A juniper flat bow, Swiss cheese style

At a time of year when I usually bring home a lot of bow wood from the forest, my son brings home colds from kindergarten. So, with a cold and a fever, I can finally get some work done on the website since I'm to knackered to be out in the barn making bows or in the forest harvesting wood. Updating the website here and there, little things.

Thought I might share a few pictures of my latest. It's juniper flatbow (I do love those!). This one is a bit unique. First, it's got eight holes straight through it. Old, dead twigs that fell out as I worked the bow. I've made bows with a hole or two in them before, but not this many. I doesn't seem to matter at all, at least not with juniper. So if you're out looking for juniper staves, you really should not worry that much if a given trunk has a few dead twigs in it. Second, the stave was a little too thin (I thought) to make a fully thick handle. So I laminated the handle with a slat of birch (white) and a slat of heartwood from swedish whitbeam (dark brown). I think it looks pretty cool.

The bow is about 68 inches nock to nock. Water buffalo horn overlays at the nocks. 37 pounds to 27,5 inches. (I have pulled in several times all the way to 29 inches, but I'm better safe than sorry). I still have a few hundred pulls to go before I'm completely confident the bow will hold up – 400 pulls is just halfway, in my opinion. Almost no string follow whatsoever. Tell me what you think!