I've been spending too much time in the mill, 7 days this week... last week too, but I plan to get out after the holiday and do some of what you're doing. I want to cover some more of the ground on these local state game lands. I have lots to see and learn here yet. I imagine my favorite selfbow giving me a playful, anxious look as I walk by, and disappointed when I leave it behind. We need to get out.
Is that a white ash you're sitting on in the last picture? It's too bad they're all dying. There are few left clinging precariously to life here. I would have made a few more ash bows, but any trees that I see now still alive are obviously infected, and the way those borers work, and the way the tree dies, I just don't trust the wood for selfbows.
I like how David coordinated and finessed the width and depth of that bow in the area of the handle and dips... good flow, perfectly functional, and aestetically pleasing... expertly done.
The bow is "springy"....very lively and powerful. Those who say that hickory is at all sluggish have never shot a well made hickory selfbow.
