Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => English Warbow => Topic started by: WillS on July 31, 2017, 03:24:21 pm
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This was the third stave that I got from Stuart in return for some English yew. The first two made almost identical 80lb bows and were quickly snapped up, but Stuart also gave me a really nice chunky stave which I wanted to push as hard as I could to make a bow for myself. I was sort of hoping for 140lb but wasn't particularly worried, as I hadn't ever tried this wood before and was just curious what it was capable of.
I kept it full thickness and full width, set up the tapers and got the bow finished with the cow horn sidenocks glued on, and then braced it to about 5". It looked awful, so I used my heat treating method to "tiller" the bow (without losing any weight by removing wood) until the brace shape looked better.
It was taken to 25" and I had a feeling it was lighter than it should be at that draw length. I piked it by about 2.5" to take the overall length to 74", and took it down to my draw length of 30.5", where the scales read 132lb. The bow took perhaps 1" of string follow.
I'm really quite pleased with this, as I know wych elm is perfectly capable of these weights but I've never been that keen on the idea of using English elm, so when I get my hands on some more I'll try and tip the 150lb mark.
Please excuse the incredibly poor full draw photo quality, it was taken as a video and is the best I could do!
Huge thanks to Stuart for this lovely timber and the opportunity to work with it.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4316/35488372203_8843d5cd12_b.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4302/36253238736_e1388b0116_b.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4294/36161632881_3aa7d031ce_b.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4305/35488371973_4d4446c32a_b.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4301/35488372433_4518bd9c16_b.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4319/36161632781_c32b49f4b8_b.jpg)
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4310/36253238546_60d2c6b87a_b.jpg)
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Beautiful bow, beautiful job you did. I wish we had a self bow class for war bows in flight shooting using an arrow of at least about 700 grains.
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Thank you very much!
That does seem a shame - what's preventing the addition of such a class?
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Great bow Will
Just goes to show that the 'meanewoods' make good, robust, and high poundage bows.
Time to get yourself in the 'Warbow Wales' record book for longest distance using English Elm.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a working bow from all the 'Meanewoods' available to the bowyers back in the day!
Stuart
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Nice work Will, looks and sounds like some great timber
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Nice looking bend will. Nice looking wood too. Cheers- Brendan
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Very nice work WillS, lovely looking bow (-S.
R.D.
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Nice work. Good looking bow
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Wow, nice!!!
Would love to read some measurements of thisone!
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No probs - it's 74" nock to nock, 40mm wide and 29mm deep in the handle, with 11mm X 11mm tips. The belly and back are rounded to match each other.
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Nice work, Will. Shows what a the right wood can do in the hands of a craftsman. Could you tell us a bit about your process of heat treatment or " method to "tiller" the bow "? Do you treat deferentially?
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It's simply a case of bracing the bow, spotting where it's weak and hitting that area with a heat gun. Long and slow, really gentle and no scorching. You almost don't want any colour at all, but when the back feels hot you're good to go.
With this one, there was an awkward deflex area, followed by a slight weak spot from my initial tapering which was throwing me off at brace height, so I heated that area to stiffen it all up and the brace shape looked fine afterwards.
What's nice about this method is a) you obviously don't lose any weight by chasing the rest of the bow down to balance a weak spot, and b) you can go over the areas as many times as you want to heat treat other areas. Often I'll never touch the bow with a scraper or rasp and just stiffen the weak spots with heat until the bow is tillered.
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Thanks for sharing that procedure. Will. I think there is a lot to be said for knowing what the bow should look like at brace.
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I can't take any credit for that, I just copy and learn from the bowyers I admire most!
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Very well done, especially that 1" set. Your method of tillering with heat is interesting! I have done it myself while heat treating by reflexing those weak spots more. But i feel like it doesnt have that great effect.
Just to make sure, do you pull the weakspot on reflex also, while heating it? That obviously works nicely if done right, but doesnt allow you to heat treat the bow fully in the end? Right? Cause that would throw the tiller off again. But if you end up with 1" set at 130lbs, do you need heat treating.... :laugh: Great job again!
In your another thread, i understood that you heat treated the wood and then continued to bend the bow/stave during the same day. If that is correct, i need to try that too. Well anyway i should try it, now that it got me thinking!
I happen to have couple of 78" wych elm, ash and apple staves so, i should really start working with them. Heavy longbows are totally new thing for me, since i have only made short bows. Its allways nice to see WillS posted a new topic about warbows, cause i know its full of good info and interesting stuff! Keep on going!
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I don't pull it into reflex, no. You can of course, but exactly as you say it causes problems later if you want to go over the bow again at some point.
Let's say the stave is dead straight, and you've done all the tapering and finishing and nocking etc. You get it up to the full brace height and you notice straight away that one area is weak, or will end up weak or whatever. That's the bit you tag with the heat gun - but after just bracing the bow there won't be any set there, so you don't need to induce reflex as well. All you want to do is add strength to that one small area.
As to other point, yeah I tend to heat treat and leave it until the belly feels completely cold, then just carry on tillering. There's really no need to add oil, or wait days for the RH to return etc, you can get it bending again almost straight away. You just have to wait for all the heat to leave, otherwise you risk "heat bending" the area into permanent string follow!
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Oh! I forgot to mention, your point about the 1" of set is interesting, because this bow has hardly been shot, it's just been braced, pulled to 30" and drawn a few times. The set will probably start to creep up as it's shot in, and that's the stage where I decide which limb is upper and lower, and quite possible heat treat the entire bow (sometimes with gentle reflex) to get it nice and punchy again once the bow has settled.
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Nice, thanks! I like that you have (obviously) experimented heat treating and the wait time on your own, rather than just taking what other people say.
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Oh! I forgot to mention, your point about the 1" of set is interesting, because this bow has hardly been shot, it's just been braced, pulled to 30" and drawn a few times. The set will probably start to creep up as it's shot in, and that's the stage where I decide which limb is upper and lower, and quite possible heat treat the entire bow (sometimes with gentle reflex) to get it nice and punchy again once the bow has settled.
Very nice indeed. I've made Elm warbows bows up to 150# before.
I have used this method of heat-treating to touch up the tiller before but find it too unreliable. It looks good at first but the tiller changes over time
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Very interesting tillering method. Makes good sense. I intend to give it a try.
I have not tillered any horn bows yet, but, is this heat tillering exactly the opposite of how the horn bows are tillered? What I mean is, when tillering a horn bow with heat, I thought you applied the heat to the stiff spots to lossen them up a little till the tiller evened out. I realize different materials react differently to heat. Wood in one case and hide glue in the other. Just interesting that the same method of tillering (applying heat) is used for opposite purposes on different kinds of bow.
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BTW - awesome bow!!!!! I don't think I could even draw it.
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I have used this method of heat-treating to touch up the tiller before but find it too unreliable. It looks good at first but the tiller changes over time
I've had it happen once, with a yew bow that I "tillered" using mainly heat, and after the bow had settled the tiller began looking worse and worse. I re-heated the problem areas and it held the second time. White woods seem to respond superbly however, and I've not noticed any changes happening 100s of shots in with the rest that I've done this way. That being said, it is a relatively new technique for me, so there's every chance it'll catch up to me at some point!
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Very interesting technique Will.
I will be keen to try that with my next bow (probably Ash).
I must admit, I have never been too fussy with trying to get a perfect shape from a bow that isn't straight to begin with!
I also start with tapers that experience has shown me to work well with a particular wood type.
The point of tillering is to share the bending strain equally to as much of the bow as you can.
Obviously if your working a wood to its limits, it's best to include the center area, resulting in a circular shape.
If I try to remove a natural re flexed area in order to achieve a perfect shape, it means that area is bending more (working harder) than the rest of the bow.
What I like about your technique is with a de flexed area, instead of leaving it thicker, you can just stiffen it up a bit rather than have an area that may look like a hinge but is really an area working just as hard as everywhere else!
It's not often I find dead straight staves, so I don't think I have any with a 'Perfect Tiller'!
Anyway, it's always nice to hear people share their knowledge.
I am guilty of repeating mistakes I've made before but overall, I think I'm heading in the right direction being open-minded about things.
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It does work very well with ash - I think you'll be quite pleased. My latest heavy ash (150lb) was made almost entirely using the heat method, but I did do a bit of scraping here and there to get some small areas working.
I've always thought that the quicker you can make a bow the better that bow is. Hours (or days in some cases!) of torturous bending and checking and bending and checking and tweaking and bending and "exercising" just shoots the bow out before you've even held the thing, and really just isn't necessary. Also, I can't help thinking that "back then" there wouldn't have been any of that, just good quality staves being tapered by an experienced bowyer, checked at brace height and chucked on the pile. If you're making 2 or 3 a day, you can't be messing around with all the rest of it. Whether they used heat we can't know, sadly. There are a couple of MR bows that show really dark patches of something on the belly which could be scorch marks, but that's just supposition on my part.
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Why do deflexed areas act weak and reflexed areas act stiff when you have a perfect taper? ;) What does this mean in terms of strain?
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This example of differential tempering is an interesting technique that gets a guy thinking about the meaning of "equal strain".
I suppose that if a tempered area is bent just as much as an untempered area, than the the strains are equal. Presuming of course that the thicknesses of both are the same.
Just for the record, I spend a bit of effort keeping the tapers on my bows fairly precise, at least up until final touch-ups at near full draw. I usually try to keep plus or minus .01 inch from a straight line.