lemonade-iboshoot

This will be a somewhat involved page. The story of "Lemonade" is, I think, one of my more interesting ones. I tried to lay up another flatbow, like Slowpoke, but they layup went bad. Out of the disaster I salvaged a funny little bow I tentatively called "Little Stinker". However, as the tale unfolds, you'll see how the disaster became a great learning experience with a positive outcome and how the bow becameearned the name Lemonade.

March 21:

I'm getting awfully tired of these "good news, bad news" stories, but here goes. This bow is another disaster, and it puzzles me. There is a large area midway up one front limb that obviously got no glue, or the glue didn't adhere. I'd have sworn that I used way too much glue and was careful with coverage... certainly enough so that having an area this large missed seems unlikely. It could have had grease on the glass, or I could just have missed. Anyway, here is a pic:

You can see where there simply was no lamination. There is no recovery from this error. As you can see, the non-glued area extends about halfway across the limb. I will try slicing the entire layup in half and seeing if I can get a nice kids bow out of the half that's good.

The good news part of the story is that I appear to have done a terrific job on feathering in the ends of the fades and getting the line even:

And so the journey continues... I'm truly amazed that I got a nice bow the first time, to be followed by two disasters. (The bow before this one had some real screwups and blew up.) Maybe the time will be the charm... Thing that gets me is losing the two nice riser pieces, and not being able to tiller them out and see how the formula worked.

racklefratz!

Later - March 21:

I cut off the limb width that had no problem and ended up with a very skinny longbow. After rough shaping and believe me, minimal shaping, I have what I think may be the skinniest kind of, sort of, maybe Hill style bow around. It went from being a wide, thin limb to pretty much a deep core limb. The limb width is .669... with a depth of .333. Did I say it's skinny? Anyway, with all that, I cut it off to 64" and it ended up tillering not too badly and coming in at 12@20 or 17@25. Now, here's the kicker... hope you're ready... "Little Stinker" shoots like who laid the chunk! I need to get it on a chrono in daylight, but it shoots Slowpokes 1516's flatter than Slowpoke. I used a few arrows getting the feel of it, then proceeded to do some fun shooting at all of the distances in my yard... including putting 10 out of 11 arrows solidly into the body of my standing bear at 30 yards... with 5 kills. That's good for me at that distance, and that's with a nock but no reference point on the riser. Needless to say, i didn't put a shelf on. It'll be shot off the hand. I think the poor thing looks silly, but Ann thinks it's pretty (the riser) and says, "I can draw that one!". She can, too. If she ever wants to shoot, unlikely, she'll have a bow, or if a kid comes by I have a good bow on hand.

Nice zebrawood riser... looks good from that angle, but gets weird when you turn the bow... there's no shaping to the riser at all. The limb is skinny and so is the riser! The shape is straight, all the way to the ends.

Up till now, I have always avoided any "open" shoot, i.e. where compounds and trad were thrown in together. However, a recent shoot announcement to the effect that there would be a state championship IBO (International Bowhunters Organization) shoot at the Cedar River Bowhunters range and that there would be a separate trad course intrigued me. Saturday was the championship shoot. I couldn't get down for that. Sunday (today) was an open shoot day, but it dawned damp and drizzly and I was still feeling kind of down from the bow failure yesterday, even though I had salvaged a rather silly looking skinny 17# bow out it. But Ann said, "Let's go," so down we went.

Anyway, what with the bow building problems of the previous day as background, and a dismal looking morning, you can see I wasn't in an uplifted mood. However, I did decide that I'd take the new little bow and if the courses permitted, maybe shoot one round with it. The trip down took an hour and I got more and more tempted to try the little bow in a real RD shoot. When we got there, I decided to start right out with it, in case the rain started. As things developed, it never did really rain... just the typical Northwest "heavy air". I spent three and a half hours shooting round after round after round, about 80 targets, and never did take the the little bow back to the car. I returned damp, but not wet, and absolutely elated with the bow...

Yesterday afternoon, I was tentatively calling this bow "Little Stinker". However, after today, it is not going to have to put up with that name. Someone said, "You had a lemon, but you made lemonade." With its performance yesterday afternoon and today, instead, this bow will be called "Lemonade". As the rest of this page will show, it's earned it...

First shot of the day..	This kind of scrawny looking bear was a victim...
and a boar...	and a lion...
I pulled the arrow, before I decided I wanted a picture. It wsn't a very good shot in any event, but this club had some targets I'd never seen before and I wanted to show them...	Now this takes courage... taking on a velociraptor with a 17# bow... but we prevailed!
Not so good on this skunk, but again, it was a target I hadn't seen before...	This is more like it!
This was a high point. The shot was set up for compounds.. no trad stake.. and was taken from up on an elevated platform, at about 35 yards. First shot was in the throat, second I dropped it down a hair and put it right in the chest.	This baboon is definitely not happy!
And this was my favorite shot of the day... both with the bow and with the camera. The shot was downhill, again about 30 yards, and if you look really, really closely, you'll see a yellow fletching dot just above the leg!

I think I can honestly say that I would be happy to take this bow out on any reasonably layed out 3D course I've been on in the past four years. I didn't feel that I was giving up anything because of it's light weight. The lesson I learned from this was to pay attention not only to hte layup formula, but to the ration of limb width to core depth. Even a skinny bow can perform well if the core depth ratio is sufficient to give it some substance and cast. I'm going to be experimenting further with this factor.

Not only did I have a great time discovering the abilities of this little bow, but the shoot itself was great. The trad shooting stakes were very well and reasonably placed. Several times I came up on compound groups. They were invariably super friendly, glad to see something different and happy to let us shoot through. The only unfortunate element was the lack of trad shooters taking advantage of the opportunity. I met only two others. I was told that this club plans to set up future "open" shoots this same way, and I'll be watching for them. They put on a great time.