a while back i wanted to make my friend and his sister a bow, so i made them a PVC one which he lost intrest in after 5 muinets but his little sister loved it and when she came round the other day i let her play around with some other bows i have made. even the crossbow that im working on. anyway after an hour i asked if she wanted to try making one. from wood. she wanted to give it a go.
i picked up a broom handle that was 2" longer than she was tall. i know a broom handle isn't the best bow wood but i wanted to give it another go as it had worked for me a few months ago. the way i taught her was that i would work on one limb and she would do the same on the other limb. we roughed it out in 30 nmins and it had a round back and a flat belly. we got it in the tiller but there was a knot hidden in one limb which caused a limb to fail. we laughed about it and she wen't back to playing with the bows.
after she left i looked at the remains and decided that i would make it into a takedown, the break happened mid-limb so i put the broken piece on the fire wood pile and then cut the rest off at the handle. im going to atempt to make some take-down sleves and make a new limb from another broom handle. but for now it will sit in the corner of un-finnished bows until i make the new limb. i took some pics of her making the bow.
picture of the "stave"
measuring the handle/fades
using the half round rasp for the tips.
we used the round rasp to get down to thickness then used the surform rasp to get the thicknes on the limb
bow on the tiller before it broke.
i will continue this post when i get round to making a replacement limb
