This May Be My Last Post... unless you can help me

As some of my readers know, I am in the midst of moving my home and shop.
The area we are moving to does not support the email address I have been using to access the Blogger forums: guy.taylor@sbcglobal.net I get this address through having ATT as my phone and internet service connection and they don't cover the new place.
I am trying to add a new email address (greenmanarrows@gmail.com) to the system and Google, the owner of the Blogger system, is just fighting me every step of the way. The system has even gone so far as to tell me that I can not use a gmail address with a Google service. Pretty freakin' odd since gmail is Google.

Please... if anyone has an answer for what I can do I would so very much appreciate it.
I've tried emailing Google but their system is so big and self-important that everything gets refered to help pages... and we all know how useful those can be. There appears to be no way to actually contact Google. Pretty outstanding customer service there.

Working Harder - Not Smarter... wait... what?

I'm putting together some Flemish string boards to have available for sale at upcoming events I'll be at. At the SCA event, Great Western War in October I'll be giving ongoing Flemish bowstring demonstrations in my booth. Having the string board available for folks to purchase only makes sense.
The back of these boards has a bit of helpful information printed on paper and laminated to the board. When I did the lamination a bit of ink smeared on the paper, but it wasn't too bad so I went ahead and did all of them. When I brushed on the first coat of protective finish a little more ink smeared, it didn't look good but I went ahead and did all of them.
Well, afterwards I looked at these things and decided I'd need to start all over again, they looked horrible. I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to sand the finish and paper off with some 60 grit sandpaper and a vibratory sander.

It turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.
The lamination glue and the finish I used over the paper combined to gum up the sandpaper into unusability very quickly.

 

 

Trying to figure out how I was going to get this stuff taken off I decided to try the trusty Shinto Rasp. Bob's your uncle, we got going in the right direction.

 

The Shinto Rasp took things down pretty fast and without the blade getting gummed up. The long length of the rasp let me use it almost like a surface plane and I had no difficulties keeping the board flat with no spots where the tool dug into the wood.
From this point it was quick work to use a cabinet scraper for a final touch-up before hitting the surface with the vibrating sander.

Yeah, the idea is to work smarter, not harder. But occasionally when things don't work out as you want them to you've got to do a little bit more work to get things headed back in the right direction.

Lessons learned here are:
When the ink smears... STOP!
The Shinto Rasp rocks!



Happy archery, and Flemish bowstring making!

Arrow Sale at GreenmanArchery.com

Ok, folks. I've got some stock arrows that I'm tired of looking at! Let's get these puppies to some new homes.

I'm offering 10% off the listed price on arrows that I have already made. These are good arrows I just want to get them out so I can make room for some new designs.
You can see these arrows by going to the Greenman Archery web page and clicking on the Available Items button on the left side.
Or, just go straight to the Available Items page in one click.

Here is a sample of just some of the available arrows, please see the page for individual specs...

Hapy Archery and thanks for looking!

Well... That Didn't Work!

We had our monthly Pasadena Gathering today.
This is a once a month gathering of friends and interested individuals who gather at the Pasadena Roving Archers range in Pasadena, CA to work on bowmaking and other primitive-type skills.
Today we had some new attendees wanting to make a bow so we got them set up and going. All three women made great strides before their schedules called them away. I suspect that they'll be able to finish their bows the next time they visit.

Last night I was loading things to take into my truck and found an almost completed bow that I didn't recognize at all. I don't know who gave it to me or even what kind of wood it was made from. It looked to be really close to finished so I tossed it into the truck to see what I could do with it.
Once I got started on the bow at the range I rounded all the corners before bending the limbs and then put it on Ken's tillering tree to see how things looked. One limb was stronger than the other so I went at it with a cabinet scraper to bring it into line.
A couple more trips to the tiller tree, some more scraping with the scraper and it wasn't looking too bad. Weight was going to be low, maybe 20-25# so I thought I'd either give it away or hang on to it for a loaner.
While I was exercising the bow by pulling it to draw and letting it back down it suddenly went BANG and I got whacked across the forehead, nose, and mouth with flying wood pieces.
The first thing I asked when a couple guys turned around was, "am I bleeding?"
When you get whacked so suddenly like that you can't always tell just how hard you got hit so I wanted to know if I should start worrying or not.
Turns out that I was fine so we looked at the bow. It broke right on the back of the bow and the only thing we can figure is that it just wasn't bow wood. We never did figure out what kind of wood it really was.

O, well. It was still a great day spent with great people doing a great activity.
And since I've still got both eyes and all my teeth after getting whacked by the broken bow... it's all good!

Happy Archery!

Future Bow

At the Western States Traditional Rendezvous shoot a few weeks ago in Petaluma, CA I managed to pick up a couple freshly cut yew logs from Dan of Wapiti Archery who came down from Oregon.
Ken Villars did a splitting demo for interested parties using one of the logs so I came home with two freshly split staves and one log.

Ken graciously offered to cut the log on his bandsaw so I passed it to him at the following Pasadena gathering and should be getting the resulting staves back on the 15th at the next gathering.

Looking for something to do this past Saturday at an SCA event I decided to debark one of the split staves and reduce the width a bit to speed the drying.
I don't normally get to work green wood because the balance of the wood I get has already dried. Wow, was it ever a pleasure to work this yew!

I recently got a neat little drawknife at an old tool swapmeet and this is the first chance I've had to use it. This new drawknife turned out to be a wonderful tool for gently removing the stave's bark without going too deep and gouging into the sapwood.
For serious wood removal I'll stick with the full size drawknife but when it gets to the delicate stuff this new guy is Bob's uncle.

As is common when I do work like this at an SCA event, I fielded a lot of questions about what I was doing. Folks are used to seeing event participants sew, weave, spin yarn, and do other somewhat portable activities. But setting up the shavehorse and then making a big mess like I did always brings folks over to chat.

Today I gave the freshly exposed back of the stave a coat of polyurethane to keep the wood from losing moisture too quickly. I'll put the stave in my custom hotbox (the interior of my truck's shell) and keep an eye on it.
I'm looking forward to working with this wood and I hope my skills are up to the task.

Many thanks to Fayme for taking a break from face painting and teddy bear juggling to get these pictures of me. My hands were otherwise occupied.

Happy Archery!

Stir Fry

This may seem as if it would be a better post for Greenman Cooking. But despite the title, it's not really about cooking, as you'll see...

We all go through changes in our lives for what we do for recreation.

Activities that we are passionate about today may get put back into the closet as our lives progress and change.

For example, I used to do a lot of fishing. When I was in high school I worked in a fishing tackle and bait store on the Huntington Beach, CA pier. I spent a lot of hours out on that pier fishing with friends and also fished at other local spots as opportunities presented themselves. I even began wrapping my own fishing rods, an activity that I kept up on for many years.

Pictured are a stand-up rod for ocean fishing and a fly rod for lakes and streams. I made both of these.

Back when I was married my wife and I used to head down to a quiet spot in Newport Harbor to fish on some evenings. Along the Balboa Peninsula there are some little beaches that are quiet and offer an opportunity for a relaxing evening along with the chance to catch some really nice fish.
I’ve caught some beautiful spotfin croaker in the particular spot we went to and have just generally enjoyed the time spent there.

We decided one day that we’d go down to the spot for an evening’s worth of fishing so I called a local tackle shop to see if they had a particular live bait that I liked to use. They did so we drove down to pick up a container of live ghost shrimp.

Arriving at the tackle shop we walked in just after two women and a man. They were probably in their early twenties and were gathering firewood and snacks for an evening at the beach. I told the fellow behind the counter that I’d called about the ghost shrimp and he got a carton of them out of the refrigerator for me.
I opened up the container to see the size of the shrimp and make sure that they were all alive and in good condition. One of the young women happened to be standing nearby and she curiously peered into the carton to see what was in it. Upon seeing them she asked, “What are those?”
“These are ghost shrimp,” I said.
“What do you use them for?”
Now that was a dangerous question to ask me but I still don’t know what made me give her the reply I did:
“Stir fry.”

Upon her exclamation of surprise I proceeded to explain that you can’t find these shrimp in the regular grocery store, you needed to get them from a reputable tackle shop like this one. That was the only way you’d be assured that they were fresh and tasty.

At this point I glanced up at the fellow behind the counter and saw that he was trying to eat his fist to keep from laughing uncontrollably.

The young woman had now taken the carton of shrimp from my hand and was poking them with her finger while the other woman looked on. I told her to be careful as the shrimp do have pincers that are large enough to give a little surprise.

The guy eating his fist had finally recovered enough to ask her to give me back the shrimp so I could buy them and get back to making dinner. She did so and he rang up my sale.

Walking across the parking lot to my truck my wife said, “You know, you can go to hell for things like that."

Possibly, but it’ll sure be a fun ride along the way.

Happy stories!

Brave - Youth Archery Tournament

If you follow archery news you probably know by now that the movies Hunger Games and Brave have increased interest in archery a hundredfold. Many clubs have seen a huge increase in attendance at their introductory classes. Some clubs have even had to turn people away due to their classes being filled to capacity.

The Pasadena Roving Archers has teamed up with Disney/Pixar to hold a Brave themed archery tournament for youths. This event will be held on June 10 at Central Park in Pasadena, CA. The flyer below gives more details.

The PaleoPlanet gang has been invited by the club to attend and give demonstrations on making things archery. We'll be working on bows, arrows, bowstrings, and anything else we can think of that will be appropriate and fun to watch.

If you're in the area by all means stop by to see the fun and say, "Hi."