Bowyering
Well, finally got some bowyering going. The glue-up of the Mongol-gone-Scythian bow is pretty much a disaster. The bamboo was way too thick and I'm convinced that even roughed into a bow-like shape it won't be able to be floor tillered (ie. able to be bent before stringing), let alone actually even strung. The core pieces might have been too thick as well. Oh well, this is all a learning experience. If I had it to do over, I probably would've gone with fiberglass for the back and belly since I now know I can go to the wood shop to make all the mess of shaping it. So, in lieu of working on the probably unusable waste of time and effort, I started work on tillering my Red Oak Holmgaard replica. The Holmgaard bow is a type of prehistoric European bow that dates back to about 8000 years ago. Much study has gone into the design of this bow and it has been found to be an incredibly advanced design and tends to make a very fast hard-hitting bow. We'll see how well mine comes out. I'll post pics when it's farther along. Suffice it to say the Holmgaard has an usually shaped profile. If you don't know bows that well it may not be obvious, however if you do know anything about bows you'll immediately be struck by how odd it looks at full draw. It also has a really weird shape when viewed from the front versus the side.