Hello everyone,
I've been reading this forum for a while and thought I'd finally post my first bow. I'd been thinking about making a bow for about a year and at the end of the summer I finally went for it. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot of things and improved my woodworking skills. The bow is 35# at 28", and is 72" tip to tip. It's made from a maple board, and has an oak handle and tip overlays. I backed it with brown paper for a little bit of extra security and because I thought it would look nice. I tried to make everything for the bow myself, including the string, a bow stringer, a tillering stick, a tillering gizmo, a serving tool, a fletching jig, and the arrows. Needless to say it kept me pretty busy!
I wrote up a bit of a build along on my blog, which shares my experiences and has lots of pictures of the process. You can have a look at it here:
http://diydudes.com/building-a-longbow/
The tiller isn't perfect, but I can't see any fatal flaws. In the braced photo, the right limb seems to bend a bit more in the outer region than the left limb. The bow also might be a bit stiff at the tips in general. I'd be happy to have any opinions or advice.
Making bows is extremely addicting, the evidence of this being that I had a second bow tillered and ready to shoot before I ever shot my first one. The second bow has way thinner tips, and I think it's quite a bit nicer to shoot. Overall I am quite happy with how this bow turned out, and look forward to many more!
