Kid's board bow dimensions

[justsomedude]

Making a board bow for my 8 yr old daughter from Oak 1x3 board (it had good grain so I got the 1x3). It will be 48-52 inches. If I do 1" wide with a glued on handle (4"?) can do a straight taper to 1/2"? Is that too narrow? I would like to leave it unbacked.
I'd like to cut a small shelf as well.

[justsomedude]

I'm going with 1" wide, 4" handle, 2" fades, taper to 1/2".
I am going to try to make the handle from an accent wood. Osage or Juniper.
Just have to see if I can get it square enough to glue down

[Springbuck]

  Your plan sounds just fine.  Kids bows might not strictly need 2" fadeouts, but all good, either way.

 I usually do one of two types of kids' bows.  Longbow-style, I go 1" wide to start I leave middle 4" alone.  I make a mild front/back taper, say from 3/4"-1/2", and a mid-limb side taper down to the nock width, which is usually more like 7/16" wide. Then I plane off all four corners to an octagon and see what I got.  It's usually bending too much in the middle, so I scrape all the facets except the back evenly, until it comes around like a longbow and smooth off the corners gently.  It's funny because I bet I could barely pull off a 72"/50 lb longbow from good oak, but at 48" and 20 lbs at 22" it works just fine.

The other is more like an American flatbow.  Add a little handle, make some fades, etc.  If you do a straight side taper, go to even narrower tips.

The best thing about a 3" board making a 1" bow is that you can take the really, truly best part of that stave out. 

[justsomedude]

I ended up doing a 3" handle plus 1" fades. I made the handle out of Osage and that worked out well. Got to improve my belt sander skills.

Kid's bow tillering happens FAST!!!!! Be super careful when you start getting close. I almost totally ruined this bow and my daughter would have been sad. It is very low weight. My scale only goes down to 20# but it feels like a little kid's bow (in the range of the Bear Wizard). Should be great.

I also made a mess of the string nocks. Was using a new chainsaw file and it wandered while I was starting the groove. Will start with a triangle file ext time.

Will post some pics tomorrow. Putting some shellac on it.

[justsomedude]

The fun part of bow building!

[George Tsoukalas]

I make them as tall as the kid...1" wide, 3/4" thick...until just past mid limb...taper to 3/8" nocks. Your mileage may vary.

[helmet]

Awesome! looks like she has the hang of it!

[justsomedude]

I was trying to get the limbs to start working 'early' and I overdid it. It's strong enough for her to learn from. I have the rest of that board about 1 1/8" wide and plan to try another one with a Juniper handle and leave it heavier.