2020 Bow Trade - Sign up closed

[dylanholderman]

here's what i got to start with. from left to right, honeysuckle, osage, honeysuckle, honeysuckle, osage.
i'm leaning towards the right most honeysuckle but i need to do some tests on some scrap first to see how far i can get it to bend, i want to do a deflexed bendy handle with static recurves but we'll see.

[lebhuntfish]

I'll try to get pictures up as soon as I can. I got a lot going on right now with with a new neice n the nicu but I've got one sort of roughed out. It's winged elm and a beauty in my book! I love a challenging stave but these are sweet! Got to get it thinned out and get it bent up and make some sexy curves in her. Then I'm going to set her on fire and burn her belly!

Patrick

[M2A]

I shoot split finger, tried 3 under a few years ago but didn't care for it much.

I got a sugar maple and black locust roughed out. The maple is set up for a stiff handle while the locust is roughed out for a bendy. Got some ideas for each but not sure what direction to head yet. Both are a little too wide, long, and thick.  Going to do some looking in the next few days and try to come up with a game plan to start on one of them. Both of these will need some monor heat corrections down the road and thats always been a weak link for me but been getting better at that. That said, I dug out the straightest piece of locust yesterday and brought it home from work just in case.

Hope to put up a pic or 2 in the next few days of what I'll be starting on with the intention of getting some bend out of one of them over the weekend. Looking forward to getting started on something soon. With 20 folks building its going to a lot of fun. 
Mike   

[Flntknp17]

Here is the better of the two maple staves glued up with bamboo in my super homemade “jig”.....these often increase in reflex in the weeks after I remove them from the clamps and I’ve been told it’s the water from the glue that is soaked up by the bamboo eventually completely drying out and allowing the boo to be stiffer.  Not sure what it is exactly, but this one gained an inch of reflex in the couple days after it was taken off the “form”.  Ignore the messy bench....that just means fun stuff is happening 😉

[Mo_coon-catcher]

I’m a split finger guy myself. And shoot in a snap shooting style. If I hold anchor for more than 0.1 second, then I’m doing good with holding full draw.

I think for my main bow for this year I’m going to work on a takedown hickory bow using a Fglass sleeve. I have a few other ideas handy Incase that one fails for some reason. I’m not sure what style I want to go with yet until I get t he bark off and see what I have to work with. I’ll probably do a wide flat bow with a willow leaf profile. I’m not sure if I want to recurve it or not yet.

Kyle

[hoosierf]

I can shoot split and three under. I always tiller my bows equally on both limbs.

[Swampman]

I did a little work tonight and got my black walnut stave roughed out.  The limbs are down to a half inch and it is not bending at all yet.  I have it cut to 68 inches so I should have plenty to work with.  This stave will definitely need some heat corrections to get the alignment right.  It also has about 2 inches of natural reflex so it has some good potential of I don't mess it up.

I couldn't find my calipers that I use when laying a bow out so I found a vice grip works great as a gauge to get the thickness of the limbs even. 

[Deerhunter21]

I have a nice osage and hickory stave. the hickory can probably give a belly spit, and then split so i can get three but it has a nasty knot or whatever it is.

[aznboi3644]

Here’s another black locust stave I got roughed out.  Plans are to put about 2-3 good layers of sinew in the back of this one.  One limb is gonna be interesting with a big hump on the back from a knot that I’m digging out.  The grain swirls around it and it is wider.  This will be my first black locust bow.  It’s gonna be a fun challenge.

It still needs some rasping.  One limb is about 1/2” thick and non even budging.  Damn it’s stiff.

[M2A]

All righty, Think I got a game plan to start on. Going to start on the sugar maple for a stiff handled bow. I got that and a piece of locust with the thickness roughed out. Figured I'd put the locust in the pics as well in case I do any work on that one.  The Maple has some twist to it that may need attention down the road but I think it will look much better after I get it narrowed up a bit. Picture gives the appearance of some deflex out of the handle but its pretty flat imo. No knots, and that's hard to come by from the wood I seem to cut. So should be a fun piece to work on. Next step will be to lay out the limbs and get it looking a little bit like a bow.
IMG_3410 by Mike Allridge, on Flickr
IMG_3411 by Mike Allridge, on Flickr

[Flntknp17]

Here is stave #1 after glue up, cleaning off the excess glue, roughing out the handle.  I haven’t worked maple in quite a while so it’s been entertaining. 

[Yellowstave]

These two are gonna be my best efforts.

[timmyd]

hardest part for me is just picking a stave. I have hickory, ash, osage billets, character osage staves, and some hickory backings, walnut and hickory slats for tri lam bows. Have no idea what to do. The hickory is the best as far as clean straight staves go but hickory needs to be babied (kept dry) if going to be shot frequently. but i love building bows out of it.

[TimothyR]

Here is one of my potential bows. Elm character.

[TimothyR]

More pics