A Knotty Fool Draw

[PrimitiveTim]

haha get it? A bow with knots and its full draw is just foolish.

By nature I am not a perfectionist.  This being said, I realize that when making bows perfectionism is very important, especially when tillering.  So, I'm working on building that mindset of, "It HAS to be perfect!"

Not everything is finish finished but it's finished enough to shoot and have fun with.  Plus I like the rugged look 


When I split my hackberry stave I split it off a really nasty part from the rest of it, expecting to throw it in the burn pile and focus on the rest of the stave.  However, I saw a bow in it and I decided I would practice with it before I made a quality bow from the rest of the stave.  My reflection on this bow will be after the pictures.



Braced.


Here's the "fool" draw I was talking about.  It's tillered out to over 30" and to get a powerful shot you got to pull back that far.
I noticed after taking these pictures that it might help if I take some wood off of the upper and inner part of the top limb.  I'm happy with the bottom limb.


I heard it was cool to temper the belly of the bow... so one night while sitting around the fire with a buddy I roasted it, some areas more than others. lol.
I kept the handle simple since that wood feels so nice.


Before this one I made a mini bow to practice tillering.  I love this mini bow.  It's made from crepe myrtle and is so snappy.  It's got some attitude for sure. 

It's tillered out to about 18".  After I've had my fun with it I'll probably make some blunt arrows and a quiver for it and give it to some kid to terrorize the neighborhood.


It took some set but I'm ok with that since it indicates which side is back and which side is belly.  A kid might not get that right off the bat.


Back of the handle.  I left the bark on 


For the mini bow I made this slick little fishing arrow.... ya, I already broke it. lol



The string on hack bow is the same string I had on my last bow.  I'm very proud of that string because I made it from agave.

Aight, I got some questions for all the bros... I mean pros out there.

1.  Do I need to take the bark off?
      -It's slowly chipping off in places where it's being bent.  Otherwise I cannot simply peel it off with my hands.  Tempering it seemed to make it brittle and chip off easier

2.  When heat treating how important is it to get the entire limb evenly?

3.  Is it possible to do a flemish twist or infinite loop with fibers that are only like a foot and a half?
    -If it is I'll just look it up online and figure it out from there.  I attempted the flemish twist but it didn't work well.  More practice I guess.

4.  The arrows in the full draw pictures are brazilian pepper.  I kind of like it for arrows.  Has anyone else tried it before?




And as always, I love it when you guys destroy me with constructive criticism.  Bring it on!
In all seriousness, I would appreciate constructive criticism.  Sarcastic harshness is fine though... like if you had a bad day at work and you just want to say it like it is then go for it.

[TacticalFate]

Wa-howww, that's some bend  . What are the specs on the hackberry?

[PrimitiveTim]

Wa-howww, that's some bend  . What are the specs on the hackberry?

Pretty light @ 27" and heavy enough to fling an arrow @ 30".  Sorry, I don't have a scale to measure the draw weight.

[Traxx]

YOWZA!!!!!!

[burn em up chuck]

    very cool

           chuck

[randman]

Bend looks good on both of those. Bet they were good practice on getting wood to bend. Reality is that both of those are extremely thin limbs and the bows are probably very light thus being able to bend that extremely. The weight you re feeling when you pull 30" is called stacking and not really weight at all. If you look at the angle between the string and the tip of the bow you will see that you are well past 90 degrees. When your string angle hits 90, you've reached the wall as far as actual draw weight goes and any additional weight you fell by pulling farther is the resistance of the limb to being stretched endwise and is not in fact stored energy.
It may feel like the bow is really strong but it is just stacked. You got hooks on the end of those? Natives that made short bows sometimes used hook shaped nocks or small recurves because the next trait of a short bow being that the string (once it goes over 90 deg) will slide off. How you keepin yours on?
Great use of scrap material. If you're like me, you can't throw it away, got to experiment and practice with it.

[Weylin]

I recommend reading some literature about bow design and performance to get some more information about what you are ideally looking for in a bow. I don't say this to be dismissive, I think you're off to a great start. It just seems that from the little that you've said that you might have a few misconceptions on some basic stuff. There are great chapters in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible's 1 and 4 called "Bow Design and Performance" that will give you a great start and there are several other books that are definitely worth a read called The Bent Stick by Paul Comstock and Hunting the Osage Bow by Dean Torges. Also, Marc St. Louis (who is a regular on this site) wrote a very detailed chapter in the Traditional Bowyer's Bible (vol. 3 I think??) about heat treating. You will learn all you need to know to get started with that from his chapter.

[Newindian]

How long since this was cut

[toomanyknots]

Wicked. 

[PrimitiveTim]

@randman: Yes, the hackbow is very light.  I was sitting by a fire with it and a hatchet and kind of lost track of what I was doing and I was unsure about how the knots would change things.  I understand stacking and how at a point you really don't get much more energy as you pull it back but I'm not sure that it's 90 degrees.  When I was pulling it back to 30" I was getting the max speed out of the arrow.  I'll test it out tomorrow and check it but I'm not so sure that 90 is the magical angle at which no more stored energy is added.  I feel like it would just hit a wall but after 90 degrees it would start dropping.  Like if you graphed stored energy on an x-y plane where x degrees and y is stored energy it would rise like a normal exponential curve then at 90 degrees it would begin to level out but rise a little bit after that but not exponentially. Do you see what I'm saying?  I should bring a bow to school and ask my physics professor.  I bet she would know!

No hooks just grooves in the side where the string goes.  I'm sure it is stacking some but you out to see it shoot an arrow.  That arrow goes super fast.

How long since this was cut

I think it was cut in December and split soon after.


thanks for the compliments and other various expressions.

[Pappy]

Very cool,lots of bend in them bows. I love when a guy just goes at it without a worry in the world about what is supposed to work, just do it and see. to answer you question heat treating should be done even through the limb length for the best results,and yes I would remove the bark,it will dry and flake off anyway and could bring a splinter with it. Keep at it young man,looks like you are having a ball and that is what it's all about.

   Pappy

[blackhawk]

I like what pappy said and being on his end of the spectrum of encouragement....BUT....there is a lot of constructive criticism here(I don't even know where to begin) that can be said,and to fully explain it all would take chapter lengths of books to explain it all for you. Even if it was all written out for you here or in a book you read, you really still won't grasp much until you have more firsthand experience. Your probably not really feeling stack because its so light weight and has so much set that it has no resistance to pull it.

But hey...I like your attitude and just going at it with it being a fun mindset too   don't stop

[Hrothgar]

Impressive tiller.  Another option would be to call it a minature Meare Heath and wrap the entire bow with leather to keep the bark on. Primitive doesn't have to be complicated...

[Squirrelslayer]

cool mini bow you got there. how long is it? i have a maple log about 42" long think i could get one of thoose out of it? SS

[burchett.donald]

How long since this was cut

  I was thinking the same thing...Is that wood still green?