. Vagabond is on my list. ;)