Spring Day

It was 28 degrees C in Johannesburg today. My hottest day here yet. I think there may be something to this dry heat/ humidity thing. 28 degrees here seems a lot more tolerable.

I decided recently that I want to take up traditional archery. Not sure why, but its something I’ve always wanted to do. Past reasons for not getting around to it have included the fact that its a fairly expensive hobby. I realised a while a go that you can make a fairly decent old school bow yourself and that traditional archery’s a fairly big hobby. I never got around to it though, for one reason or another.

I’ve got a fairly large bee in my bonnet to finally actually do it all of a sudden. I think its from watching the History Channel and that survival show on Discovery. Theres something appealing about a good old fashion bow and arrow. It’s one of mankind’s oldest weapons and I have visions of stalking small game with one in the bush.

Whether or not that’ll happen I’ve gone ahead and started building my first bow.

I’ve decided to build a bamboo backed recurve bow. The problem I’ve run into already is the wood I’ll be using for the core. I had originally decided to use Ipe because that seems to be a good bow making wood and thats whats been used in the build along I’m following.

Its supposedly a popular wood for decking, but apparently not in inland areas. I’m not actually going to go into how frustrating it was trying to find decent timber or a supplier who would cut it down to a workable size for me. Suffice it to say that the problem is probably more my own impatience than anything else. I could have probably found what I was looking for if I’d phoned around and/ or waited a bit longer.

What I did ended up with is a cheap ass piece of Meranti and no idea if it’ll make a decent bow or stand up to being bonded to bamboo.

I still haven’t found a piece of bamboo though. Theres not much I can do except keep looking. I have a couple of idea’s where I might find some good sized planks though.

So I got my piece of wood and I shaped it with an electric planer. Not really the correct method ( I should have used a band saw but I don’t have one). I think I’ll be able to get it pretty near how it should be with a belt sander.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll find some bamboo and get my work done quickly, because I’m quite looking forward to building my bow.