Monday 19 February 2018

Molle and Arrow Repairs

I'd been putting off working on the Molle' as I wan't sure what I'd find once I started chiselling out the splinter and I had various other odds and ends on the go.
Once I'd had a tidy up of the garage and spliced a laburnum footing onto a flight arrow that lost it's point on Sunday, I plucked up courage to start work.
The sap wood was V shallow where it was forming a splinter and as I dug down the heart wood was a bit rotten for a few mm depth. I've cleaned it out and I'll glue in a nice sliver of sapwood cut to a V section. In the pic you can see the heart wood is also showing along the ridge running down the centre.
I'll fiddle about this afternoon and see if I can get a nice bit of sapwood to fit, it can take a few attempts to get a nice match and a good fit. I may need to cut way a bit more to make the patch longer as a long thin patch gives a better glue line than a short fat one.

I've been testing the Yew flight bow to try and establish the maximum safe draw before it starts taking set. It had been drawn to about 25" on Sunday and had all night to recover. I laid it against a straight edge and measured between that and the belly (at the centre of the bow), the gap was 4mm. Then I put it on the tiller, pulled it to 27", took the string off and re measured... the gap had opened up to 12mm, but after about half an hour it had relaxed back to about 7mm. It will be interesting to see how it is tomorrow.
Update:- Yup, it's back to 4mm  :-)
I reckon that 27" is pretty much the maximum draw without it starting to take permanent set. It's a short bow and at 27" draw it looks like it's working hard and has real full compass look to it.

Oh, and here's a pic of the drawknife I bought off E-bay, with my one for comparison.
On top of the drawknife is the sanding block I made for arrow shafts. I ran my router along a couple of scraps of 2x1 , very handy.

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