Oh Lord, The Rings

Noob tip:  The back of the bow should consist of a single growth ring.  The reason for this is because where growth rings touch is actually where they will want to split when forced to bend.  Google 'making self bows' or do some research on bow failure and you will understand.

I am getting ahead of myself.  As I told you in my previous post, I have a crack developing in my first bow due to the direction of the grain/growth rings on the bow.  Here is a cross section of that board that I sawed off when I started it.

End piece from previous bow.

As you can see the rings go right off of the back and the belly of the board.  The ring in the upper left of the board is where I am having failure.  Probably should not have used this board, but hey, it was bow 1 and now I know better.  

My two new boards are very different:

1 x 2 

1 x 3

As you can see the rings go more or less parallel to the back and belly of the board.  What I want to do is use a single ring as the back of my bow.  To do this; you choose a ring that is intact down the entire length of the board and you cut away all the partial rings above it.  It means your bow will have a slight convex back and will not be flat like a sawn board.  It will look more like a natural piece of log with the bark removed.

As you can see in the 1 x 3 above, there are some 'circles' in the pattern.  These are the separations of the growth rings. The darker areas are transition rings, and the lighter stuff is more solid wood.

Having never done this before I decided to use the 10" on the end of this board to see how one goes about 'chasing the ring'.

 I picked this point as the high point and thought I would work it down even with the first solid ring you can see in the cross section.

Lesson 1: examine the side of the board for grain direction as well.  Turns out this point is NOT the high point like I thought. It is actually part of the ring under the one I wanted as the outer ring.

I was happily cutting away when something didn't seem right with the way the light and dark areas were coming off. Before I figured it out I had cut through that ring and had found the next one. DOH!  Thankfully I was only using the first 10" to practice this.  Anyways I ended up working the wood down to this point.

I also learned that a box plane is not the correct tool for the job. It is what I had on hand but made the finer cuts very difficult.  I need to find a draw knife. I did look this week, but Lowe's and Home Depot are woefully deficient in woodworking hand tools.  And the staff (school age kids) have no clue what I am talking about.  So my projects are on hold until I can get my hands on one that is serviceable.  The antique store near where I work has a rusted up 100 year old knife for $25.  I really don't want to have to restore that one to working order.

draw knife from image search

Stay tuned.  It may be a few days, but once I get the draw knife I'll be rocking an rolling.