Fitting horn nocks

[bearded bowyer]

Hi all
I thought I would share another of my errors!
Just trying to adjust the brace height on my 120lb warbow and using a stringer to fit the string and BANG!
the timber within the nock gave out.
On closer inspection I hadn't tapered the wood to snugly fit the nock! It only went about 1 cm into it...
Ho hum, Ive learnt my lesson....

Cheers
Matt

 

[WillS]

Yikes! That must have been fun!

On a sidenote, how's your yew going?

On another sidenote, head over to primitivearcher.com and sign up. It's entirely dedicated to bow building, so you'll get far more advice from experts in wooden bow building than you would here! There's even an English warbow section

 

[bearded bowyer]

Cheers Wills
there was a loud crack and the horn flew off, amazingly the string dug into the hickery and it stayed braced. It was a pig to then unstring. I had to lay it between the arms of the sofa and sit on it!

As to the yew, I've stripped the bark off and there is quite a lot of discolouration in the sapwood, and lots of tiny dark threads...
Do you think this means the sapwood is no good?

 

[WillS]

Are you able to post a photo? Yew is a funny beast. It can take the most horrible violations of the sapwood and still take warbow weight, and yet the slightest hint of a rotten knot or too much heat treating can cause it to buckle as if it just got whacked in the wedding vegetables by Mike Tyson and explode on you!!

Could be rot, stick a pic up and we'll see.

 

[bearded bowyer]

will take another later.

 

[WillS]

Wow. That doesn't look great.

I can't tell if those large brown patches are cambium or discolouration. If they're cambium obviously that's not a problem, just scrape them off. The black lines I've never seen before in yew. They almost look like the result of bug damage which is surprising in yew but certainly not impossible. Nobody tells the bugs in my wood shed that yew is poisonous...

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't even dream of making a heavy bow from that. With laminations you do get a lot more safety, but with a self-yew bow the back doesn't have to be perfect but the cleaner the better. Yew can certainly handle growth ring violations to a certain degree, but the heavier the bow the less it can take obviously.

Once you push past 100# it's almost key to keep the back one ring. I know lots of bowyers say it doesn't matter so much, but why risk it... Certainly something looking like that would ring alarm bells if I was trying to make a warbow.

It might look stunning though! I'd aim for a 40 - 50lb bow, keeping the draw length at no longer than 28". Lovely Danish Oil finish will bring those lines out like a dream. That could be such a beautiful bow.

If you've got plenty of excess wood, try digging down a few layers with a drawknife or scraper and see how deep those lines go. They're almost horizontal in places, so if it's structural you're asking for trouble!

 

[bearded bowyer]

Ok Wills
Here is another picture of the sapwood. the grey discolouration isn't continuous throughout, but is it rot?

So....do I salvage the heartwood for laminating or ?????????
happy to go with whatever you all think is best.

matt

 

[WillS]

Yeah, that's spalting, or early rot. Not necessarily a bad thing though. Streaks of rot don't usually effect a bow too much, and can look amazing. It all depends where it is, and to what extent. Still not quite sure what the picture is showing in terms of location in the stave and what's in view - is it taken from the edge of the stave, so theres heartwood at the top, then the grey area is sapwood and then the white strip is also sapwood but nearer the back of the bow? Confused!

Basically, two options. Make a lightweight character target bow (not a good idea to try making a warbow on your first attempt with self yew anyway!) and hope it doesn't die on you, or rip it up and use the heartwood as a lamination (safer but boring - yew laminated bows are everywhere and no harder to make than normal laminated bows, while a self yew stave bow is a whole different kettle of fish and much more challenging even with a clean stave)

 

[bearded bowyer]

The grey is in the sapwood. It yoyos down the stave, some areas are clear but the sapwood is thin in the areas where it is good. Im working upto using my lastest 120lb warbow, seems a bit boring doing a low (normal weight) bow. But you are right, this will be my first non-laminated bow. Its strange how I've made well over fifty laminate bows but this is so completely different. A whole new set of skills needed.

 

[WillS]

You'll find it's a lot harder to make a very fast, efficient self yew longbow at 50# than it is to make a heavy warbow.

I've learnt my lesson now, not considering a yew stave for a warbow unless it's amazing quality. I've gone through too many staves that could have been excellent 40-60# bows in the vain hope of getting a 100+ bow out of them.

Warbows need to be supremely high quality when you don't have various wood specifics to help you out, so any damage, too much reflex, funky sapwood, knots in the wrong place, quartered too small so the belly is too triangular etc etc and the bow needs to be kept at a low weight.

Anyway, a nice quick 50# self yew is far better than a laminated bow in my mind, so don't rush into the heavy self yew bows, as you're right - this ain't like making laminated bows!