Flight Archery Projects

[RyanY]

They're still a bit lumpy after the planing. Still need to figure that out.

[bjrogg]

Hey Ryan. If you still want to come my way and send a couple down range. My fields are starting to thaw out. Shoot me a text if you still have my number.

Bjrogg

[RyanY]

Tillered the osage bow today. Not perfect but close to what I was going for. So far, retaining about 2.5" of reflex after unbracing. I think I could go with another heat treat on it and tweak the tiller a bit more. Humidity here is about 50% even over the winter. Not sure how much weight osage will pick up in the desert so I don't want to come in too high on the draw weight. Right now it's just under 50# at about 23" draw from the belly of the handle.

[sleek]

Whats the draw length? Id recommend shooting for 1 pound under you draw weight, but if you are cooking it hard and heavy, you can nail the weight and it shouldn't change any.

[RyanY]

Thanks for the input sleek. I’m planning on making my arrows around 23.5” long to give 1/2” of length to keep on the shelf. It’ll be the full 2” deep that is allowed so the draw should be the arrow length from the belly of the shelf.

[sleek]

The arrow/arrow rest relationship must be such that the arrow point will fall off the shelf at the max draw. So if its 50 pounds, your arrow tip must fall off the rest within a small fraction of an inch afterwards. 1/8" is acceptable but I wouldn't do mich more than that. The goal of course is to prevent the possibility of accidentally or intentionally over drawing the bow on the firing line.

[JW_Halverson]

Caught myself staring at the bow again, Ryan. Dang, that's just pretty with those sweet curves.

[sleek]

Tillered the osage bow today. Not perfect but close to what I was going for. So far, retaining about 2.5" of reflex after unbracing. I think I could go with another heat treat on it and tweak the tiller a bit more. Humidity here is about 50% even over the winter. Not sure how much weight osage will pick up in the desert so I don't want to come in too high on the draw weight. Right now it's just under 50# at about 23" draw from the belly of the handle.

You should be aware, we measure the draw weight and length from the back of the handle, not the belly like in IBO.

[RyanY]

Thanks, John. I reheat treated it today and the unbraced shape is really sweet.

Sleek, so if measuring from the back of the bow, I'm going for about a 25" draw to shoot 23" arrows since my shelf will be the full 2" deep. Hopefully that's accurate.

Had a marathon of working on these projects today. Started with putting in the recurves for that hickory bow. I needed breaks from working on the arrows because my fingers were getting sore doing all the planing. That gave me time to heat treat the osage bow and start straightening/heat treating the hickory bow.

Started with one arrow by getting the nock shaped and put a horn tip on. Really like this horn tip and it turned out great. Arrow weighs 162 grains and is 23.5" long. Put sinew on the nock and will figure out the vanes at a later time. Spent the rest of the day shaping the rest of my poplar shafts between the barrelling and the nocks. I got them down to about 215 grains before heating them in the oven. That brought them down about 15 grains. Probably could have toasted them for a bit longer. I wanted them lighter so I did more planing and got them down to about 175 grains before being trimmed to final length. Hopefully will have some variety with all of them being no more than 180 grains. It was really fun getting the hang of this process. Hopefully they will hold together for shooting.

[RyanY]

Sorted some nice long sinew strands for binding the nocks. The carving of the nock end was really fun. My fingers weren't used to doing that much carving.   

[RyanY]

I did manage to fix the lumpiness of the arrows a bit. Made a v notch sanding block the same shape as the shooting board. Helped smooth where the plane started to take the shaving. Also some of these were pretty wonky and needed straightening.