Simple Yellow Birch Flatbow

[Siyah Later]

A year ago I cut down a yellow birch tree thinking it was the best wood option I had (now I've discovered that I have access to sugar maple).  Yellow birch grows really straight and quite clean, so I got some nice staves out of the tree.  Since this is my first bow not built from a board, and I didn't know what to expect from yellow birch, I decided to make a nice safe bow.  It's 66" long, 2" wide at the fades and 1/2" at the nocks.  It is parallel to about mid-limb.  It pulls 40# at 28".  I decided to keep this bow really simple; no tip overlays, no handle lamination, no backing, not even an arrow shelf.  I also didn't do any heat bending, so the bow is a little twisted, but the string lines up through handle so it works fine.  As it turns out yellow birch bends real easy with dry heat, but I'll save that for when I post my other bows.  After putting some fancy finishes on a few bows it was kind of nice to make a bow that was just a single piece of wood.  The bow has 2-2.5" of string follow, but the stave was deflexed at least an inch to begin with, so it really didn't take too much set.  I've yet to have a yellow birch bow break on me, and I get the impression that it's more likely to take set than explode.  All things considered I think it's a fairly decent bow wood.  I'm going to try to make a yellow birch bow in the 50lb range next (all of my others have been 40# or less) so we'll see how it handles that.

Extra information and pictures are available here: diydudes.com/a-simple-yellow-birch-flatbow-bow-4/













And here's a quick video of the bow in action:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wPaxUKCykM

[bjrogg]

Nice looking bow you got a beautiful bend out of her.

[Stixnstones]

good lookin bow and cool vid. nice and simple.

[bradsmith2010]

nice bow,, contrats

[Knotty]

Looks very nice! Well done. 😉

[wizardgoat]

Nice bow, I hear yellow birch is the best of the birches. You'd probably get good results with heat treating the next one. Cheers

[loon]

Nice! Looks pretty

If you are not getting cut by fletching, I'd say it's proof enough that a shelf is really not necessary except to make it more center shot, but then could just make the handle narrower as well

would birch somehow be better at tension than maple? (since those reaction pine bows were backed with birch..)

[GB]

Good looking bow!  Nicely done.

[mikekeswick]

Nice! Looks pretty

If you are not getting cut by fletching, I'd say it's proof enough that a shelf is really not necessary except to make it more center shot, but then could just make the handle narrower as well

would birch somehow be better at tension than maple? (since those reaction pine bows were backed with birch..)

If you get cut by your fletches then your nocking point is too low. Simply raise it 1/8th at a time until you don't feel anything.

You got a loverly bend going on there. Well done. I'd also try heat treating it.

[Del the cat]

Yup, single piece of wood, that's what I like 
Sweet
Del

[Marc St Louis]

Very nice.  Keeping the bow long and wide was a good idea.  I made several Yellow Birch bows many years ago and most chrysalled over time which suggests that it is a bit low in elasticity and heat-treating won't help that

[Siyah Later]

Thanks for all the kind comments.  I'd definitely be interested in trying some heat treating on my next bow, especially since heat bending works so well with yellow birch.  However, like Marc St. Louis said it might negatively affect the longevity of the bow.  Only one way to find out!

[scp]

Nice work. I never had much luck with birch. Too many knots in my staves. I would have left the tips ticker, so that I have the option to flip the tips, if not making a proper recurve. I would definitely try heat treating the belly. How fast does it shoot?

[Siyah Later]

Nice work. I never had much luck with birch. Too many knots in my staves. I would have left the tips ticker, so that I have the option to flip the tips, if not making a proper recurve. I would definitely try heat treating the belly. How fast does it shoot?

I have no quantitative way of measuring speed at the moment, so I'm not really sure.  I've already made another bow with flipped tips since this one, so I'm not too worried about making this one faster.  I've got one ready for tillering that has about 3.5" of reflex, so I guess that one could be considered a proper recurve.  It's a really clean and straight stave so I'll see if I can hit 50# with it.

[PlanB]

I like your bow very much Siyah. I've had good luck with black birch bows so far, and I have yellow birch growing here which I'd like to try. I think you made good conservative design choices for the wood and a first trial at it. Good work!