Monday, December 20, 2010

The first bow - but no pics...

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Well, I gave my nephew the bow I'd been working on the past few weeks (on and off, so quit laughing!).

He has to be with his Dad on Christmas day this year, and so my sister and he put together a party for the family the weekend prior, where the kids get to open presents from each other, so we don't miss out on the excitement.  Well, I wasn't fully prepared for the party this year, and with the wet weather we've had this week, work on the bow was seriously curtailed.  So, I decided to give him the bow, along with a promise to bring him over to help me finish it, as well as make some arrows and a string. 

It bends well with the jute string I made at the last minute (and string-making turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it'd be), and it looks nice with the mahogany Minwax finish I put on it.  I finished it with beeswax, although when he brings it back, we'll spray on some spar urethane for a final finish that should make the linen look better. 

The linen wound up being the most time-consuming part, because it's tough to get the edges to look nice.  However, next time I'm going to soak the linen in a water/glue mix, and just lay it on that way, to eliminate any potential for dry spots. 

For my next bow, I'll be making a scaled-down version of this one.  After that, I'll make a version with siyahs (stiff recurve ends glued on) that will pull a bit stronger than these.  We shall see.

As soon as I can, I'll get pics up of this finished bow.

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