Primitive Archer

I fooled around with sourdough a few times. My first was a starter I collected just by sitting flour water and sugar out on the back deck on a windy day. After all, natural yeasts are EVERYWHERE.

I recently ran across a guy that makes blended videos of woodworking and cooking. The first video I saw was him simmering wood chips in cream and sugar, then making a wood flavor infused ice cream. He then turns a bowl from the same wood and carves a matching spoon to eat the ice cream. I followed his videos and ran across one where he made a sourdough starter from juniper berries he had collected. Juniper berries have a dusty bloom on them that is pure yeast.  I did a little research and found that the ground hugging juniper in the Black Hills is indeed Juniperus communalis, the same juniper that grows the berries used in cooking and making gin! I picked a mess of berries last fall on a ruffed grouse hunt and I intend to crush them and use them as the base of a new sourdough starter soon. 

I don't tend to stick with sourdough starters long because they are a lot of work and I discard a lot of starter for what little baking I do. Still, It's fun to brew up a batch of bread from the wilds now and then.

Casurina, Australian timber. Looks like a pine because it has needle like leaves, but the wood is more like a diffuse porous oak. It is also called  she oak. Splits cleanly like oak.

Never tried it for a bow, but Badger one of the most experienced bowyers on here rates it as pretty good from memory.




General theory for bending wood with heat, is if the wood is green, use wet heat, like steaming or boiling.  Also use wet heat for tight bends like recurves. If the wood is dry, use a heat gun, for taking out propellor twist, or reflexing, or making the limbs look more even.

Fantastic Dave thats a great thread for me to read through, just got to page four this morning. I find the search function only really brings me stuff up from the mid 2000's so i woud have missed that if you hadnt linked it.

Yeah I did consider a tiny ELB Derek but then I remebered I hate them  Nice, looking at Dave's bow i think the lower limb will be ok in width but the upper will get a whisp of sapwood on the edges. The question i was wondering was will the added weight of the sapwood negate the added performance of the increased width by leaving it on. (i've written that a few times now, still not sure thats the most coherent sentance) but if you say it just takes a bit of heart wood on the belly, it should end up 70-80% heartwood so should be just fine!

That looks to be thick enough.
My fave style is a willow leaf shaped limb narrow grip.
You may need to de-crown it if the sapwood is thick, but you can maintain maximum with by allowing the sapwood to wrap around onto the belly, so the belly has a strip of heartwood along the centre and sapwood either side of that, it looks really cool. It doesn't need much heartwood to give it some poke. You could go for an ELB style but that would be more stress on a short bow.
Alternatively you could splice on some short levers onto each end (maybe 3" of lever plus 2" of V splice) that would give you some extra length and look cool 
Del
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2014/08/monkey-bow-lives-again.html
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2014/08/monkey-bow-lever-detail.html

FWIW....I look at the selections and try to decide which bow out of the lot presented I would like to own the most!

Cheers,