i have this huge obsession with building my bows but i dont have any info or mentors to go off of to learn exactly everything that goes into it ive been winging it so far which isn't teaching me to make a bow correctly. i see so many of yall doing it i figured i'd put i thread on here to hear from the people like me out there making them before i started web searching any advice??
Bow building is a frustating, rewarding, upsetting, hobby that requires patience I assume you are meaning selfbows? If not, glass bows should be pretty easy. I pulled in a ton of info from primitivearcher . com and tradgang dot com. Also have paleoplanet dot com. What kinda bow you want to build?
thanks i'll check those out. selfbows, wood working has been a part of my family for so long that side of it has come i wont say easy but not far from what im used to doing. i just got done splitting a piece of orange osage then got it into a plank then took my hand saw split the plank right down the middle it took some time cause i do it old fashioned style i cant say amish style cause i will use a power tool now and then but its how i like to do it. the osage is gonna be part of this 60in recurve im working on. how do you like to do the recurving process? imma need to find a better way to do it
IMO, recurving is very difficult with a sefbow. I would say advanced. A true recurve seems to take loving care to keep from twisting. Most I have done so far is a reflex or simple flipping the tips. I have destroyed some nice osage blanks recurving. I have learned not to make osage bend. What I do with a recurve now is put in a caul with a metal strap to hold down splinters. I will put some wieght on the opposite limb hanging from it. I will use only dry heat and let the osage move when it wants to move. Not using force from my hand. If you have harvested a osage you ought make a self bow, not a plank. I back all my planks with hickory or bamboo. Glued one up today.
dumb question but what exactly is a selfbow. the osage im using is only part of the bow im putting it inbetween other pieces of wood to make a whole pretty much a trial and error to see it if works if not oh well i'll try again and again untill i find something that works. and what do you mean a dry heat how do you do that
So a self bow is a bow that is self backed. One complete piece of wood. Osage requires one growth ring for the whole back. That ring cannot be violated. Its called chasing a ring. Tedious, and time consuming, but I love chasing rings. A bow that has backing on it, is a backed bow. If osage is cut into slats, usually it has to be backed with something like bamboo or hickory. Bows that do not require too much work with the rings is yew, hickory and few others. For laminated bows like you are talking about, you want combos that compliment each other. For instance, Osage and IPE are great at compression, and bamboo and hickory strips are great at tension but suck at compression. So you glue on a hickory or flattened bamboo strip and have a great combination. Now, you might want to make a glass backed modern bow. Using fiber glass for belly and back. And using a pretty wood in the middle for looks. What I mean by dry heat is using a heat gun. Some woods need to be boiled or steamed. Some require a heat gun to bend. General rule green wood, steam, dry wood dry heat. If you steam or boil dry wood, it will check and warp and crack. Especially osage. I myself highly suggest reading the bow guides. If you blindly go and glue woods together without paying attention to the cut (quarter sawn, rift, etc) or species, the bow will probably break. I suggest Stim Wilcox's guide to selfbows. And the Trad bowyer bibles Vol 1 and 4.
i been reading alot and learning alot through trial and error, my osage bow is nearly almost done i'll post pics when i get the clamps off it im putting a backing on it at the moment hopfully it turns out good and i finally seccsed in making a shootable bow but here is what will soon be a long bow i didn't have the info while making the osage bow i have now so we'll see how this goes the only wood i had available was this white oak 2x4 the rings ran the same direction on both ends of the board but werent going accross like i was hoping but a whole hell a lot of work later i got it trimmed down where the rings are just how i want them i'll post pics of what it looks like now later today.
I myself suggest using a shaving horse and drawknife to get that ring down. Here is a photobucket album where I made my first one. I think I got a picture of the shaving horse in it. http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn73/bigcountry_ky/OsageBuildalong/
thats where im at on the white oak the osage backed recurve broke during the tillering but i know what i did wrong and learned from it. in the pic here i didnt have a draw knife so i used what i had but i have one now my buddy gave it to me its super old not it to great of shape but i got a decent edge back on it it'll have to do till i get the extra funds to pick up a good one money is super tight so i really cant spend to much on my hobby but im enjoying it and learning alot thats all i care about right now. a shaving horse woulld make things alot easier i'll probley start building one in the next few days.
