Ironbark mollegabet from downunder

[ozy clint]

I finished tillering a mollegabet yesterday. It's made from an ironbark stave I cut some years ago. I left the back as nature made it and the limbs are mostly sapwood. Top limb is on the right and is longer than the bottom limb. It's an asymmetric bow. Turned out to be 64#@27"amo 66" NTN. I haven't shaped the handle or the levers yet.

Let me know what you think of the tiller. Brace is 6"  this is my 2nd bow. I'm just happy it's not a 2 piece.

[ozy clint]

Looking at the photo it looks like the bottom limb is bending more. I didn't notice that yesterday.

[Roy from Pa]

Yes, just a tad more, Clint.

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[ozy clint]

That's a neat trick. How do you draw an ellipse like that?

[dbeaver]

you can do it on the computer paint app or sometimes when i just have my phone ill go to the photo editor feature and insert text pout the number "0" in and manipulate its size and angle to fit up under the bow.
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[KenH]

Agood techniqueis to mark your tillering board with a series of lines parallel to the clamp at the top, and about 7-10 cm apart.   That helps you see the uneven-ness of the limbs tiller...

[Kirkll]

What is the purpose for putting those huge tip overlays on the belly side of the limb tips? Never seen anything like that before....

[Longcruise]

What is the purpose for putting those huge tip overlays on the belly side of the limb tips? Never seen anything like that before....

You need to see the frontal profile to understand that bow.  Maybe clint will post one up.  I'd like to see it too.

[ozy clint]

Agood techniqueis to mark your tillering board with a series of lines parallel to the clamp at the top, and about 7-10 cm apart.   That helps you see the uneven-ness of the limbs tiller...

I have done that. I've got parallel lines an inch apart on the board, they are faded a lot though. I should remark them.

[ozy clint]

What is the purpose for putting those huge tip overlays on the belly side of the limb tips? Never seen anything like that before....

It's a Mollegabet bow.  They have static levers on the limb tips.
I haven't shaped the handle or the levers yet as I wanted to get it tillered to full draw before putting effort into doing such. There is a lot of mass to come off the levers yet.

[ozy clint]

Belly

[ozy clint]

Back

[ozy clint]

Profile

[wooddamon1]

Pretty cool build! Looks like a few scrapes could come off that right limb, from the middle to the lever. Looking forward to seeing it finished up.

[KenH]

Originally those tip levers -- and the handle -- were all one piece, carved from the stave like the rest of the bow.

Think of those tip levers as Asiatic siyahs which are inline not reflexed.  They keep tip weight to a minimum and still provid power.   

The great bowyer revelation 'back in the day' six or eight thousand years ago, was that you could angle those levers forward quite a lot and get the same power from a physically shorter bow.  That led to the development in the North of what we today call the Finno-Ugric Two-Wood bow -- a flat bow with angled levers glued on.

[Kirkll]

Interesting..... Makes a lot more sense now... Thanks

[ozy clint]

Well I'm not sure what's happened.

I haven't done anything to it since the last pics but now it's dropped a ton of draw weight. Now it's 47#@27" AMO.

The bottom limb has a huge hinge too.
This is nowhere near the target weight now.

Moving on to the next stave I think.

[ozy clint]

For the avoidance of confusion, there are no overlays or anything on this bow. It is a homogeneous piece of wood. The sapwood is pale, the heartwood is red.

[Brian from GA]

Well I'm not sure what's happened.

I haven't done anything to it since the last pics but now it's dropped a ton of draw weight. Now it's 47#@27" AMO.

The bottom limb has a huge hinge too.
This is nowhere near the target weight now.

Moving on to the next stave I think.

If that wood is anything like hickory, it's picking up moisture like a sponge and losing draw weight because the MC is going up.  If I'm making hickory self bows or bamboo backed bows, I put the stave in a box with a low wattage bulb when I'm not working it to help keep the moisture driven out. You could probably dry it back out pretty easy, or even heat treat it to pick back up the weight.  I'm not sure it will help with a hinge, but it will give you a bit more wiggle room to tiller around it.

[KenH]

Thanks Clint.   My bad!   I didn't realize that that wood was so drastically colored between sapwood and heart wood.  I thinkyou've done a great job so far.