rough tillering

psy-ops

psy-ops

Joined
Sep 27, 1999
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Sunday, May 25th I harvested a 4" diameter oak tree.

cut it down to 62" piece, the split it with a sledge and 3 wedges.

following the excellent instructions off the website of Jon Jeffer.

Monday evening, I took my dexter fish splitter 14" panang style blade and tilled or hacked it down to roughly 1 3/4" x 2". took about 2 hours of intense work.

as you do the tillering process you quickly understand why and how a bow works.

I have pictures but cannot post.

I tried an Adze purchased from a sculpture supply house which was not very effective and an USMC bolo machete 10" blade x 1/4" thick carbon blade with a convex grind. let me say the a flat ground blade will till better because of the geometry. this is why machetes and other flat ground blades are great for wood working because it can get right close the the wood as you come down to till(shave)it away. With the convex style the grind is steep so the bevel hits the wood and bounces it away without biting into the wood.

now I am interested in checking out how a large Busse or a Swamp rat might fair.

Now the bow has to cure for month or so. Then to the final carving...
 
Sounds great! Could you post a link to the instructions?

I've used a reprofiled SwampRat Battle Rat for this type of thing, and it worked quite well.
 
it is an awesome site and I have read tons of material.

good luck

how and why did you re-pofile your swamp rat?
 
Will oak make a good bow. I have been wondering how hard it would be to make a simple long bow. In simple, I mean no recurve or anything fancy such as that. I would guess it is difficult enough to get both sides equal so that the bow shoots effectively and one limb isn't over stressed.

Sure would like to hear how the project comes out and how well it shoots. Here in southern Louisiana I don't have some of the trees that you often hear about being used for bows, but the one thing we do have is plenty of small oaks.
 
I will let everyone know how it turns out.

In the link that is posted Jon Jeffer says oak makes a great bow. It carves extremely well, I used an 1/8" thick blade and hacked it down. So far oak works but I am hoping to have a working bow to hunt with this fall.
 
The Traditional Bowyer's Bible, Volume 2 mentions a good list of woods that make good bows. Oak is among them. I don't have the book in front of me, but there are many that work, including pine species.

Making a bow is on my list of "things to do someday."
 
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