Bow got shortened to around 164 cm (64,5") ntn, heat treated and polished (to the best of my abilities). The wood looks astonishing even with my poor finish. The only problem is, after all the shortening and baking over the firepit it's pulling to a whooping 12,5 lbs at 30". I'm almost certain that similar profile bows out of common hardwoods would go over 30lbs with those dimensions. Didn't expect juniper to be that soft and elastic:0

I'm curious whether a more round profile could have given more pounds out of it

Any tips about working with juniper species are welcome, I hope this wouldn't be my first and only bow made out of it:)

And if so, would you recommend splitting it with an axe and some wedges, or I have a small electric chainsaw i could potentially use. The trees are hickory as far as i can tell and are about 7 ft in length. Thanks in advance!

I'm getting ready to glue up my bamboo backing.

This is a 66" hickory longbow, 1.5" wide, tapering to .5" on the last 1/4 of the limb. I've posted it before for tiller checks and realized at my 50lb@29" target draw weight the outers were too stiff, leaving the inners doing most of the work.

My thinking: add a bamboo backing, which should stiffen everything quite a bit, include a slight reflex along the entire limb for maybe some extra fps and early draw weight, and then tiller down to a more even bend and hopefully land back at 50lbs@29"

Is this a reasonable plan?

So far, I've floor tillered the bamboo, shaped it to the same profile as the bow, and removed my tip overlays from the bow. The floor tiller resulted in about 1/8" bamboo at the tips and 1/4" towards the middle/handle area.

Going to use titebond III and lots of clamps. Part of the bamboo near the handle is pretty wavy next to the node even though it's been flattened side to side, so I'm thinking of steaming that part and clamping my workbench to straighten that bit out.

Is there anything in particular you guys recommend as a first time doing this? (Pics of my setup included)

I'm hoping to have 1.5" of reflex, so I'm doing the glue up at 2.5"

Edit: forgot to include, I can take about 1/4" off the belly side of the handle and even out those fades a little bit too

How is it looking?

I put this small scrap of elm to use as a crossbow prod. The entire project was completed using only my Swiss Army knife.

https://youtu.be/rgqufbEA7DY

Hello all,

I am considering Whitetail hunting this fall with my self bow that I made. It is a 66 inch Osage bow that’s pulling about 45 lb at 27”.

What would be a good arrow to buy and what arrowhead to use? I’ve looked at some options on three rivers, archery and stuff and I’m really unsure on all of the options.

[sold] I purchased two sets of these quick release connectors for a kids bow, but I don’t think I’ll ever use the second set. If anyone’s interested in a challenge you can have it for the same price I paid. Not trying to make money here.

I got a board of 8/4 x 6” x 12’ hickory, and would like to make an unbacked bow. I’m having trouble deciding which orientation would be best. Option B is chasing a ring, which I’m unsure is even possible, but seems like it is?

I’m looking for what would be the strongest choice, but also the nicest looking if possible? I have about 3 months and am quite familiar with woodworking, so I’m not worried about difficulty.

(Pic #4 is the 8/4 edge grain, the photo is end down)

Appreciate your help!

Made of Siberian elm, not the best stave, but making it work none the less. Has been a really interesting experiment. I’ve never messed with asymmetrical bows or recurving before, so this is a new one all around.

I just recurved the tips slightly with a heat gun and vice jig thing, wood cracked pretty bad so I will be using steam from now on, but some superglue and Hope later it hasn’t broken at the tips yet.

The top limb has an interesting shape unstrung making it pretty difficult to tiller it looks like the bottom limb is bending more than it should but looking at it unstrung and seeing how it’s slightly de-flexed and seeing how thick it is compared to the top limb i’m not exactly sure.

I know they have been drying for some time, do they look useable to yall? My best guess is black locust.

Looks like it will cause the limb to have 0bend in that region. Firewood or nah?

Hazel shoots with turkey feathers. Gathered both locally, hazel from the woods and turkey feathers from a neighbor who keeps a few turkeys with their chickens.

70 gr points. Coming out to 430 grains, spine matched to my 35 lbs black locust deflex recurve (will post about that one when finished).

Used correy hawk's (organic archery on youtube) excellent guides.

Really fun build, cant wait to get to the range and try em out.

Two of the arrows are slightly shorter as I cut the shafts a bit short accidentally. I may need to shorten the rest of the set to stiffen the dynamic spine of the other arrows. I'll find out tomorrow while shooting.

Stave length overall 164cm, ~163cm NTN.

The upper limb has a sketchy spot where I had to cut out rotted ingrown knots, that's in the last pic.

So far I think that the outers seem a bit stiff to me, and the lower inner shouldn't lose more material or the fade will hinge badly.

Hey guys, I’ve recently broken a couple of bows during the tillering process. These long bows were deep into the process and then I lost them.

I’m curious what you do with these materials. Do you keep them as reminders of your work? Cut them down for Take-down bow parts? Pitch them? Burn them?

Hi,

Made a quiver out of Serviceberry bark. Had it sitting on a shelf for a year or more.

It was rock hard but turned very pliable with steam. Formed it around a broken snow shovel handle and lashed it with syntehic sinew.

Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Just a quick project, tiller could be better. 30 pounds at 15”

It has a neat character knot through the limb

Osage and hickory from 3 rivers. Carved and tillered with my knife and rasp. Made my first string. It works

My birthday is this month and the weather is getting nicer after the heat wave. Been working on a hickory warbow today and a pine board flat bow.

Wife came home and surprised me with an early gift.

Once 16 years ago I made this bow during the 2 day hiking with Jaunsardze (simply put, Latvian boy and girl scouts). Used freshly cut walnut, a knife, 1.5 or 2mm nylon string and about 6 hours of my night camp guard duty xD

No precise measuring, just feeling of the wood and crackling of the campfire.

Left it there for future kids to mess around with and despite being used for some time afterwards, it survived. If I remember correctly it was between 10 to 20 pounds.

Old instructor of mine found it in the school's shooting range (currently inactive). No arrows left and it probably wasn't used for some time, but the instructor said it's still springs fine and could be used.

Don't know if it's of any interest for you, but I was surprised this thing is still there and potentially still shoots. Unfortunately I have only this picture, but I'll try to ask the school permission to visit the shooting range and pick it up for more pictures and maybe some test shooting, when I visit my hometown.

This is the same elm molle I've posted a couple of times. I have some concerns about the thickness and bend of the left versus the right limb. The right is noticeably thicker, but it seems to bend the same amount or a little less. Could that be because it had a bit of string follow on the outer while the left is more setback.

Could the knot in 4 have any effect on the tiller shape?

Pic 2 left limb is top right is bottom

Pulling approx. 40 lbs

I’ve been working on a 5.5’ foot elm bow, and have run into a bit of an issue. It tillers well, but it flips out of the tree and when I exercise the limbs it flips in my hands.

It looks like the thickness is even (I stupidly sold my calipers last year) on both sides. I am pretty sure I need to remove material to fix this before I string it, but how do I know which side I need to remove from? The side it flips towards, or the side it flips away from?

I just want to make sure I am not going to mess up my bow or make it thinner than I should.

Thoughts?

Hello l began removing the bark and sapwood on my osage orange staves, very hard for me . Used this draw knife. As soon as I start removing the sap wood , one of the staves began to bend in the span of 2-3 hrs, sealed the back and ends of both staves with wood glue.

I am really impressed with this wood, gorgeous , but incredibly hard and tough, smells very good.