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Hickory short bow(s) build along
Aaron1726:
Ok, so my red oak, sisal backed shorty went out with a bang! Design, tiller, and over drawing it all had a part in its demise. I am trying to learn from those mistakes and hopefully have a better outcome this go around.
First off, design. The Last one was 36" overall, I'm going to lengthen things a bit for some safety margin, this time I will be at 42" overall. Also, I found some hickory boards to work with instead of oak so I hope that will be a benefit as well.
Then the tiller... well I'm still learning, but from what I got from everyone's feedback, I think the handle had a bit too much bend. So this time around I'm not going to narrow the handle and I'm going to try to put less bend there.
My end goal is 40 to 45 lbs at about 18-19 in of draw. I have taken my hickory board (1.5 in wide x .8in thick) and ripped it in half so I can have 2 to work with of about 3/8 in thickness. I got both pieces roughed to shape, 1.5 in for about 8in in the middle and then tapered to 0.5in tips. My plan here also is to try my hand at sinew backing one and then sisal (or maybe dogbane) on the other to see how things turn out.
So far my first one, which I plan to back with sinew, is nearly ready to be backed. I got it tillered to about 15 in, then made a caul for a little reflex and tried a heat treat on the grill, could only get one limb at a time, but seemed to work ok. After final tillering out to 17 in, I'm now at roughly 0in of reflex, and 33lbs at 17 in. I have been getting sinew ready and went ahead and sized the back so hopefully I can get the sinew on soon.
Anyway, thought I'd share this one (or 2...) with yall. Hopefully one of them will turn out alright. Here are some picks so far of the build.
Aaron1726:
Here's one at rest and at brace of the (hopefully) soon to be sinew backed one.
RyanY:
A narrower and thicker handle that is bending less may still be under similar strain and at risk for failure. Even so short, I’d worry about it being a bit too thin at 3/8”. Hopefully the backing helps bring it up a bit.
Aaron1726:
Ryan, we shall see, I may have gotten greedy with that board, trying to get 2 bows out of it. Still learning.
I did get a chance to get the sinew on today. I had a little over 40g to start with and ended up using closer to 30g I think. Hard to say for sure since the leftovers were all wet. I added and extra amount in the handle area first and then layed the rest on evenly over top of that out each limb. I had pre-weighed everything so I could hopefully keep both limbs even with the amount of sinew that went on. I think it was pretty even, I tried to leave equal amounts of left overs for both limbs. Anyway, here's a couple pics with the sinew layed out and then on the bow. Now time to wait till it dries....
Aaron1726:
Couple more. Seems like a really thick layer right now, so I'm curious to see how much it shrinks as it dries.
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