HHB D Bow

[Marc St Louis]

I was contacted a couple months ago by a member here that wanted me to make him a bow just like the one in this thread http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=5611.msg77588#msg77588.  This was a bow I had made years ago out of Elm for flight shooting and had re-done it a few years ago by shortening it and re-tillering the bow.  The only difference is he wanted the bow a bit longer and to pull between 65 and 70 lbs.  The original bow that I had made years ago was made out of Elm and I guess that stuck in my head so I pulled out one of the better Elm stave I had and made the bow.  I tillered the bow out and applied the finish, here is a picture of the bow. 



Then I reviewed his e-mail and saw that he wanted the bow out of HHB, crap.  Back to the drawing board.

I pulled out some HHB I had cut a few years ago, very nice wood and clean, and set to work.  Between hauling out my firewood and other things to do I finally finished the bow a few days ago.  Now with the Elm I had a bit of a hard time making weight with the bow coming out at the lower end of what he wanted but it was the opposite with the Ironwood.  Specs are, 62" long with shallow D section limbs 1 5/8" wide.  I kept the center of the bow fairly stiff with it working only a small amount.  The draw weight is a bit much for me, it pulls 70# @ 27", and I can't quite get it to full draw in the picture.  String tension is quite high and a FF string will be necessary for this bow.  Here's a few pics

[Danzn Bar]

Your full draws are picture perfect......
DBar

[Stick Bender]

Really like simplicity & strait foward design Beautiful bow !

[bradsmith2010]

whew that nice,, congrats on such a nice bow,, should make the new owner more than happy,, I love those bows that have such a Native look to them,, thanks for sharing

[Marc St Louis]

Thanks guys. 

It pulls about 75# @ 28" but it is pretty dry in my shop right now.  I suspect that this bow is going to be used on Moose since Nate lives in Moose country

[PatM]

Really nice. Twin sons of different mothers.

[Red Tailed Hawk]

Them moose are in trouble😉

[wizardgoat]

Those both look great, I really like those little flipped tips

[Del the cat]

Glad it's not just me that miss-reads E-mails!
Nice work of course!
Del

[Pappy]

Very nice work, love that HHB.
 Pappy

[PEARL DRUMS]

Wow, that's a lot of draw weight from that bow. Good work Marc.

[Badly Bent]

You always seem to get your bows bending so smoothly, nice work all around on this one.

[Aaron H]

Great bows Marc, what are your nock overlays

[---GUTSHOT--->]

That's a nice bow love the finish on it.

[joachimM]

Marc,
what strikes me in many of your bows is that they have so little width change throughout the entire working section. They only start to narrow markedly towards the tips. That means there's still a lot of mass in the outer limbs, which I'd think is pretty detrimental to speed, and yet you build about the fastest self bows.

Compared to my bows, your bows retain the heat-treated reflex in the outer limbs very well most of the time. Heat-treated pyramids with narrow outer limbs (narrow for high dry fire speed) tend to lose most of the heat-treated reflex I put in.
So my question: do you think your bows retain the reflex so well because the limbs stay so wide, and hence the strain is so well distributed over a wider area. The cost of extra mass clearly outweighing the gained benefits from the retained reflex?

thanks for your thoughts
Joachim