How to create the handle grip of a flatbow

Hi,

Today I wanted to finish the handle section of my selfbow. This one piece bow is made from a maple tree, cut in 4 sections and dried in my dryer/hotbox for a few weeks.

But I ran into a slight problem, the handle section was too thin for a comfortable grip, so I had to come up with a new plan. From an other laminated bow project (unfortunately broken...:( ) I kept some wooden strips, that were already glued together. It's a 1,5 inch block of meranti and a thin strip of oak in the center.
It seemed quite easy to glue it onto the existing bow, but I don't have a beltsander, so it took me a lot of work to flatten out the surface manually.
After half an hour of sanding it was finally done and I glued on the wood. Here you see a picture of the handle with the fades already cut off:

Then I used my rasp to smoothen it for a comfortable grip. I have quite a rough rasp, so there were a lot of cuts and bumps in the wood that needed some sanding.

After an hour of intensive work the final grip looks like this:

It's a nice contrast between the light color of the bow and the brown layers. I'm going to create a Maori inspired tattoo design on the limbs with a black marker. If you want to see some pictures, please check back soon or subscribe to my blog.

Any questions or tips? Just let me know.

Kind regards, Mark Storm