Introducing BOB, the Boring Osage Bow

[Eric Garza]

Greetings folks, it occurs to me that it's been a long time since I've last shared any of my work here. I thought I'd remedy that by posting a few photographs of this fall's hunting bow, which I'm just finishing up. In honor of the many acronyms (HHB, BBI, BBO, HBI, ETC) I see floating around to describe various types of bows and the wood(s) they're made of, I'll call this one BOB. This stands for Boring Osage Bow, which describes it pretty well.

The bow was made from an osage orange stave I acquired from Eric Bartels last year, which had been cut and split a few years prior so it was dry and seasoned by the time I received it. The stave was uncharacteristically straight for osage, and there are only a couple pin knots on the finished bow so it was an easy build. And it had fairly thin rings with vanishingly thin early wood, which gave me a lot of confidence in it.

The bow measures 59 inches tip-to-tip, and was laid out in a pyramid style with longish fades that maxed out at 1-3/4 inches wide. The limbs are symmetrical and taper straight to pin nocks that are just over 3/8 inches wide where the string lays over them. It took perhaps 3/4 inches of set throughout tillering, and I expect it to take a little more as it's not shot in yet.

Front-view profile:



Side-view, un-strung:



Side-view, braced:



Full draw:



And the obligatory force-draw graph:



Comments and questions are welcome!

[Stick Bender]

Nice bow nothing boring about it no such thing in my book as a boring osage !

[Badly Bent]

I really got a good chuckle out of the naming of that bow Eric.   Nothing boring about a well made hunting bow of osage and that is what BOB looks like to me. Good luck in the woods this season, that bow looks up to the task.

[ajooter]

That should do the job just fine sir!

[Dictionary]

A lot of draw out of such a short bow

[George Tsoukalas]

Came out great! Jawge

[BowEd]

Sweet looking stick.Good luck with it.

[FilipT]

Oh my God! That truly is most boring bow I have ever seen!

Just kidding man, it looks great and I bet it shoots well also. Its actually nice to see once in a while bow made from "perfect" stave, even though I like character bows with knots more.

[osage outlaw]

That's a perfect hunting bow.  You don't need anything fancy to kill a deer. 

[sleek]

I like the shape of that fd curve.

[SLIMBOB]

Fancy is nice to look at, but it wont make 'em shoot any better.  Looks like a keeper right there.

[Snake River Stickbow]

I think the longer fades and pyramid design match up very well. That may be a simple design, but you executed it very well. Nice!

[Jim Davis]

I like my bows a little longer, but otherwise, that bow is perfection. I have made some character bows, but only because I didn't want to waste the wood and had no better at the time. That bow is glamorous!

Jim Davis

[Eric Garza]

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

I like the shape of that fd curve.

I was hoping the early hump would have lasted a bit longer and been more pronounced. I've managed to do that with a few paddle bow designs, but this attempt at a pyramid couldn't swing it. My ideal FD curve has the initial hump just start to turn over so the curve slopes upward as I get to my desired draw length. Maybe I'll need to bend recurves into the next one to see if I can achieve that.

[bentstick54]

I like boring. Boring is nice. Wish I could find some boring staves to work with. Good job.