The little girl asked as her dad came out of the garage.



Her brother said, "Emma, you know the guys have been scrapin all day."

BillJ on the left, MarkC on the right. I'm the guy behind the camera. Oh yeah, you can't see me!!    

And?

and...Thanks to the hospitality and help of Kenny, We have my stave thinned out and I found a new respect for "chasing a ring". It was great to have help, and to meet Ken and Bill.

Mark

Mark posted on the bow classifieds that he wanted to buy a selfbow. Since he lived in the same vacinity, I thought I would see what he was looking for. I pm'd him and found he had a stave but it had thin rings and he wasn't sure if it was worth persuing.
We discussed it and decided he didn't have much to lose in giving it a shot.
So we settled on Saturday morning. Meanwhile I remembered Bill j. lived close by and he and I had discussed getting together sometime to work on our Dryad glue-ups.
Mark showed up about 7:45 and Bill a little while later.

So, after introductions, and solving all the worlds problems, we got to work.
Now, I haven't been building bows like some of the "Old Timers" on here, but with Dean Torges book and the knowledge of reading on Tradgang for the past 1.5 years, we thought we could find a bow in that stave.


This was the part of the stave that didn't have a bow in it!  :D

       

Hey Ken, Cute kids you got there!

This is going to be good.

Glad to see you and the other Tradgangers working together and sharing knowledge of selfbows.

I can't seem to get anyone around here interested enough to get into it, but i'll keep trying.


Good luck and post as many pics as you can!

Is It a bow yet?<><

Welcome to our world, yella pants, socks and after a short time shoes and boots.  LOL

Mike

Oh Kenny, we want more please.

Osage....I'm near Columbus and would be interested in puttng in some time making a selfbow.  I have been reading in the Bowers Journal about all these different types of bows and I am really getting the itch.  My problem is, I have no tools or a place to make a bow.  If you know of anyway to get around that let me know.  Oh yeah...I also have zero experience with woodworking and generally am not mechanically inclined.  It might be a minor miracle if I could make a selfbow, composite or laminate.....Charlie

Sorry guys, this is gonna come in pieces. Church this morning, and now Adam wants to go out and play ball. The first nice day we've had in a while, and he's a baseball nut.

QuoteNow, I haven't been building bows like some of the "Old Timers" on here, but with Dean Torges book and the knowledge of reading on Tradgang for the past 1.5 years, we thought we could find a bow in that stave.

Don't let Kenny kid ya - he knows how to make bows.  I wasn't able to stay for the whole scrapin session, but I learned tons in just the time I was there.

Thanks Kenny and Mark - had a great time.  So much so that later that evening I was inspired to pick up the Dryad and scrape some more on it.

BillJ

So we looked that stave over and decided on the best course of action. It is fairly straight so we laid out the bow on the back alittle over sized so we would have a little room for error.
8 inch handle area about 2 inches wide to start with, then tapering down to 7/8 on the ends.
We decided to rough the width to those dimensions because we had a ways to go down to a suitable ring, and that would still leave us a little play room on the sides if we needed to shift for knots.
 

I've chased rings on 4 other staves prior to this and non of them were as hard as this.
The other chasing I've done was on green staves. This bad-boy had been drying for at least 8 months and it was hard work.

My mind, like God, often works in mysterious ways, but I'm so glad to hear this thread didn't have anything to do with daddy having close encounters with large, furry, four-legged carnivores!

ODR that's too funny.

As you can see, Mark's not gettin yellapants.
He's got the apron thing goin. I'm gonns hafta make me one of them.

Mark and I decided that due to time restrictions and the fact that his bow needed to dry somemore, we would stop one ring from the desired one. Partly because he needed practice chaseing (his words) and because we wouldn't have to be so pickey about scrapin off all the early wood.
This stave had no knots and only a few pin clusters, had sections of beautiful redish color.