Hey guys,
I posted a bow I finished in January yesterday, it was part of an attempt to build a bow for my uncle. My uncle asked me to build him a bow last June and I kept failing, either causing a bow to break or ended up lightweight and not tillered well, which resulted in the Plan E that I shared yesterday. After Plan E, I tried to make him a bow out of an Osage stave but it turns out I'm horrible at chasing rings and after the amount of time I spent on the project, I decided to put that project on hold and I made a new bow out of ash. I chased a ring on this one too because I bought it seasoned with the bark on and I damaged the ring underneath the inner bark while trying to get it off. I backed it with rawhide because I removed the rings with a series of rasps which allowed me to more successfully chase rings than the other methods I tried but it was slow and it left rasp marks. Trying to sand out the marks didn't work and I was afraid that I would go down into the next layer so I backed it. I have realized since that a file can get those rasp marks out better than 60 grit sandpaper but regardless there are better methods to chase rings. Anyway, my uncle's instructions were to 'do whatever's easiest'. Well, considering that I failed to make the flatbow that seems to be the most popular type of natural material bow right now, I decided to do whatever I had found was easiest. I felt that the easiest bow I've ever built was an English Longbow. So I laid out this bow as if I was going to build an English Longbow. It was here that I feel I made my first big mistake. I decided to try to get more weight out of the design by making the bow thicker not wider. The widest width is at the handle, which is 1 1/4", but I made the handle thickness hover a little over 1 1/6", thinking of dimensions of historic bows that I read about. I had my misgivings about it but I decided to try it anyway and see what happens. The tips' width was 1/2" and the thickness was 1/2". So I roughed out this ELB, making it with a rounded cross section, backed it, and floor tillered till it could bend 5". When I tillered the bow, I used my tillering gizmo a lot and by the time I pulled the bow to 15", it was ready to go to full brace. However, the bow didn't want to bend in a D-bow tiller that I was shooting for and I was afraid of removing wood from the handle, which I thought was problem and I decided this was probably going to be another screw-up so I mine as well just keep going to see what happens. I tillered it out to 29" when it was still 70" ttt, the tillering gizmo didn't scratch the limbs anywhere which I thought was good but its weight was at only 39 lbs. Great, I thought sarcastically. Having spent 21 hours on this bow already, I decided to shorten it to see what happened. I shortened it twice but on the second time I shortened it more than I intended because I measured from the nocks instead of the tips. I measured after shortening it the second time, thinking that the bow looked awfully short. It was 62' ttt. I shrugged my shoulders and thought, 'let's see what happens'. I tillered it to 28" and it weighed 59 lbs. I finally made a bow that was at least 55 lbs at 28", which is what my uncle asked for. So I shot it fifty times and I really liked it, at 10 yards it consistently penetrates 2-3" more than my 53 lb Rudderbows Hickory ELB. I measure set by tying a piece of string between the nocks and then measure the distance between the bow's handle and the string. It was 2 5/8", it was 1 7/8" when it was at 70" ttt. Last Friday my uncle came over and shot 16 arrows out of it and he liked it. So I'm not sure if this a good bow or not but I thought I would share anyway to get your input. For me its hard not to feel proud of a bow I make that survives 50 or more arrows but making better bows is my goal.
Thanks,
Aaron
