...some assembly required.



When we bought this house in 1992, this pecan seedling began to grow right next to the fence in the rear of the back yard. As it grew, I topped it and cut off any branches lower than about nine feet from the base to give the wood no knots. I also did not want a 90 foot pecan tree to cut down. Each winter I'd cut off the branches above that large burl at the top. You can see the one year growth there. That burl and the one just below it will yield some neat looking bowls. But it's the bows hidden in the trunk I'm after.

I counted 22 growth rings.

My next step will be cutting the two burls away from the log. Then I'll split the log lengthwise with two wedges and a sledge hammer. Then I'll wire it back together and stand it up in my garage for a year. Then I'll split each half once again. This will give me four bow blanks. Maybe more. I'll see in a year.

I figure since the archery forum is pretty under populated, that I could use this thread to keep tabs on my bow building. But not much more than replies will appear here until next winter.

I like long projects.

CDFingers

Great project! Long time arc (ahem!).

But, but, but... pecan pie!

Elmo wrote:Great project! Long time arc (ahem!).

But, but, but... pecan pie!

Four more pecan trees in our yard, the oldest of which is the source of this one. Wretched squirrels plant these suckers all over the place. I pull up twenty a year, probably. I do so love pecan pie, though. True, that.

CDFingers

We've got pecan trees up to here around here. I've tried making tool handles out of limbs but they twist and split as they dry.

Is there a technique in the drying?

I left it long to allow me to reject the checked areas near the ends in one year. The wood you used for tool handles would need to be cured in one of two ways. First, if you have a long stick you might use, cut each end fresh and melt beeswax and pour it over the end grain. Put it in your closet for a year. Then it won't twist or check. The other way, which might be easier, as the situation presents itself quite frequently around trees that we maintain, is to select the cool stick or log, left at least a few inches too long, and bury it in the ground about two feet down for a year.

This "split in half and wire together for drying" is how English bowyers did it back in the day. I love experiments. This should check (split) five or six inches in from each end. I'll cut the checking off when I begin to shape the bows. In the interim I'll build the only other tool I need, a "tillering stick" that allows me to draw the bow, discover areas of non-symmetrical bending, then shave wood off and test it again. I get to use some of my old organ building tools, which is cool, as we built organs in the 17th century style, using 17th century techniques.

CDFingers

Neat. Made me just watch a series on primitive bow making. Looks like a fun project!

http://handmade.hackaday.com/making-a-bow-from-scratch/

Wow. An impressive project!

Thanks so much for sharing this. This looks like a great project.
I have loved archery since I was 4 years old.

Here are two of the bowl blanks in there.



You see all the years of cut off branches there. All these branches will leave little bullseyes in the wood for me to find when I go in there with my old lathe and get the hidden bowls. On the right of the cut you can see one branch that got missed. It's about eight feet from the bottom, so when I cut it off--might be a bowl in there, too--I'll have about seven or so feet to get six foot bow blanks out of. Should work. I might not split the log for a week or so, as rain is coming.

CDFingers

I cut the two boles off where the bowls are hidden, leaving this. It's been raining for some days, so this was taken while dodging rain drops. You wait some days after falling the log to let it show you where to do the first split.

Here it is.



I'll put a wedge in there and whack it until the split makes it through the bark, then I'll put in the other wedge on the outside. I'll whack it till the split heads down the log, then alternate until it's in half. There are no knots, so it should go pretty smoothly. I'm leaving the bark on to slow down how quickly the moisture leaves the wood. After I split it, I'll wire it together and stand it up in the basement for a year or until I can't stands it no more. Then I'll quarter one of the halves and start the first bow.

CDFingers

During a break in the rain, I was able to split this guy. Because I let it tell me where to split, this took about seven minutes. Pecan is very coarse grained. This splitting will allow me to shape the bow along the fibers of the wood.



You can see that little vein of heart wood running down the middle.



I laid it bark up, as it was starting to rain again. Wunderground says maybe a week of rain, so I'll wire it up next weekend.

CDFingers

This project is most exciting to follow. Can't wait for the next installment!

But, is pecan really a good wood for making bows? The old bows were only made from a pretty short list of trees

There are better woods: osage orange, yew, and so on. However, I live near where Ishi walked out of the Stone Age and into the 20th century--about 30 miles. I've been studying Ishi and his area for the last 20 years, and it turns out that he used pecan for some of his bows. His bows were all pretty short, as they are designed for shooting from the kneeling position inside thick brush. Pecan is ideal for that. It's tough, and it's strong. If I make a long bow it will start out at like 90 pounds. Ak. That would dislocate my whatchyamacallit if I tried to draw it. So I'll shave it down. The wood I think is tough enough for a thinner bow that will draw around 40-50 pounds.

All that above, while it is true, is a bit of BS, as the real truth of the matter is I had that volunteer pecan growing against the fence. I took advantage of it. Waited 20 years, trimming, and now I'm starting to make the bows. I also have another volunteer trimmed in the same way along the side of the house. I figure out of eight blanks, I'll get a bow I can use.

CDFingers

Here is the log in the basement. Above and away there hanging from the floor is our floor heater, 1927 vintage.



Now we wait some more.

CDFingers

You are a zoo man. And I love the hammer.

Mid October sometime is when I go down in the basement and light the pilot light on our 1927 floor heater--made in this very town back when we made things in America. The sheet metal fabricator shop name-stamped on the side is now a pizza joint catering to students of the near by university.

When you look at the pic of the log lying on the basement floor, perhaps you can see how tight the wire was wrapped. A couple weeks after I put it down there I was down getting something or other out, and I saw that the wire had prevented the log from warping into a U shaped thing--very tight wire.

So today the wire is loose, and the log has shrunk. I can see in the end grain the characteristic features of pecan, like hickory, the rays and texture. I'm looking forward to December when I'll take off the wire, split one of the halves in half, and restash the free quarter back down there. Then I'll have the first quarter log so I can start hacking out a bow.

I've seen writings about getting six blanks out of a log. I will look into that when I have the half log out back. If I think I can get six, I'll split the half into thirds. Have to have it in my hands before I make that determination.

CDFingers

No pic of the shrunk log?

Marlene wrote:No pic of the shrunk log?

Because spiders.

The best weapon, as we all know, against the eight legged Mythical Basement Badass, is the chasing hammer, left over from my manufacturer's jeweler's stint in the dim dark days nearly beyond recall.

You can see how relaxed the wire is there. I slid the log to show some inner wood, but the flash didn't resolve it well. Looks like pecan.



Great big gobs of greasy grimy spider guts are off camera.

CDFingers

Your project, as reported in the great posts/pics, has me hooked. Fascinating stuff. Please keep posting at every step.

Paco wrote:Your project, as reported in the great posts/pics has me hooked. Fascinating stuff. Please keep posting at every step.

Ditto. I'm not even an archer and I'm mesmerized. Keep posting!

My dad made some long bows from timber on his land before, and he said the best results he had was by using different piece of timber for the limbs and the main body. I'll email him to find out more, but he use to make some pretty good long bows. I recall him saying something about making the entire bow out of the same piece of wood not being the best thing..
Then again, just because he did it, dont make it right lol

cant wait to see your progress.. this should be informative, and fun...


and thats a mean thing to do to your chasing hammer...

CDFingers wrote:...some assembly required.

When we bought this house in 1992, this pecan seedling began to grow right next to the fence in the rear of the back yard. As it grew, I topped it and cut off any branches lower than about nine feet from the base to give the wood no knots. I also did not want a 90 foot pecan tree to cut down. Each winter I'd cut off the branches above that large burl at the top. You can see the one year growth there. That burl and the one just below it will yield some neat looking bowls. But it's the bows hidden in the trunk I'm after.

I counted 22 growth rings.

My next step will be cutting the two burls away from the log. Then I'll split the log lengthwise with two wedges and a sledge hammer. Then I'll wire it back together and stand it up in my garage for a year. Then I'll split each half once again. This will give me four bow blanks. Maybe more. I'll see in a year.

I figure since the archery forum is pretty under populated, that I could use this thread to keep tabs on my bow building. But not much more than replies will appear here until next winter.

I like long projects.

CDFingers

I get the impression your a faithful watcher of the Woodrights shop on PBS..

It's coming on time to start the first bow. I think I'm going to split the first half into thirds. I'll just split one off and wire the log back together. So I've been researching as well as consulting The Traditional Bowyer's Bible. I am using pecan because it's there. But here is some thing that makes me feel good about this happy coincidental convergence of squirrels wanting to bury pecans, a nearby pecan tree, and the near-back-of-the-yard location of the tree so I could keep topping it and let it grow fat.

The Mohawk bow is a working replica bow is made for the bow hunter or target shooter who wants more authenticity in their traditional shooting. It was made using one of the Mohawk Indian designs in the encyclopedias of Native American bows and arrows. We made it slightly longer to modern draw lengths but is no less an authentic Mohawk design. It is an effective hunting bow and has the power to take down large game with well matching arrows. The bow has a uni-grip design which means it can be shot from either either side. The bow is 65” tip to tip and comes with a bow string and a warranty.

BOW SPECS

Length -Approx 65" tip to tip
Bow Wood - Hickory
Backing - None
Bow Type - Flatbow
Stain - Early American Dark Brown

link:

http://www.crowshead.com/mohawk-bow/?mc ... 951db58b78

Pecan and hickory are closely related with respect to properties. I've worked with both and they behave the same. So, ah. feel. good. (nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh)

I think I'm going to pine tar mine--but you all knew that.

CDFingers

CDFingers wrote:It's coming on time to start the first bow. I think I'm going to split the first half into thirds. I'll just split one off and wire the log back together. So I've been researching as well as consulting The Traditional Bowyer's Bible. I am using pecan because it's there. But here is some thing that makes me feel good about this happy coincidental convergence of squirrels wanting to bury pecans, a nearby pecan tree, and the near-back-of-the-yard location of the tree so I could keep topping it and let it grow fat.

The Mohawk bow is a working replica bow is made for the bow hunter or target shooter who wants more authenticity in their traditional shooting. It was made using one of the Mohawk Indian designs in the encyclopedias of Native American bows and arrows. We made it slightly longer to modern draw lengths but is no less an authentic Mohawk design. It is an effective hunting bow and has the power to take down large game with well matching arrows. The bow has a uni-grip design which means it can be shot from either either side. The bow is 65” tip to tip and comes with a bow string and a warranty.

BOW SPECS

Length -Approx 65" tip to tip
Bow Wood - Hickory
Backing - None
Bow Type - Flatbow
Stain - Early American Dark Brown

link:

http://www.crowshead.com/mohawk-bow/?mc ... 951db58b78

Pecan and hickory are closely related with respect to properties. I've worked with both and they behave the same. So, ah. feel. good. (nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh)

I think I'm going to pine tar mine--but you all knew that.

CDFingers

You dis it again. Its a beauty

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