You're not hijacking at all, I'll answer the questions the best I can. It is 50" ntn which is overbuilt for his 15" draw length but I figured that I could pike it, reflex it and heat treat it later as he gets stronger so it might last a few years. I'm not sure what the weight is, I just kept telling him to see if he could draw it and then I'd go back and take a little more wood off and try again until he could handle it. My guess is that it's somewhere between 5-10# at 15". As for wood to make your own I'm not sure what to tell you for georgia. I found the sapling really easy to work and tiller. It was my first sapling bow. So I would recommend that for what it's worth. Hopefully someone from the SE will chime in and point you in the right direction.
the hand wrap is John Strunk's style. he uses a filed down golf tee for the arrow rest. that's glued to the side of the bow and then the leather is wrapped around that using barge cement to form it around the tee. It works great, I do it on almost all of my bows.