Primitive Archer

Great looking bow Dave. Impressive speed too.

Sick bow Dave! You’re not allowed to build a bow like that - too complicated for my mind! Great job.

I haven't posted in a little while but I have been making some bows lately.  This one is a third attempt of this style ive made.  It pulls about 56lbs at 28". its about 67" ntn.  its quite narrow at about 1.3" at the fade and gradually narrows to the tips that are very narrow.  The speeds out of this bow were very good.  The speeds averaged around mid 190s fps with 500 grain arrow.  high 180s fps with 550 grain arrow.  Its near center shot with the shelf cut in.  It also favors i tiny bit to the shelf side. The arrows flight is very straight out of the bow.  I shot both 350 spine and 300 spine.  it shot well with either.  This bow shoot about as well as my other one and is very accurate shooter.  well as accurate as i can get it anyway!  The reflex is also very impressive with this bow.  it retained 4" of reflex after shooting in.  I started out with about 4.5" after glue up of the belly lams.  I had pretillered this bow out to 20" after assembling the boo backing lan to the hickory core.  This helps alot as i did not want to scrape my belly lams too much.  A little side tiller to fine tune and good to go.  It is an inch longer on top limb and positive tiller about 1/8".  no handshock and is very smooth.  Ill include some pics here and will try to link a couple videos of me shooting it in slow mo.   sorry no full draw yet.  i forgot to do that!  wheres my head at!

Birch bark canoe is an awesome project! Wanna see that !
I bet you'll need alot of spruce roots and tar to seal all the holes and sewings!
I also imagine that it will be very difficult to find the right balance between strength and lightness

here is an interesting page on building birchbark canoes (you may already know it).

Yes it’s probably going to take me longer than I’d like to collect all my materials and I’m know I’m going to need a lot more roots, but I’m hoping I get to hang around long enough to use this canoe.

I’ve seen the link you posted. Watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials and I love how they are built. I guess that’s the biggest reason I want to try. I will definitely try to post my progress but it’s probably going to be in spurts and I don’t think I will finish this summer. Maybe I’m underestimating myself though, but probably not.

Bjrogg

Birch bark canoe is an awesome project! Wanna see that !
I bet you'll need alot of spruce roots and tar to seal all the holes and sewings!
I also imagine that it will be very difficult to find the right balance between strength and lightness

here is an interesting page on building birchbark canoes (you may already know it).