Hanged Man Designs: 2014's first post

2014 – The next quarter.

Wow, my last post was a long time ago.

I haven’t had all that much time to work in the shop, but I have done some, I think I have about 5 knives that are up to the annoying and boring parts – getting out the scratches, and polishing them, and smoothing and finishing the handles.

I haven’t worked on the razor again – so I still don’t know if the handle is the easy part.

I made another Bloodwood bowl and discovered that the allergic reaction wasn’t a fluke the first time. I also made a bunch of other bowls, a few more full shaving sets, and tried some Antique Brass Bolt Action Pens (that I don’t like as much as the gold ones).

I also started a red oak board bow – thanks to www.poorfolkbows.com

I didn’t really know what I was getting into with this one, but way back in the day I loved archery and bows and had a Robin Hood hero issue. I’ll blame Errol Flynn for that. I haven’t owned too many bows. There was the old long bow that my parents found in a closet in an apartment many years ago that finally broke when I was playing with it in the cold – probably still useable somewhere with a little glue since the only thing that broke was the riser. Then a couple years later I bought a 35# recurve at Pennsic. It didn’t move with me from wherever I was, but stayed with my friend Dave, who used it and then I think traded it for a crossbow. And I haven’t had one since.

Now, I work for a Pueblo in the southwest, and am in charge of Big Game hunting (among other things) and think about hunting more than I ever did in the past. AND my daughter saw “Brave” or as she calls it “Disney-Pixar Brave” because branding is everything apparently. So I carved her a bow out of a 2x2, broke it, then rebuilt it as a takedown bow. It’s cute, and it works pretty well. She is still having a hard time coordinating everything, which is frustrating for me, but I think she’ll get the hang of it.

Anyway, I decided I wanted one too – and then looked at how much a decent longbow or recurve costs – I’m not really into compounds. And decided to make one instead.

After a little searching, not too much, I found the www.poorfolkbows.com tutorial. Now, I do have a few more tools than are used in the tutorial – a belt sander, a band and table saw, etc… But I’m still pretty much starting from scratch. I’ve ordered an adjustable Flemish string from www.3riversarchery.com , since the twisted silk that I tried snapped. No I know that (twisted silk cloth) isn’t a standard string, but I know they make silk strings, and that silk is very strong, and I had a spool of it lying around. I also ordered a luggage scale so that I can tiller the bow to the right weight; And built a tillering tree. And some car repair fiberglass, with which I backed the bow. So now I need to wait for all of that to arrive so that I can do the next step – the tillering. Right now it looks like it is pretty even, but I won’t know what the draw weight is at all until the scale comes in (lots cheaper than an actual bow scale – hope it works).