15May/10Off
Bow Making
Started the course this week. Holy cats, that was fun. Nothing like making a big mess with sharp tools. My shaving horse got some attention. I think there might be a couple others inspired to make one. We'll see. Saved my back in a big way I think. As far as the bow making itself, there weren't a lot of details. Let's see if I can summarize what I learned while it's all still fresh:
- We can make bows out of standard 1x3 lumber, we used red oak.
- Need to look for a really straight and continuous grain.
- The objective is to have an even distribution of flex force along both arms of the bow and the ends have to be thin enough to move fast but strong enough not to break.
- The back of the bow is more or less flat, just some rounding of the edges.
- The face of the bow is well rounded with a D shaped profile.
- The staves came to us pre-tapered....thinned out from the middle handle section to the ends (going in from the face side towards the back) and corner cut on each end. No specific measurements.
- The handle section was marked out from the center point...again no measurements yet.
- Cut inwards slightly near the ends (lateral to medial) to thin out the ends and smooth out the rough corner cut angles.
- In the middle of the handle, another inward cut (lateral to medial).
- Oh, if the blade on your tool bites into the wood you are going against the grain so work in the other direction. In red oak, you can tell the grain direction by the direction of the coloured bands....see if they travel towards an edge and that's the direction you go.
Anyhow, I think that's all I got out of today. No photos because my batteries died. I wanted to take a picture of all the wood shavings I made. Anyhow, more on this next week.