Here's my clamp job on the riser section in the handle. You may notice that A) the riser fades are already cut and B) they're rather dark. Well, I was using my school's bandsaw and it had a rather dull blade. Like cutting clay with your thumb. However, I did get it burnt cut out, which was more than I could have hoped to do in 3 hours with my current tools.
The glue line.
Here is is after I cleaned up the burned wood. The wood survived, and smelled quite nice :) I love working hickory, even if it destroys tools.
I apologize for the blurriness of this shot, I think I'm using a potato attempting to pass for a camera. However, you can see in the shot that I had to remove limb wood in order to get a clean fade. It doesn't matter much, I'm going to be removing a lot more very soon.
Just displaying the marks I'll be using to narrow the riser. It's an inch and a half wide and thick here, I'm going to narrow it down to an inch wide with plenty of thickness left to mess with arrow rests and contoured grips.
A quick shot of my feet and the freshly filed nock. I'll be cleaning it up a bit, but I think I'll just shoot for pin nocks later to help with the simplicity, rather than dealing with the stress of nock overlays. It should also help the FPS, just a tad.
It's nearly invisible to the camera, but here you can see the handle, fades, and tips. I've used the school's bandsaw with a fresh blade to help cut out the riser at this point, and using files have taken all of the edges. This is where the stave is as of today, however, with plenty of time left to work with over break, I should be able to finish by January, but if not I'll be close.
I also mentioned that the bow now has fresh purpose as well. A friend of mine stopped by the other day, and through conversation she mentioned her father had broken her longbow a few months back. I offered to make a fresh one for her, and she was pleased. She shot an old lemonwood longbow, 35 lb at 27", so I have some stats to shoot for. Hopefully, I'll have this bow ready for her before the new year.
On another note, a friend gave me a book called the Impossible Bow, by one Nicholas Tomihama. If anybody has not read it, I'll give a brief synopsis of what it's about: making bows cheaply and safely from PVC pipe. It fits my budget and will allow me to make some bows for some family members who've been asking. It will also finally allow me to get out and shoot a little again.
