I gotta get back in the shop.  

I offered up a longbow built to someone's specs on the St. Judes Auction #1.  It closed tonight and the winning bidder was Caleb Monroe who's winning bid was $350 for a bow from this "hobbyist" bowyer.  I'm honored he thought so highly of my work and it feels good my work will be going to support a great cause.

Caleb wants a Hill Style bow with brown glass and we're still discussing riser woods.  I'll definitely do my best on this build.  The pressure's on and Caleb deserves a nice bow for his generosity.

I'll post pics as it progresses.

Good on you John!

Way to go John! I'm sure he will be happy- looking forward to seeing your build.

Congrats to you both, and a big thank you for the kids!

Show us some pics as you progress - Always love to see a bow come together! Especially for such a great cause...

Looking forward to seeing the build. Very generous of both of you.

I've already communicated with Caleb about what he wants.  It will be brown glass with a curly maple riser dyed brown.  Curly maple is at the top of my list for woods I like to work with.  And I have plenty of curly maple and brown glass in case I screw up and need to start over  

He's a big boy so ya'll will want to keep him happy...    

Paul - That's what I gathered from him.  It will be a 70" bow and I'll try to hit his draw weight at 31"          

I got started on the bow this weekend.  Here's a few pics in progress.

Right off the form - There's a bow somewhere in that mess of glue, plastic, and tape.


Cleaned up a bit.


Shaped and adding overlays.


On the tiller stick.  I did have to do some tiller adjustments to get the limbs bending evenly, but not too much.  These straight glass laminated bows are about as easy as it gets as far as tillering.


Figured out which end was up and then cut the shelf.

Great job John, looks like you found some nice maple there!

Looking good John! That maple is really going to pop!

Looks great John. It amazes me how quickly this came together. Can't wait to see it without tape.

Looks like another fine bow from the Sweka stable!  

   

I got things pretty well rough shaped.

Slight dished grip.


The beginning of feathering out the riser overlays


And nice narrow limb tips


Still lots more work to do, but it's coming along.

Looking Good!!

It looks like it's coming along nicely.      

Lookin great John!

I'm done sanding everything and tonight I applied some walnut stain to the riser and the edges of the limbs.

We often get all exited about fancy exotic woods, but good ol' domestic curly maple is still at the top of my list for pretty woods.  And this is just stained - no finish on it yet.


It also looks pretty sweet next to one of my flintlocks in the the gun cabinet.