This is a little project I've been goofing around with: A Seneca Native American style bow with scalloped sides. I saw this in Traditional Bowyer's Bible, volume 2, p.61. I had a hickory board lying around, and this seemed just the thing. Truth be told, this is a complete lark, and I have no idea what I'm doing messing around with those scallops. Given the nature of the board (described below), this may also be destined for failure. BUT, the fun is in the journey, right? ;-)
The stave is lumber yard hickory or pecan, biased ringed, and mostly sapwood. The bow is 53" nock to nock. Limbs are 1" wide (1 1/4" at the peaks of the scallops), and started 5/8" thick at the center. It was quickly tapered 1/4" on the bandsaw just outside the handle section to the tips. I marked it out for the lower limb to be 1" shorter than the top limb, so the arrow pass is closer to geographic center.
Scallops were laid out simply on two criteria:
1) There was a very small knot or occlusion in the back. I wanted one scallop laid out so that the peak would line up with this area for maximum strength.
2) I wanted 4 scallops per limb.
Not very scientific!
Ends were recurved initially with dry heat by bending over a thick dowel, which resulted in more of a "hinge" rather than a smooth curve, as well as an indentation on the back where the dowel had been. They were later steam bent over a 12" diameter form, giving them their better appearance but resulting in lifted fibers on the belly of one of the curves. (This has subsequently been filled with super glue and sanded. I'll keep an eye on this -- if it looks like it might lift, I may have to do a sinew wrap.)
The biggest tricks so far have been 1) getting the limbs aligned and 2) getting the limbs to bend where I want.:
1) The original board had a small amount of heartwood running down the edge of one side, which is now part of the belly. As a result, it seems slightly stronger on that side, causing the limbs to bend toward the scalloped side.
2) The 1/4" taper created a pretty even bend straight away, though with way too much bending through the handle. I've been weakening the mid limbs to try and move the bending away from the handle, which was starting to take a set. I made a small heat correction to the handle to try and undo a little of the set (seems to have worked), and now it's getting a more even bend, though still more at the center than I'd like. Interestingly, based on the set it has taken so far, it is starting to look very similar to the sketch in TBB2.
So far I've pulled it to 12 1/2", where it read #35. Extracting this using a straight line slope for the force/draw curve would put this around #70 @ 26", give or take. Looks like there's still a little wiggle-room for fixing the tiller and still getting a hunting-weight bow. We'll see...
