Show Me your First Bow ! Good ,Bad & Ugly ?

[Stick Bender]

A friend of mine sent me some pics of his first bow that he ever made so I thought it would make a interesting thread to see every bodys first & a little story behind it so here is mine,
It is 70 in. 80 lb @31 , Hickory, the only bow education was a copy of PA magazine at the time, the unbraced says it all !

[Stick Bender]

Unbraced

[osage outlaw]

I'll post some pictures of mine tomorrow.  It's baaad.

[Stick Bender]

Lol...its humbling Clint !

[Eric Krewson]

Mine was a sinew backed osage board bow so poorly made that it blew after 30 shots. I put it on a pile of bagged leaves for the city to pick up and haul off. I looked out abuot a half hour later and someone driving by had seen it and took it with them. It is probably on someones wall being displayed as an "ancient Indian bow".

[smoke]

I wish I had a picture of mine.  It was a board bow and I finished it up to look very nice - and shot it about 200 times.  At about shot 201 I thought to myself, "Man, making a bow isn't tough at all."  The archery gods heard that thought and reached down to touch my top limb - and blow it up in my face!  After I realized I wasn't really hurt, I laughed, picked up the pieces and went into the house to start working on bow #2. 

[leonwood]

Mine is a 27 lbs pine boardbow, still "shoots" today. Here some pics of my daughter shooting it. It was both her and my first day of shooting a bow ever! We had no idea what we where doing but it was so much fun!

[BowEd]

Pretty good looking bow Leonwood for a first.
Rich...Yours does'nt look too bad either for 80#'s @ 31".
I've still got my first self bow.It was osage.I was'nt on this forum back then and no full draw pic but resting and brace pic.I made bows on my own for 2-3 years before joining the PA forum.I've also just tillered  and shot in an osage bow lately.Waiting to put finish on it.I'll show both when I post the latest.I want to show the difference.
Well on second thought here's a couple pics.Not good pics though.

[Dvshunter]

Looks just as good as the latest ed!

[BowEd]

Well I'm a slow learner....Ha Ha Ha.I'll try to show how much I've learned in few days ok?

[gfugal]

Sinew backed Juniper branch. Was a measly 20-25 lbs, but it shot. I wanted to increase poundage so I applied another layer of sinew. I didn't bother re-tillering and took it to full draw as soon as it dried. Since the new sinew threw off the tiller, it was enough to break it. It wasn't much of a loss, but it was my first broken bow too haha. Those breaks just demoralize ya.

[Pat B]

Neither of these two were my first bows but the short one was my first osage bow. It is 42"t/t. It shot pretty good at about 20". I built it in late 1989. While we were building our house in Brevard in 1990 I was showing it to the guys working on the house. I told them not to draw it far but the 19 year old lummox helper, a 6'+ muscleman decided he could draw it farther. Yep, you guessed it it went kablooy. It was an osage board and broke right where it should have.
 The other bow is black locust, 62" t/t, 1 1/2" wide at the fades tapering to about 3/4". I was so proud of this bow it was going to be my first hunting bow. It has 3" of set and plenty of frets. Needless to say I never hunted with it even though I called it "Killer".

[Springbuck]

Jeez, I wish!  Do you know how many times since then I have destroyed a phone while fishing or something, since then?

I will confess, it was basically a copy of a fiberglass takedown, R/D boo-backed bamboo flooring, reverse trapped because I didn't understand the principle.  Pretty little walnut and purpleheart handle, pulling about 32 lbs.

[Badger]

  I don't have a pic but my first bow was actually a success followed by a long string of failures. I had zero idea anyone else made all wood bows. I went by memory from my childhood on what a fiberglass recurve looked like. I purchased some 1/8" by 2" strips of hardwood with no regard for grain run out. Maple was my back, walnut was my core and Brazilian rosewood was the belly. I think my riser was a solid block of maple but not positive now. The bow was 62" long recurve with the tips slightly behind the handle. I did no tillering beyond narrowing the outside 1/2 of the limb. I used gorilla glue to glue it up. The bow shot great for at least a year and was about 47# at 28". I had an archery shop run it through a chrono and he was impressed but I have no idea what it was reading.

[Stick Bender]

That's a. Interesting story Steve a zero taper recurve and it held together, I made mine back in 1995 when I could pull a 80 lb. bow ,if I pulled it now I would need to use my senior discount at the chiropractor