Sorry, sorry again, for this time-delayed report about the making of the prod for the crossbow. The prod is almost ready, maybe within the next 2 weeks I´ll go to do the final tillering.

The final shaping of the horn- lam is a delicious job to do, cause while drying horn-lams are more or less twisting sidewards. The job to do is to end up with a straight, symetrically prod- lengthwise, in width and in thickness with oval cross- sections. The cross- section of the recurves should be rectangular. I don´t use any machine for this job, machines are nothing else but very fast hand- tools, too fast for delicious jobs, no machine can replace the feeling I got from shaping and tillering thousands of bows by my own hands.

That´s how the lam looked after glueing- no recurves added, not shaped

A rough shaping has been done, the recurves had been spliced in, time for final shaping.

The draw- knife is my favourite tool for shaping the horn- lam

My wife will use the horn- splinters as a fertilizer in our garden. The white lines on the back are cutted through glue- lines.

.......done- isn´t it looking elegant?

I´ve even bent it some 5″ for to check an even tiller of the 2 limbs- if you do bend a horn- lam the first time, it´s a horrible experience, cracks and cracks, that´s the usual sound………when I bent my first horn bow years ago, my nerves were done.

Next volume is dealing with the sinew- wrapping and sinew- backing of the horn- prod

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