Mantra Red Oak board bow for contest - Build along

[Matt S.]

See if I made a bow like this, I'd have ta make 2, cause I wouldn't wanna give it away for nothing... 

That's pretty much what I'm doing 

[RyanY]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the comments. I won't be posting more till I can work on it during the weekend. Please feel free to comment on the design or ask any questions you may have.

[peshikthe]

i love build alongs, ive seen ryoons work he can as well as others here teach me much, keep em coming.

[RyanY]

Let me now take you on a journey into murky waters. Trapping a bow.  After careful inspection of the growth ring orientation I decided to take a chance and trap the bow. The back at the handle was taken to 1 1/4" with a straight taper to 1" at mid limb which continued till the line could go no further due to the eiffel tower shaped outer limbs.




After trapping I scrape the sharp edges and sand them down as I normally do with the edges on the back of the bow. Still at the floor tillering stage, the bow lost quite a bit of strength from the trapping and, with some more scraping, was ready for the tiller tree.


You can see that the bow was bending straight out of the handle which is bad on such a long bow. I marked about 7-8" away from the handle so I knew not to scrape there.

One thing to keep in mind with red oak is how it reacts to being scraped. Because the growth rings are so porous they can create low spots on the bow if not careful and result in dangerous hinges. Sometimes blatant run outs on the belly are hard to avoid when scraping. Just make sure to be careful around the area and if you notice that it gets low, DON'T TOUCH IT!!! Here is an example of what you might see on the belly.


Here are a few pics of the tiller developing.



I'm pretty happy with the tiller at this point but there are a few things I'm worried about. Still a little too much bend near the handle, there is some unevenness between where I've been trying to get the limbs to work and the tips and inner limb which have been fairly untouched, and I'm getting pretty close to full draw. Hopefully I'll have enough time to work these things out. As always, please comment, criticize or ask any questions you may have. Thanks for looking. 

[randman]

Looks like it'll be a great bow. To my barely trained eye it looks like a hinge starting on the left about a third up from the tip and a slight flat spot mid limb on the right.
It doesn't look to me like it's bending too much right out of the handle though but that is something you can probably observe better as you pull it on the tree than we can see from a still pic.

[Matt S.]

I don't use a scraper, I'm a surform and rasp kind of guy, and red oak responds great to these two methods of wood removal. No the same with a recent maple bow I made, it resisted the surform and wanted to leave hills and valleys the whole way through.

If you're having trouble with using a scraper on your red oak board I suggest giving the surform a try.

ryoon, I'm very interested to see how your bow turns out. Have to scope out the competition 

[RyanY]

randman, I'd say you have a pretty good eye if you can see those. I think what you see as a hinge is actually caused by the increased thickness in the tip area. If you try and look at the back only the bend is smooth to the tip. As for the flat spot in the right limb, that area does nee more work. Thanks for the help. 

Matt S, I may need to break out the rasp. The draw knife is always my first choice though but red oak definitely isn't the best for scraping. I'll hopefully finish it this weekend and get it shooting. Thanks. 

[skyarrow]

Thanx for doing this ryoon I'm still a noob at building bows iv only made 2 so far and my first a redoak started checking because I chose poorly on the board but it still lived and shoots so I'm going to learn alot from this challenge and your build along. I'm hoping to work on mine after work today iv chosen a hard one to build but I want to challenge myself ttyl



Sterling

[dbb]

Very interesting build,i think i will make one from the hickory i just bought.
I think randman was tricked by the angle of the last pic,all but that one is straight on.
The last is slightly from right and together with the increased thickness it tricks the eye a bit.

/Mikael

[wvarcher]

looks like its coming along nicely.  I really like it when u guys pick up a piece of red oak and show us what can be done with it.  I stopped worrying about finding some osage and yew to make a bow with because red oak makes a great bow.

[toomanyknots]

When long enough and wide enough (at the fades) it can make a very nice bow.

[threeundr]

  I am watching with great interest. This may be old hat to some but I am a newbie! I love these build alongs.

                                              Thanks, Leonard

[RyanY]

Thanks guys. I'm not the best at doing very detailed build alongs but I know that they help me the most and it's nice when you can find one for a specific style bow.

So I made a string for it and at first brace I could see that one limb was slightly stronger than the other. Pulling it on the tree showed that both limbs had the same bend but differences in strength. A little scraping brought them to be equal but I ended up slightly lower than my goal of 45#@28". Here is the braced and full draw pics with final tiller.



All that was left is to narrow the tips and do some finishing work. With this style bow you want the tips to be as narrow as they can be with safety and bend ever so slightly. It can often only be seen looking down the limb at an angle at brace. Getting this slight bend means there is the least possible mass for the width. Because I could already see I had this bend fairly close to the tips, I only narrowed them for the last six inches using my belt sander. They are now exactly 1/4" tapering to 1/2", 6" from the tips.


Thats about all the technical stuff. Everything else will be shaping the handle, rounding edges and sanding the bow down for finishing. OH! Also the bow took very little set. Just unbraced set is slightly under 1 1/4" and relaxed set stands at slightly less than 3/4". Just shows how important design is for making a low stressed bow. I'll post pics of the finished bow once it's done. Thanks for following. Questions, comments, criticisms, all welcome. 

[wvarcher]

Tiller looks great!  Any guesses how fast the bow will shoot?  I'm thinking 155fps plus with a 12 strand dacron string and 450 grain arrows.   

[RyanY]

wvarcher, I really have no idea how fast it'll be. After shooting it in and measuring the weight again it'll probably come in just under 40# after finishing. I was shooting a 500 grain arrow and it seemed quite fast even compared to my heavier bows. I'm thinking about going to gander mountain to test it out. Also we have to remember that speed will greatly depend on the shooting style and release. Even though it feels fast I think being under weight will kill me but oh well. The bow is a pleasure to shoot and will make whoever receives it happy (I hope).