Verum Vox Vocis

Second Red Oak Longbow- Day 1, Roughing Out

nospam@example.com (H Chan) — 2010-07-20T04:31:00Z

This stick of red oak is going to be the basis of my next, hopefully more successful bow. It's a piece of 1"x2" quartersawn red oak, 5' long exactly. The grain runs nearly straight all the way end to end. I'll be making this bow 59" nock to nock and hopefully around 40#@26".
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Making a Flemish Twist Bowstring, Part 2

nospam@example.com (H Chan) — 2010-07-18T05:07:00Z

Right, so I said I'd continue my flemish twist tutorial today. Here I am.

To start off, you take your two bundles and grasp them near one end together between your left thumb and forefinger. Twist the top bundle away from you, then bring it over the bottom bundle. Now, the original bottom bundle is the top bundle and the original top bundle is the bottom bundle.

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Red Oak Longbow #1- Day 3, Tillering

nospam@example.com (H Chan) — 2010-07-17T07:40:00Z

Today, I finished off my tiller string and finally got to start tillering. Using the tillering stick/tree (I'll write a tutorial about this soon.) I made earlier today, I started off with a low brace, per the suggestions of a few friends on the PaleoPlanet forum. My low brace is about 1 1/2" and the tiller seems OK. It looks like there's a bit of twist where the jigsaw took a notch out of it, I'll try to remove wood where appropriate, but it looks pretty bad on that front.

I don't have enough pictures to really do a buildalong writeup for the tiller, so here's how tillering is done. My way. I string the bow and put it up on the tiller tree. I look at it, for bad spots in the arc. After I've looked at it, I take it down, unstring it, scrape it with the Surform, restring and repeat. Really, it's not the greatest way to tiller, but that's how I wound up doing it. I'll work out a better method soon.

In the end, I guess this bow was doomed from the moment that notch got taken out. It exploded just shy of full draw at 26". Lucky for me, it exploded up and away. I've got more sticks of wood and more bows to build, so it's no problem. All part of the learning experience. Next time, maybe I'll be luckier. Maybe I'll do better. Until then...

-Chan OUt

Flemish Bowstring Buildalong, Part 1

nospam@example.com (H Chan) — 2010-07-17T06:36:00Z

As it turns out, it's taking a bit more than a day for me to get to tillering, partly because I don't have a bowstring yet. Yesterday, I went out to FS Archery in Tustin and got myself a 1/4 lb spool of black Dacron B-50. Later in the day, I realized that was probably a mistake. I'm definitely going to need two spools... not just one. And I might have needed to get some bowstring wax also, but hey... hindsight is 20/20.

Once I got home, I set to work building a string jig and making my first string. This is going to be fun...
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Red Oak Longbow #1- Day 2, Belly and Nocks

nospam@example.com (H Chan) — 2010-07-14T05:02:00Z

I started this afternoon with a quick bit of double-check research to see what I should be doing for the belly of the bow. What it looks like, is that I need to sketch out a gradual taper along the side of the limb, from the full thickness at the grip to a 1/2" at the tips.

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