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It now looks kind of like a bow.
I still need to cut out the sight window and sand the contours of the riser. Cut the string nocks and shape the tips. Sand down the edges of the limbs and work on the wedge contours. Start checking and working on the tiller. And a whole lot of finish sanding before applying a finish to it.
And then I can clean up my mess and put the tools up for a while.
Next we tap the holes for the inserts. This is a 1/2-12NC tap.
Add some epoxy to the threads and 1/4″ alignment pins and set them in place. Now we wait for the epoxy to cure.
Well, the dye didn’t penetrate the Maple strip very good but I can take care of that later with an India ink pen.
Now a trip to the bandsaw and sander.
Presto. A fat boomerang.
Went out to try calling in a coyote or other critter today and swap out a couple of trail cameras. I didn’t get any takers on the free meal offering so I wandered the woods looking for shed antlers. Strike two. If the bucks have shed their antlers they hid them.
I put out a brand new Wildgame trail camera two months ago. It has great video but the trigger is so sensitive I think a bug would set it off. The LED lights are also flickering and dimming. Within the past week it almost filled a 16GB card and completely drained the batteries four days ago. I have it in a baggie of desiccant to see if it might have gotten damp.
A old time tree stand that’s seen better days.
And a view of the woods beyond it.
After soaking up the Cactus Juice I wrap the wood in a thick layer of aluminum foil and bake it in a toaster oven for 2 hrs at 200-210*.
After cooling down and unwrapping. The resin is cured hard and the rough edges are very sharp. They are ready to be sanded down.
My Jatoba riser wood was delivered this morning so I laid out the riser shape on it.
Then marked the cut line for the accent stripes. I’m going to use two strips of Maple with a black dyed strip sandwiched between them.
Meanwhile I have another project in the works. I bought a knife blade blank and am going to put stabilized Spalted Elm scales on it. They are in the vacuum chamber soaking up Cactus Juice and will stay there overnight and then get baked tomorrow.
The tips are sanded down to rough shape and all that is left cutting the string nocks and final shaping of them.
I also set up the limb drilling jig and drilled the pin and bolt holes in the limbs. I probably quadruple checked this before even getting the drill bit chucked up.  This is not a time to goof up.
Decided to go with deer antler tips on a piece of Tiger Maple.
Cutting and sanding down some antler from a long dead Texas deer. Now my shop stinks.
I picked up a new belt yesterday at Home Depot so I was able to rough out limb #2. Now to drill the limb for the mounting hardware and add some antler tip overlays. I haven’t decided to use deer or Caribou antler.
Looks a whole lot like the first one.
#2 is on the left. I really like these Flame Maple veneers.
I decided I needed to go for a woods walk and swap out my trail camera cards. These have been out since mid December. I got to the first camera, a real cheapie, shut it off and swapped the card. Turned it back on to check the battery voltage and everything was fine.
Second camera is a new Wildgame camera and this is it’s first outing. Battery is still good, swapped the cards, and headed for camera three.
Number three is the oldest of the trio and has been in these woods for probably three years. I mounted it a little higher than normal because I had one camera drown here last year.
Got home to check the videos.
For some reason #1 had no videos. I’ll have to check it next outing.
Camera #2 had 1017 videos on it. Very few had animals in them. The Wildgame cameras have very good photo and video quality but their sensors are way too sensitive. I think a mosquito would trigger it. LOTS of videos of woods. Wind, rain, fog, snow, anything and everything triggered it. Right around two weeks ago the night videos started getting dark. The IR LEDS started flickering and fading out over the next week. I need to bring it home and put it in a baggie of dessicant. Maybe it got wet????
Camera #3. Old reliable. Somehow it got reset to take pictures, not videos. The videos are much better quality than the pictures. I wound up with 2238 mostly grainy pictures of deer, squirrels, and a few coyotes. For some reason it would detect something and then take a picture every ten seconds for a couple of hours. Maybe it is time to retire this one.
Here’s a few shots of the woods. It was a good day to be out.
I spotted this tree a couple of months ago and showed it to my 8 year old granddaughter and explained what bird did this. She thought it was neat. We have lots of Pileated Woodpeckers around this area and when they go to work it sounds like someone is beating the tree with a hammer.
This gives an idea of the size. The hollowed out area is around ten feet high.
