Hey folks this is my first post here, came over from r/bowyer to share a design I've been working on. I've always loved the idea of a takedown bow hunting kit, but I could never bring myself to use takedown sleeves. I've been shooting bendy handles so long that a stiff handle feels lifeless to me, and I don't view metal sleeves as being truly primitive. Of course I don't judge those who like them, but I needed to come up with something different to meet my own personal needs and preferences. The design I ended up using turned out to have several advantages over the sleeve system. It's also a bit simpler to make especially with primitive tools. So I figured it was worth sharing with you here. I'm calling it the splinter joint bow.
The design is pretty simple. Each limb gets its own wet formed rawhide sleeve joint, and when they slide together the overlapping triangular limb sections combine their stiffnesses to equal the stiffness of a parallel limb. Of course the triangles aren't perfect, so the handle stiffness is somewhat higher than it would be in a parallel limb bow. You can tiller around that issue, or just let it be stiffer and give yourself some extra limb length.
Those tapered overlaps grant the best advantage of this design; a narrowed grip. The bow above is 1.5" wide, but it has an arrow pass which is only .75" wide. This is only a minor advantage for a narrow bow, but once width reaches 1.7" you usually need a narrower stiffened handle. However with this design don't have to worry about that.
The length of the overlap region is an important variable. It impacts the overall size of the takedown package, as well as grip comfort and the amount of binding you need on your outer facing joint. I tend to like 8" of overlap for a bow with average hunting specs, I find that to be the sweet spot personally. But for very wide bows it might be good to increase the overlap for more comfort (example below). With an 8" overlap my min takedown length is DL + 4" which is equivalent to the length you'd end up with using a takedown sleeve. Of course the bow itself will be on the shorter side (DL * 2) so that's something to consider.
One issue with this design is that friction between the two overlapping sections can cause creaking, this is solved easily by adding thin rawhide to each of the contact points. Wax is a short term alternative. Here's a closeup of the joints prior to glueing and wrapping.
I haven't noticed creaking on all my takedown bows, so they might not all need the rawhide buffer. The board bow below has no rawhide and it's completely silent.
All these bows are in the 45#-50# range, but a friend of mine made one at 60# with no issue. He used rawhide instead of cord to provide tension to the joint. I think potentially the most interesting implication of this design is the ability to make very wide, very short bows without a narrowed and stiffened grip section. This design can technically achieve the highest possible draw weight at a given bow length. This isn't as big a deal if you're using osage, but with lesser density wood species that require significant width it can make a big difference. The following example is a wide low set red oak bow that was initially tillered out to 60#.
Hope ya'll found this interesting. I'm continuing to work on it and several others have built cool iterations of this design. If you want to see the build process check out my posts in r/bowyer on reddit. You should be able to find me under u/Mysterious_Spite1005
