New work in progress

This is a bow that I have been working on for several weeks now in my spare time, its modelled on the spanish/maltese crossbows, but a bit stubbier. I really liked the slender stocks, I only wish my skills were a bit sharper with inlaying and brass work. I decided to keep it simple though, and made my best effort to make it a solid usable bow. I was aiming for something that suited my needs, aka target shooting for fun, so its not a replica in any way. It is however what I had wanted, and that seemed enough for me, I enjoyed the making of it a lot!

Its a 100-110# prod from Slobow, I was satisfied with the purchase, it seems well finished and tillered. The tiller itself is red oak, with brass lockplates. The nut is delrin, as I have a lengthy rod of that material. I really liked how the nut turned out, its more like the originals than any other I had made. Someday I'll have to try antler, when I have a lathe. I know the tickler isn't traditional in regards to spanish crossbows of the kind I was mimicing, but it does the job and doesn't look to shabby to my eye. Next time I make another crossbow I intend to make it more faithful to the maltese crossbows posted on this site. those ones are definately some sleek looking things!

I still need to work on the finish, such as polishing the brass more to remove residual scratches, and perhaps some fine tuning of the prods angle, it seems to me to have a hair too much string drag. I had some issues with inlaying the brass, I think I need to work on my chisel work. I filled in a couple spaces with wood glue mixed with oak dust, if you dont look too close it isn't horribly noticable, but I find myself getting more perfectionistic the more I work at it, and it bugged me a lot when I realized I had trimmed out too much wood initially. I also learned a lot about brass work here, such as you don't just grab a metal bit and go to town unless you want to watch that drill bit suck itself into the work... After some googling I realized I had needed to flatten the cutting edge for brass. Yay for learning the hard way!









Sorry about the blurry pics, I'm still trying to get used to my new camera.

Nice!

What sort of wood is that??? Beech???

Nice job!! Clean, elegant, attractive, nice looking brass work (metal work is still so much work for me), looks like a real shooter. And great about Slowbows, I will be ordering from him from now on. Nice guy too.

Dane

@Flippy

The wood is plain old red oak, I used two sections so that I could chisel out the trigger channel and drill out the nut socket. (Drilling out a socket by hand sure isn't easy, its too easy to get off center.) Chiseling the trigger channel was a lot easier this way than trying to work through from bottom to top. I like red oak, despite its nuances, it turns out looking so nice when its finished up.

@stoneagebowyer

Thanks! I had some issues with the brass, and I still need to put some finishing touches on it, but I like it better than steel. I got the tickler from him too, that needs some work too, to make it all nice and shiny.

Ah, I see you're from the States...

Many unseen wood textures from european aspect...

Here is something that had not occured to me, but I have placed a gaffa pin behind the nut, I positioned it to bear against the wood, rather than the brass lockplates. Do you guys reinforce these pins with anything, considering the load it bears when using the gaffa? I used the positioning of the pin as compared to many maltese bows, roughly 2 inches or a bit less behind the back of the nut socket. Im just waiting on tax refund to buy one of Darkwood Armory's goatsfoot levers. Im just hoping the draw length isn't too much for the lever at 8 inches.