new member, new bow, and a question

[Holmes]

Hey everybody. I thought I'd introduce myself with my first attempt at a red oak board bow. 73 in ttt fiberglass tape backing (I know poor choice, wish I had used silk) don't know the weight cause I don't have a bow scale but I'd guess 45 lbs at 29 in. I'll post pics when I figure out how. My next attempt will be a maple board and I was hoping to make this one shorter so my question is how short can you take maple? Thanks for your replies.
Holmes

[Holmes]

Here's the pics

[LivingElemental]

Sheet rock tape works perfectly fine. its what i used on my first few bows. Most important thing is functionality, aesthetics can come later. Best thing I've found to judge weight is a hanging scale. You can usually find them in the fishing section of walmart. How does it shoot?

And I apologize, i have no experience with maple.

[Slackbunny]

I found a 100lb scale on ebay for under 10 bucks. Check there first. I found that most scales at walmart and other comparable places only go up to 50 pounds, and to get heavier it often gets fairly expensive.

[Cameroo]

68" long, with 1 3/8" wide limbs is a good safe length for a beginner to get a 40-50 lb maple bow, from my limited experience   Rawhide also makes a great backing if you can get your hands on some.

I can PM you the layout I've been using if you'd like, I just don't have access to it right now.  Or you can dig through my previous posts - I'm sure I posted it at some point.

[Holmes]

Thanks for the responses guys. LivingElemental, It doesn't shoot fantastic though my standard of comparison is a beautiful osage self bow (not something I made I assure you) and I think its because I managed to do something that I didn't think was possible with a board bow, I ended up with a twisted limb. I didn't notice till after final tiller and it didn't break so I'm not gonna mess with it. Slackbunny thanks for the ebay tip I'll probably pick up a cheap hanging scale from there. Thanks for the advice on the maple Cameroo, do you think that if the limbs were wider and I did a pyramid bow that I could go 65" overall?
Holmes

[DarkSoul]

Yes, you could go as short as 65" on a maple selfbow. But why would you? Why do you want to go that short? The longer, the more forgiving, more so for a beginner. You could glue down some linen/silk fabric or rawhide. I'd avoid that ff*ugly drywall tape, though. If you make the limbs 2" wide at the fade, and taper them to ½" nocks at one third from the handle, you'll have a solid maple selfbow at 65" or so (designed for a 28" drawlength), IF the stiff handle is short and the tiler is good. A good board of maple is harder to find than a good board of oak. I can see grain run offs in your red oak bow, especially in the upper fade (bottom pic). For a selfbow, you want zero of those run offs.
Good job on that red oak first bow, though! Keeping the first one hold together and with a decent drawweight, is quite an achievement. But where's the full draw picture?

[Holmes]

Good job on that red oak first bow, though! Keeping the first one hold together and with a decent drawweight, is quite an achievement. But where's the full draw picture?

Thanks for the compliment! I was pretty sure it would break goin into it cause i definatley had some runoffs but I bought the board before I really understood what runoffs were. After using it I'm not a huge fan of the drywall tape either mostly because its just ugly. I guess 65" might be a little over ambitious but I've already lost count of how many times I've hit this one on the ceiling fan  so I thought that shorter would be better. I'll see If I can post a full draw pic in a little bit and maybe some of ya'll can give me some tiller advice. Thanks again for the replies

Holmes

[JW_Halverson]

Yeah, good way to get banned....failure to post full draw pictures!   

Welcome to the madness of addiction, Holmes-boy.