This is a brief description on how to make a Osage Static Recurve.
First get your stave of choice and get it bending at heavy floor tiller at your desired length. Leave the tips about 15% to 20% wider than finished and about 5/8 thick for Osage. Rig up your wife's bean pot and bring the wood tip and water up to a low boil. Let her go for about 25 Min. Have your Jig, clamps and anything else you need handy and set up before hand.
Tip: dry fit your clamp up so you don't waste time twisting on a clamp.
You need to make the bend quickly and in one smooth motion after taking it out of the water.
Clamp the band from the jig on the bow's limb...push an clamp. Sight down the limb and make sure you are aligned with the grip. Here's the first tip in my simple Jig with strapping to support the bend.
Let the bow cool completely for at least 24 hours. I here some folks hit them with a heat gun as well. I havn't tried that on yet...
Once their dry you can begin reduction fore and aft of the actual bend. This will reduce mass in the tips.
Here's what you should have at this stage..
Now..lets tiller the bow just as we would any other bow and get to a heavy brace height. Don't worry to much if it's not perfect at this point. You will most likely have to fix it anyhoo...
Once your satisfied with how it looks you now have to decide if you want to sinew the bow...I did. The first thing we need to do is to "tooth" the back of the bow to let the sinew get a good bond. Yeah I know you spent all that time chasing that ring...LOL Just grit yer teeth and go at it. I use a somewhat dull hacksaw blade/blades. Hold them at 90 deg to the bow limb and scrape grooves in the surface of the back
Spend the time needed to do a good job on this. Re-doing or patching a sinew bow is a pain in the a@@ if it lets go.
I then take 100 grit paper and LIGHTLY remove the fuzz left from the grooving.
You need to de-grease oily woods to insure a good bond on the wood with the sinew. I generally don my rubber gloves and use acetone generously until I no longer get any color. Let it flash off real good and your ready to go.
"Size" the back of the bow by wiping a couple of layers of the warm hide glue on the back of the bow and let it gel up pretty good in preparation for the sinew.
Hopefully at this point you have already processed your sinew of choice into small smooth fibers. I leave a "tag end" to hold the bundles together until I lay them on the bow.Again...spend the time required to do a good job on the sinew as it will look better and will require less in the way of "touch ups".
Prepare the area you are going to do this in as it can be messy (but worth it). Lay the bow on a form and force reflex into the bow. I use a good stout nylon thread across the mid point in the bow. You can trim it flush later. The malted beverage is optional...
Take your hide glue(or knox) and add just enough warm water to cover and put it on your heat source. I use the warmer from an old coffee pot...works just right. Bring up the glue to temp of 110-120 deg or there abouts. The glue should be about the consistency or thin syrup.
Take your sinew bundle and dip it in another pot of WARM water until it becomes limp..
Squeeze out the water and swish it around in the hide glue to completely cover the strands. Squeeze out most of the glue and lay it on the bow. Remove the "tag end" with a sharp scissors and smooth it down with a old ball point pen barrel. Run a line down the center of your bow very slightly overlapping the bundles.
Continue to lay bundles staggered with the seams on the first line you did until you cover the entire bow. Use short pieces as needed to fill in gaps as required.
After the first course is down you can either add another, or let it dry some. I prefer to do it all at once because of the mess.
Note: you can and some folk do run the sinew all the way up the static to the tip. However in my experience all you are doing is adding unneeded weight to the tips. The sinew cannot do work on the non bending feature.
Now set your bow in a cool dark area and forget about it for about a month depending on how much you piled on...
At the end of that time it should be hard, dry and not dent with a fingernail. You can (I do) sand the back with 60 grit to smooth it up and rub some hide glue on it with your finger to smooth out the fuzz...now finish tillering add overlays and such and put on your skins...
Hope this will help someone although it was brief and limited. If anyone has questions please feel free to PM me if you wish.
Take care..
Take care.. Sparky
The Bowsite
The Stickbow
Primative Archer
