New Recurve Bow

[richgibula]

While mulling over a new ironwood bow, I finished a recurve and thought that I would brag about it here. Its a 55 inch bamboo and black walnut laminate recurve with a padauk handle.  The string is 20 winds of 40# spectra line. The draw weight is 55# @ 28 inches. The handle is the closest I could get to a clay cast of my son's grip, for whom this lefty bow was made.

[richgibula]

A couple more pics:

[Arrowbuster]

Very nicely done, Looks fast!!

[yew1966]

nice....

[willie]

Quite a lot of recurve and  reflex/deflex for a wood bow. It must have been a challenge to tiller.
Did you have a formula for the thicknesses of the lam layup?
Have much thickness to take off when you finished it out?

[richgibula]

Thank you for the compliments. 

wiilie, I agree that there is too much recurve. I am in the process of relaxing the curve in my gluing rack.  I lucked out on the tiller. After I tapered it (linear), I found that the tiller was surprisingly good. I did put it on a large sander to adjust the taper of the thickness and width a little. 

I watched a few UTube videos on bow tillering and they all happened to come out good and no additional tillering was needed.  I still need to find a video of someone struggling with the process to get more familiar with the subtleties. Let me know if you are aware of a good video on that subject. I have had at least a couple bows that broke because I was not able to do it correctly.

[PEARL DRUMS]

All your bending is occurring in about 3-4" of limb right at each fade, basically a hinge. I can also see some funky glue lines where your handle is glued on and the thickness isn't enough to stop the force going into the handle. Id be very careful drawing and shooting that bow. Losing an eye isn't worth it.

[richgibula]

Thanks for that.  I had the handle try to pull away, so I added a couple of dowels into the wood. I tested the draw with a winch to 32 inches without a change in the grip. 

[willie]

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,71915.msg1008893.html#msg1008893
shows a pic of a glued handle. a close inspection of the transition or glueline between the limb and the riser block shows the limb to be much thicker in the handle area than just a few inches further out (at the extreme right past the caliper) This construction detail will help with both the near handle bending and the handle pop off.

my recomendation would be to get a straight grained board and gain some tillering experience with a few bendy handle/straight limbed bows before trying a bow with challenging limb profiles or a bow with a lot of fabrication details that require a significant investment of time or special materiels.

you will break a few drawing then out to their max


with a hickory board and an easternwoodlands style design should give you a snappy fun to shoot bow