I sort of disappeared, stuff was piling up on me... I'll spare the details.We got a lot done on the older mini-motorhome and finally used it for an annual weekend with most of Diana's siblings and their spouses. She was one of eight kids. Most live within about 50 miles. Every year we gather for a weekend camp out at one of her brother's little place. They are all good people.
Each year her brother tries to come up with some one special activity. Once it was general target shooting (all of us shoot). Another year it was shooting muzzle loaders. Once it was hatchet throwing. Another time it was killing clay pigeons. Once it was carving a walking stick from found wood.
This year it was hand making a bow and arrow all by hand with a few simple hand tools. It was a pretty interesting and fun experience. Most of the other guys just cut a round stick (less than 1" sapling). They used knives to peel off the bark and cut notches at the end and called it done. That is just not my style.
I had cut an about 3" straight black locust sapling so I could rive the bow blank out of one half of it. It went fairly well... I shaped 80% of it using a broad-hatchet almost all of that was taking fairly small chips. I also used a sharp block plane and a spoke-shave. A ShopSmith would have been nice.
I joked once that I had a ShopSmith hidden in the back of the RV and her brother said "I would have been more surprised if you had said that you didn't have one with you". I need to do some more work on it to thin it more, I'm too old to be shooting a bow with a 600 pound pull.
By the time I got it pulled back enough to shoot the arrow my drawing hand was shaking so bad that I couldn't have hit a 10 acre field. On the up side I did beat everybody else when shooting for distance. They also awarded me "Best of show". I did make one really crappy arrow but I took along a 5 pack of store bought arrows which I claimed to have pulled from an "Arrow-wood tree" that I located in his woods.
They used my shavings pile to start the morning fire for the next two days.
It was a great weekend. I'll post a couple of bow pictures soon.
