Osage "driftwood" short bow, part 2 - complications

Part of the excitement and challenge of working on this project was working with sub-par wood. I did not set out to build a particular type of bow. Instead, I had been generously gifted a piece of wood and decided to try to make something of it. My main goal was to try and take as much as the wood was willing to give and to try and draw the maximum amount of bow out of the wood rather than to force my will upon it.

(I try to take this approach with most of my projects. Given the number of years that wood takes to grow, I try not to take it for granted or waste it. I probably also push that a little too far, as sometimes I have just barely enough material with which to work.)

On to the tillering. From my previous emails to Jarrod:

6/24/2014:

So just when I thought I'd found all the surprises... After I showed the current progress to [Jarrod] today, I went home and started working on bringing the front profile down to the lines and then starting to reduce the belly thickness in order to start floor tillering. As I started working the belly down, more and more cracks started to reveal themselves on the belly -- fortunately all (so far) within the confines of the limbs, though at least one looks dangerously close to the edge of the limb. None have shown through the back. I wonder how far they go?

There is something about working wood with hand tools that allows the wood to "speak" to you. Something that the bandsaw will never tell you. There is something about the way the wood changes in sound as it is being worked that allows one to know that there is a crack, a pithy part of wood, a little "something" that is less than desirable. It's a hiss, a crackle, and nuanced change in pitch that gets ignored over the scream of a cutting bandsaw blade.

Right now I've hit the cracks with some super thin super glue. IF it will hold together long enough for me to tiller and bend it, I'll wrap it with silk thread and zap it with glue again as a safety measure. As of this moment, though, I'm having some serious doubts about the integrity of this piece. Current probability of survival? It's going to be a long shot.

After cutting the profile, the stave as it stood at this point (I can't call it a bow yet because it's not bending) included three major cracks: one near the upper limb tip that threatens to run off the side and two others parallel to each other in the lower to midlimb section of the upper limb. One of the two is closer to the edge than I'd like and also threatens to run off. Current dimension: 1 3/8" at center tapering to 5/8" at the tips. It;s not a straight taper, as I left more wood through midlimb, but now I can't recall the measurement.  Details:

7/6/2014:

I put a long string on the stave and managed to get a glimpse at what it might look like after the limbs moved a few inches. Some tricks of the stave -- some especially snaky bits and exaggerated reflex at the tips around these areas -- made looking for a bend particularly difficult. I read a trick about squinting in order to erase the actual profile and to get just a general impression; I think it worked, as it allows me to find some generalized flat spots and work them down. At least I think it worked. Squint hard enough, and just about anything looks okay.

The next step was to get a string on at a very low brace height - say no more than around 4 inches. I made up a string and managed to get it on, but it had a brace of 6". Rather than worry about rushing things, I took a good look at it on the tiller tree. At this brace height, the limbs came round to a nice arc, i.e. the reflex in the outer tips that caused so many illusions before had now disappeared at brace height (but are still present in the unbraced bow).

So far, so good. I ventured a few light pulls with a scale to see how it was coming along. I got to 20# at 12". Assuming even a gain of 3#/in., the bow would be headed to close to 70# @ 28 if it were done here (which it is not).

I slept on it for a couple of nights to decide next steps. I even dreamt about it! So far the red stripes are holding together, but I'll need to keep a careful watch...

I've been contemplating for some time how to handle the red streaks. There's one near the tip of the upper limb that runs off the side. I've planned that one with the intent of being able to scrape it clean away while narrowing the tips and bringing in the tiller.

Then there are the others in the main part of the upper limb, coming off the handle "fades" (not much of them really, as this will be a bend-through-handle bow) and into the mid limb. One is entirely within the confines of the limb; the other threatens to run off the side in this much-worked area. I've shot all the cracks through with CA glue and pray that they hold. If I can bring in the tiller before it blows, they'll all get a wrap of braided serving or hemp and another overlay of CA glue. 

While I intended these larger cracks to stay within the limb itself, layout of the bow and the eventual planing of wood brought them closer to the edge than I liked. This was truly a "dilemma" -- a choice between two paths. As my boss says, dilemmas are things to be managed, not solved. Layout in the other direction brought me to missing wood, punky soft spots, and too little thickness. Managed, indeed. (It also looks their proximity to the edge will prevent me from narrowing the limb any more than  it is, which means I'll probably end up with more mass at the intended draw weight, leading to a slightly less efficient bow. But I guess it's better to be less efficient than non-existent, no?)

Upon reflection, I realize that working on any of these long-term projects, whether they be bows or instruments, is a lot like building a relationships. Not necessarily a romantic one (though I suppose having a crush on an idea might blind one to the faults of the materials), but more of a long-term friendship. We may have ideas about what we'd like the other person/project to be, but the materials come with their own set of "personalities", kind of like a warped sense of humor or an annoying habit. 

Some of these can be seen from far off and are managed straight away: The wood has a knot, but I'll work around it. (That person has a tight work schedule, but I'll plan around it.) The grain twists to the side when I bend it like that, so I'll have to avoid bending it there. (That person reacts strangely when I mention that, so I'll have to avoid mentioning that thing.)  

On the other hand, like with a developing relationship, the passage of time and getting to know each other can reveal new flaws. (Like the red streaks in the stave.) Some are just plain unavoidable, so we try to manage. (I'm using CA glue to try and hold the wood together; by analogy, what should I use to hold my friends together when they start to fall apart?)

We can choose our materials and our friends, and some are probably better to just let go. But there are still some we choose to stick with regardless, even though we know we're destined for heartbreak and/or a nasty parting of ways. I'm just hoping I can hold this one together long enough to get to know it and put a proper patch on it. Funny how some things can't be fixed until they're close to breaking. That's truly twisted.

Speaking of twisted, the limbs on this stave aren't very well behaved. There's a slight propeller twist to both limbs. From one direction, the string looks perfectly centered down the handle; from another, both limbs look badly skewed off to one side. A reading of the distance from string to belly on either side of the bow show that they're equidistant, so the string *must* be centered, regardless of what my eyes say. The fact that the grain seems to be feathering off to one side doesn't help matters.

Some folks/things are just going to do what they're going to do, and we had better be okay with it. 

Next step in this friendship? Horn tip overlays and narrowing the tips. Wish me luck on navigating that red streak in the tip. Either I'll successfully cut it out or I'll be speeding this bow to its doom.