Primitive Archer

Nice work, thanks for sharing, your ringing beam looks a lot like my set up only my twisting stick is smaller, I also dry scrape and thin hide in the neck and rump area while scrapping hair and grain off in a rack, I also sand the hide, flesh and hair sides with 80 grit sand paper or pumas stone before taking out of the rack and cable or rope rather than soften back in the rack. My hide are mainly white tail and not as large as yours so I can handle them by hand better I suppose rather than re racking to soften.
 Pappy

Those are awesome techniques n methods man.  Can't beat sanding the grain side to give it a bit of a clean & smoothen it up a bit eh?  Yeah these large red deer definitely need the frame aye.  Just unbelievable how huge they can get.  I've recently just tried pre-smoking prior to doing the final braining/wringing session.  Seems to have opened up the fibers tremendously as I wasn't getting any bubbles when compressing the hide, trapping moisture in a part of the hide & squeezing did not result in any bubbles/air passing through the hide.  However, after pre-smoking both grain & gut side, bubbles would exert out of the hide after only being back in the brain solution for a good 30-40 seconds.  So safe to say the fibers definitely open up way more with a little pre smoking aye.  It was warm smoke as well, I'll update on how I get on with softening on the frame.  Thanks Pappy.

Beautiful bow, never made a bow from red oak but can see it is doable, simple but effective . 
 Pappy

Cheers Pappy appreciate the compliment! I am a fan of simple and efficient designs (mostly because their more likely to work) but am planning on doing some more stressed designs in future like recurved tips or perry reflexed bows.

You should be fine with tru oil. I'd test an area first to make sure, though. Anything like shellac, with an alcohol-based solvent would be a no no.

Well done, Toumo. Excellent bow! 

 Dean Torges used aniline dye powder with denatured alcohol. Fiebings leather is an aniline dye in alcohol and works well on all bow woods I have tried