Well, I just finished up building my Gramercy bowsaw kit. A while back I posted to a thread asking for wood suggestions and as a result another creeker (Dave Beauchesne) was nice enough to gift me piece of Pacific Yew. THANKS DAVE! Dave told me Yew was the traditional wood of English longbows so we figured if it was good enough for a long bow, it was a good enough for a bow saw. It's a cool wood - technically its a softwood and in someways it works very similarly to SYP, but its much harder and the density is more consistent. The species does have lots of little pin knots though so those could be a little difficult to work at times and tear out some, but overall it a nice wood to work by hand.

I also got to break in my Gramercy saw handle rasp on this piece, and it really is a wonderful rasp. Even though its bread and butter will be closed saw handles, it is very handy for fairing any sort round over. It just kinda hugs the curve.

Anyway, Archie England turned the handles for me out a of a piece of sycamore I had on hand and I made the toggle from that same piece. Archie and I did this a a joint project, I made the frame for his bowsaw, and he made the handles for mine. Worked out quite well, and we are both quite pleased with the results. I think I posted some pics from when I built his frame previously, but I'll tell him to post some finished pics of his (which is white oak with pecan handles) in this thread.

Finish is a couple coats of Watco Danish Oil, followed by amber shellac, and then wax.

Quick note about cutting the curves of both frames (w/o a bow saw). For Archie's, I roughed out the shaped with a coping saw before going at it with rasps - this worked well enough, but there was a fair bit of cleanup, fairing, and squaring to do, before even going about the final shaping. For the rough shaping on mine, I used the method of cutting saw kerfs to different depths (to match the curves) and then knocking out the waste with a chisel before rasping. I'm not sure if the later method was any faster, but it felt much more accurate, and was generally easier to do. If you plan to make one of these and don't already have a bowsaw or bandsaw, this method (kerf/chisel) is definitely the way to go.

Anyway here are the pics. Thanks for looking!
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