Here’s a project I’ve been working on for the last few months. My girlfriend wanted to try out traditional archery, so I decided she needed a proper kit to call her own.
The bow is bamboo backed eastern red cedar with a fiberglass takedown sleeve pulling 30# at 25”. I floor tillered the ERC before I fit the bamboo, which I thinned as much as possible before glue up, which is noticeably less than 1/16”in between the nodes. The nocks are blood wood for like a traditional horn nock. They are a bit deeper than necessary to the having the intent to carve them and wanted plenty of room for my imagination, but could never get a good idea for what I wanted to do, so I opted to carved in grooves. Which can always be tweaked later. The bow starts out just under 1” wide in the handle area remaining parrallel 12” from center tapering to 3/4” about 12” from the nocks where it tapers to 3/8” at the nocks. The depth started out just under 1” at the handle tapering to 5/8” midlimb to 3/8” at the nocks. Then was adjusted from there for tiller. The handle is laced raw kangaroo leather and the tags decorated with hand carved beads of pink ivory, maple burl, and leopard wood. The feathers are pheasant feathers dyed blue and painted with acrylic paint to mimic blue jay feathers. The bow was super low mass before the takedown sleeve. It felt like the sleeve added as much mass as the bow itself. It’s still very light though.
The quiver was painted with acrylic paint with a multi floral rose vine and flowers. The bow sleeves attached to the quiver are made from from tanned Burmese python skins backed with cotton cloth, which is glued on with titebond III. The snake skins are pretty delicate without a backing.
The arrows are 5/16” POC fletched with pheasant feathers, tied down with red silk thread and created with pained in vines. They average 400gr, so a little heavy for the bow but they shoot pretty decent.
Overall I am very happy with the way this kit turned out. I’m hoping she can get lots of use out of it and get it all well broken in.
Thanks for looking,
Kyle
