Hei, Cipriano & PA´s Team!
I´m proudly presenting my “BamBullet” bow as a candidate for Primitive Archer´s Bow of the Month in Backed Bow Category.
First, I´m born and living in Riihimäki, southern Finland, ca. 70 km north from our capital Helsinki, which is down on the south coast of Finland. And, for those who are not so good in geography, Finland locates in the northwest corner of Europe, between Sweden and Russia.
I ended up to archery about nine years ago and started directly shooting with longbows without any interest on modern gadgets. First I bought a couple of commercial glassfibered flatbows but soon I started to make bows myself, some self bows but more often laminating different woods together and most recently I´ve tried bamboo also.
I´ve finished this BamBullet bow this March more or less from “scrap” materials. The belly is about 9 mm (3/8”) thick slice from bulletwood (a.k.a. massarunduba) terrace board or plank. To get some deflex in the handle area I glued tapered hickory slice, ca. 15 mm (5/8”) on the back side of it. The back of the bow is common bamboo selected from a bunch of 4 cm (1,5”) wide slices dedicated to be used as decorative fenches in gardens. I used Urac-185 to glue the parts together, wrapped with clear packing tape and squeezed together by rubber bands from bicyckle wheels. Finally I forced ca. 10 cm (4”) reflex on the limbs and then left the package to settle down for a couple of days.
The finalizing of the bow, tillering, didn´t require too much, more or less bandsawing the limbs and then rounding the corners and the bow was born! It´s close 173 cm (68”) between string grooves and ca. 2,5 cm (1”) wide and deep in the handle area. Along the fades the limbs are first broadening to 35 mm (1 3/8”) and from there gradually tapering to 11 mm (7/16”) at tips. Tip overlays are pieces of bulletwood and the arrow strike plate is bamboo. The handle is first shaped with few pieces from an old leather belt glued both on bow´s back and belly side. The bow was protected by six layers of Danish Oil. Finally I wrapped the handle with a piece of leather from a leather skirt bought from some flea market and stitched it with red dacron. The string is one-looped red and yellow dacron, 16 strands.
The bow draws 71 lbs @ 28”, which is also quite the same as my draw length. Compared to my hickory backed ELB style bows at similar weight this BamBullet shoots faster. Partly because of this speed, I think, tiny occasional mistakes in my release are more easily visible at the target but looks like I´m learning to master this BamBullet bow and I´ll use it in the coming summer´s field archery competitions.
Terveisin,
Esa Lehtorinne
