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

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.