Primitive Archer

 Eric, it’s hard to tell in your photo, but did you leave the final back ring run full length into the metal sleeve, or was it ended at the outside edge of the metal sleeve. I see Simk left a top ring over the final back ring to flush with his finished handle, not violating the actual bow back if that makes sense.
I’ve made 2 Osage takedowns with the metal sleeves, 1@44# and 1@48#, both 66” long, and so far have had no breakage issue. I left the top final back ring run into the full length of the metal sleeves, but really like the way Simk’s looks. I hope his holds up to the test of time, because I would sure like to give it a go.

I've been going through the dregs of my stave stock until I have more dry wood to work. Left now, I pretty much have all twisted, highly reflexed and knotty wood. Mostly species I don't usually work like oak, hickory and some maple. Anyways, It's been fun tinkering with wobbly wood and running into some tricky tillering gigs and surprise failures.

Here is a stave I've been working on the past couple weeks. I finally brought it to full draw today.  It had a lot of deflexed portions in the limbs and some pretty significant propellers in each limb. It also has 6 knots total that I had to place carefully. I spent a few days straightening the deflex and twist out with dry heat and adding some reflex in the tips as well. It's regained some twist but mostly maintained a decent profile.

I was able to coax a bow out of it. The bow is 63" NTN and 1 3/4" wide at the fades. It draws 48# at 27 inches. 21.5 oz weight. I originally added over 2 inches of reflex knowing it would lose most of it. I was mostly wanting to even the deflexed portions out. It's kept a half inch total after tillering, immediately after unstringing. It holds one inch of reflex when fresh. It still has some twist and the string favors the shooting side so it's almost centershot.

You can still see some of the deflexed portions in the outer limbs at full draw and towards the inner limb on the lower limb.  I put a full draw pic from each side so you can see the waviness better

I'll shoot it in tomorrow and may add some more heat to it, otherwise if it shoots nice I'll finish it up and post prettier pictures later.

Thanks for looking!

Echo II is simply a stunning example of the bowyer's art. It's hard to believe that the stave you had pictured ended up as Echo II. That is one beautiful bow. Congratulations on your skill and artistry.

It’ll go board to board on what you get exactly. But if you cut your own shafts, mahagony gets you numbers close to what you are after.

Kyle

Nice bow, the tiller looks pretty good to me, if anything look like a little flat spot a few inches out on the right limb not quite to mid limb.probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t ask. 😊Pappy