2nd bow- one for my wife

[Rufledt]

This is the second bow I made with a friend of mine who wanted to get into archery.  We made this bow along with one for him (posted here: http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,33519.0.html ).  My wife always wanted me to make her a bow, so my friend and I decided to make a couple at the same time for double the practice/fun.  This one is the same dimensions as the other from a 1x2 oak board.  71" ntn, 6" stiff handle section, 6" stiff tips.  Center 2' (except handle) full 1.5" and straight taper to 1/2" tips.  It pulls about 30# @28, but my wife's draw length is only about 24.5.  We made both bows full length and the better of the 2 would be his since i can always make my wife another, shorter bow.  Enough talk, here's some pictures!

Here's a shot of the handle.  We narrowed it quite a bit for comfort.  it's a bit too narrow for my tastes, but she likes it.


Here's some of the tips.  I narrowed them quite a bit to try to bump the speed up for such a low weight bow.  It still has a little hand shock which might be because of extra wood where the limb fades to tips.  I erred on the side of too much wood.  Better to have it a little stronger than too weak. 



Braced:
 
The top limb is on the left, and it bends just slightly more than the other (about 1/3" more tip deflection at full draw).

Full draw before finishing:


It settled into about 2" of set.  The board had a bit of deflex in it, but if used the other way (with reflex) the grain wasn't as good.  Better sluggish than broken, at least that's what we figured.  Also, admittedly, we rushed the tillering a lot on this one, plus i shot it a lot.  It's been a while since i've had a wood bow (sold/gave away the ones I made years ago), and my draw length is about 29.5", so no doubt I over stressed it quite a bit.  It's finished in tried and true boiled linseed oil, 2 coats so far, probobly more soon.

Tomorrow we plan on doing a little target practice, maybe i'll be able to get a picture of my wife enjoying it!  She's shot it at a  range a couple times and the only problem she has is the low cast.  I'm guessing it's because of a mix of my way too heavy arrows, way overbuilt string (the only one I had laying around, i think 16 strand dacron), the bow design, excecution by noobs, and her low draw length.  Did i miss anything?    I have some dacron coming, so i'll make a lighter string, and we have to get her some arrows.  When she shot carbon arrows it shot a lot faster than the 650 grain wood ones, obviously, but could be better.  I guess i'll have to make her another bow at some point!

We still have 2 boards left in the process of making bows.  We got 4 thinking something might break, but neither did.  I'm using one (with the densest early/late ratio) to make a heavier one for me, and the other one is reserved for my friend's girlfriend.  She wants it just as long as ours, but her draw length is short like my wife's.  Would it work to make a 72" bow in the manner of the 80 incher in TBBv4?  If that was 80" and 28" draw, then 72" at 24" draw should be similar in proportion, right?  This would also be much lighter draw weight than the 80 incher.  would that work? 
Thanks!

[lesken2011]

Nice job. It looks like you have that red oak figured out.

[ksnow]

Nice looking bow, its great to see the women getting involved. 

[Rufledt]

Thanks!  I haven't quite figured out red oak, it looks like the handle is starting to come off a little.  The wood there is 3/4" thick and not narrowed to less than 1" (this is about 20-25# draw at my wife's length) so i'm gonna try to put some super glue in the joint and give it a cord wrapped handle tomorrow.  I think even if the handle popped off it wouldn't break, but i'd rather not chance it. I'm thinking of getting some TBIII glue.  I used TBII and i'm starting to think my bottle is getting a bit weak.  It used to be pretty strong, but I was doing some glue joint strength tests with some dovetailed pine and it was pretty strong, but the glue joint broke before the wood, contrary to some test results I've read about TBIII.

What do you guys use for gluing on risers?  My friend's bow was done at the same time (the same way) but the handle wasn't narrowed, so there's more surface area for the joint which might explain why his isn't showing any issues.  His bow is a bit heavier, though at 35#. 

We did some holiday target shooting at his place today, here are some pics!

Here's my wife at full draw:

You can see how this bow is a bit too long for her, but we can both shoot it which is a plus.  If she uses really light arrows (like the ones she's shooting) it has enough cast to go through a wood fence and force us to walk around and search for it, or embed the arrow in 3/4 oak plywood, despite her low draw length.

You can see she's wearing a gardening glove on her left hand.  Even with my arrows with the fletching all nice for off the hand shooting, her hand gets scraped.  We're gonna have to find her a better bow glove (i.e. not one for gardening)

Here's my friend shooting his bow:

I think he's fully addicted.  His girlfriend is, too.  She wouldn't put the bow down!  She probobly shot 3x more arrows than any of us.  her bow is next on the list.

This is an action shot of me, total luck of the camera here:

you can see the arrow going around the bow.  we got a few action shots, but that's the only one where the bow is still in motion. 

It was fun, and we definitely need to do more of this.  Also, the target we used is pure recycling.  It's a box i used for moving, packed full of wood shavings I have from bow/furniture making, and I mean PACKED full.  It's 3 projects worth of hand plane shavings (I really needed to clean out my shop and empty the giant garbage can full of shavings).  behind that is 1/4 plywood, and behind that is a solid wall of 2x4's.  Also, in the center of the wood shavings is a GRE 2010 prep book.  It's really thick and now completely useless since the GRE exam is different now.  We never got any arrows to go more than 3" deep in the 14" deep box, so it should be good enough.  We also had a sheet of 3/4" ply behind it, but we obviously need a bigger one. 

[mikekeswick]

TTB 3 will work fine for risers. It more about the design than anything else regarding risers popping off.
At a 24.5 inch draw length I wouldn't make the bow much more than 60 inches - so you don't have to get into funky tiller profiles.
If there is a problem with handshock it is normally something to do with the tiller.
Anyway good job on making those bows.....now go and make some more!

[Rufledt]

now go and make some more!

Yes, sir!

60 inches is about what I was thinking for the next bow, but she wants one long like my wife's.  i was thinking the funky tiller profile was a way to give her a long bow without too much of an efficiency hit, since that design (the 80 incher) was essentially a shorter bow with a long stiff handle and it worked pretty well.  Do you think there's a better design for a short draw longbow?  This was prettymuch the only one I could find for a too-long bow.  It also says in the book that it's pretty low stress, which is good because the peice of oak I have for this isn't as dense.  One of these days I'm gonna have to get some wood that isn't red oak...

[Rufledt]

Finally tried my hand at wrapping a handle: 


It's golden yellow dacron and it looks a bit nicer than the artificial sinew handle wrap I did on something else.  I also made a new string (not pictured) that's a good deal lighter to try to help out the low cast issue when my wife shoots it.