Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => English Warbow => Topic started by: leehongyi on April 13, 2014, 05:55:29 am
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Good afternoon, everyone. I am a amateur bowyer in China. I have learned a lot from this forum. At past i mainly built asian type bow. But now i am trying to build a EWB. Aim to achieve a 80#30" bow. The IPE board is 190 cm long and 3 cm wide, and bamboo has been sun-treated. All works are by hands because i am studying 1500km away from my home for a surgical course. You can see all the tools i use for this bow.
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more pics. I have spent 2 hours to shape it but not finished yet. the dark and bright colors of the shaving are really beautiful.
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Welcome, looks great so far :)
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Looks good! I don't know how I would do that without my rasp. I may have to give a plane a try. My past experiences with hand planes have not been too successful, I always got tear out.
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Use your imagination and you will find ways to work out solutions in spite of a lack of tools, I have confidence in you,
So far, as others have said, it looks good. It appears you have a good tight glue line from what I can tell! Keep posting pictures, we'd love to see how you progress!
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You are going to love this bow! I'm excited to watch your progress and see the end results. Good luck!
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Yeah, bamboo and ipe are a nice combo, :).
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Looking good. 80# @ 30" is a nice weight (even this cat can pull it :laugh: )
Good luck from the home of the EWB :)
Del
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OK, i'll show today's work. before the pics, i want to know whether i have used the right word. the title"BBI EWB building program" is all right or "progress" is better? sorry for my poor english expression. Today i left hospital earlier than usual and spent 2 hrs on my bow. I mainly shaved the thickness and rounded the edge. But i think it's a bit heavier than my expectation. i tapered it from 3.2cm to 1.5cm just 10cm from the center to the end, is that right?or guys can you show me some successful cases?
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Well I think your english is very good. Not in any way poor at all. I think being multilingual is a very big achievement to being with, and your english is really excellent. And it doesn't take much ipe sometimes to make a heavy bow. It is very dense and hard, so it can take less material to make the same weight as other woods. I would need to convert the metric to inches to tell you if your dimensions are good, as I am used to inches and am not very good at converting the two, but I go around 1 1/8" inch wide at center, 13/16" to 7/8" inch thick at center, 1/2" inch tips, and around 75" nock to nock length. I leave it the same width about 8" or so in the center before tapering to 1/2" tips.
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Your nick name is very meaningful. maybe it comes from your bowwood? i have read a lot of your excellent bow works which are so amazing! thanks for your dimension that fits my stave well. is that a 80lbs or so weight dimension?1" equals 2.54cm.
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Your nick name is very meaningful. maybe it comes from your bowwood? i have read a lot of your excellent bow works which are so amazing! thanks for your dimension that fits my stave well. is that a 80lbs or so weight dimension?1" equals 2.54cm.
Haha, thank you. My name is just something I made up at random when registering on another forum, after working some wood with lots of knots. Those dimensions should give you roughly an 80lb bow, could be anywhere from 80 - 100, so it might require some reducing in weight.
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today‘s work. really thank you toomanyknots!i made a twisted string for my bow.
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Looking good to me!
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Hello leehongyi
Nice work! I think you will be around 160-180# at the moment. :)
Kind regards
Andi
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Hello leehongyi
Nice work! I think you will be around 160-180# at the moment. :)
Kind regards
Andi
you mean i can pull 160-180# weight bow in sometime？
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I think he means with your current dimensions, you are around 160 - 180 lbs?
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Hi Lee Hongyi,
a shame you were not posting your bow-building exploits a few weeks back when I was in China :( I'll probably be visiting Shanghai/Beijing/Handan, again later this year in October/November. Depending where you are (I suspect possibly Hong Kong, as you give your family name as "Lee", rather than Li)? Anyway, it would be great to swap archery experiences and to shoot your English longbow with you in China would be just surreal! ;D
Look forward to hearing from you when you get a minute and good luck with the bow making, looking great so far!
John
p.s. In the attached picture; that's me 2nd from the left, but more importantly the famous English bowyer, Del the Cat, 3rd from the left. Del posts a lot on here and you should Google and read his Bowyers Blog on the web - miles of useful information on there for the aspiring stick-bender! LoL
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There are also some normal looking people in the UK ;)
Del
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Hi Lee Hongyi,
a shame you were not posting your bow-building exploits a few weeks back when I was in China :( I'll probably be visiting Shanghai/Beijing/Handan, again later this year in October/November. Depending where you are (I suspect possibly Hong Kong, as you give your family name as "Lee", rather than Li)? Anyway, it would be great to swap archery experiences and to shoot your English longbow with you in China would be just surreal! ;D
Look forward to hearing from you when you get a minute and good luck with the bow making, looking great so far!
John
p.s. In the attached picture; that's me 2nd from the left, but more importantly the famous English bowyer, Del the Cat, 3rd from the left. Del posts a lot on here and you should Google and read his Bowyers Blog on the web - miles of useful information on there for the aspiring stick-bender! LoL
Nice plan！ i am a surgeon working in Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi province, the south part of china. i have a small studio. one of my friends Xiong who graduated from surrey uiniversity is a member of the archery club in this school. he told me something about the popularity of traditional longbow in UK that makes me interested. i also gave some speeches of chinese traditional archery in high schools in Nanning. whenever you determine to have a journey to nanning just tell me.
BTW, target bow is usually 5-10cm higher than user?
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There are also some normal looking people in the UK ;)
Del
Actually, i am 230 lbs now. maybe i am denser? haha. And welcome to China.
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BTW, target bow is usually 5-10cm higher than user?
Target weight english longbows are usually around 30 - 70 lbs, and range from 70" - 78" from nock to nock. For higher weight bows, in weights that would of been used for war, 100 lbs and up, typically the bows are anywhere from 74" - 82" from nock to nock, the higher the draw weight usually the longer the bow, in order to more evenly distribute the added stressed of the higher weights.
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Thank you so much!
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Thank you so much!
No problem, :).
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nearly tiller. the diameter of the end is 15mm, should i continue to scratch? look at the left side grain of this bow. In chinese traditional wood appreciation, the grain of rosewood is called "fine golden buffalo bristles", and ipe has the similar dense and grain so it got another name "south american rosewood" in china. at the right part of bow we can see the cross section of bamboo fibers which is called "fish berry" to describe the crowned grain. once you see the section of 6-split bamboo fly rod you can understand.
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the bamboo beads bracelet
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Well I think your english is very good. Not in any way poor at all. I think being multilingual is a very big achievement to being with, and your english is really excellent. And it doesn't take much ipe sometimes to make a heavy bow. It is very dense and hard, so it can take less material to make the same weight as other woods. I would need to convert the metric to inches to tell you if your dimensions are good, as I am used to inches and am not very good at converting the two, but I go around 1 1/8" inch wide at center, 13/16" to 7/8" inch thick at center, 1/2" inch tips, and around 75" nock to nock length. I leave it the same width about 8" or so in the center before tapering to 1/2" tips.
your thickness includes bamboo?
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Well I think your english is very good. Not in any way poor at all. I think being multilingual is a very big achievement to being with, and your english is really excellent. And it doesn't take much ipe sometimes to make a heavy bow. It is very dense and hard, so it can take less material to make the same weight as other woods. I would need to convert the metric to inches to tell you if your dimensions are good, as I am used to inches and am not very good at converting the two, but I go around 1 1/8" inch wide at center, 13/16" to 7/8" inch thick at center, 1/2" inch tips, and around 75" nock to nock length. I leave it the same width about 8" or so in the center before tapering to 1/2" tips.
your thickness includes bamboo?
Yes, measured from the thinner part in between the nodes typically.
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the upper nock, still needs to be smoothed.
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Pretty cool! One thing I do suggest is, for next time, you might wanna try gluing the horn on the tips first, and then roughing them out and stuff. It's a lot easier that way. Pretty cool though!
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the onion looks a little swollen！
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"the onion looks a little swollen！"
lol, a little bit maybe, :). Looks good!
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horn nocks
how to match is a challenge~
i mainly used two methods:1.drilled a hole in a woodblock and then cut it half so as to measure the tip match degree. 2.before gluing, thrown the nocks into boiling water for 5 minutes and soon inserted the bow tip in as hard as possible. once cool, the hole and the tip match perfectly.
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perfect match!
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not a onion anymore
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Cool tip with the boiling water! I do the same with my arrow inserts but didn't think of trying it with bow nocks.
The shape of your nock is interesting - there's quite a lot of horn there that you don't need and they're very ornate. They look more like Victorian target bow nocks than warbow nocks. If that's what you're going for then it's fine (I actually think for Victorian nocks they're pretty cool!) but it's worth maybe looking at replicas of Mary Rose nocks to get an idea of what most people do.
The guy who makes the absolute best warbow nocks is Dave Pim. I was at a shoot with him on Friday/Saturday (before the great English weather ruined everything...) and some of the nocks on his bows were beautiful (and absolutely tiny!) He only uses just enough to protect the bow tip, no more. You want the tips as light and aerodynamic as possible for the best cast.
Here's his latest article on the EWBS website about making medieval warbow horn nocks.
http://74.209.214.7/~englishw/TudorSidenocks.html
Anyway, that's not to say yours aren't nice because they are! Your bow looks great and the project is coming along nicely so well done. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished bow!
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Cool tip with the boiling water! I do the same with my arrow inserts but didn't think of trying it with bow nocks.
The shape of your nock is interesting - there's quite a lot of horn there that you don't need and they're very ornate. They look more like Victorian target bow nocks than warbow nocks. If that's what you're going for then it's fine (I actually think for Victorian nocks they're pretty cool!) but it's worth maybe looking at replicas of Mary Rose nocks to get an idea of what most people do.
The guy who makes the absolute best warbow nocks is Dave Pim. I was at a shoot with him on Friday/Saturday (before the great English weather ruined everything...) and some of the nocks on his bows were beautiful (and absolutely tiny!) He only uses just enough to protect the bow tip, no more. You want the tips as light and aerodynamic as possible for the best cast.
Here's his latest article on the EWBS website about making medieval warbow horn nocks.
http://74.209.214.7/~englishw/TudorSidenocks.html
Anyway, that's not to say yours aren't nice because they are! Your bow looks great and the project is coming along nicely so well done. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished bow!
Thank you so much for your suggestion and recommendations. I am a beginner at Ewb thousands miles away from its origin. Luckily meet you guys through PA. I will look at the link soon.
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Looking good Leehongyi! Thanks for the link Will. It's interesting to see how other people do it.
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tillering... everything seems well now. any advantage?
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well, is that ok?
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Looking good :)
It looks like there are two strings on the bow in pic *IMG_4254.JPG*. Is it braced there, or with a long string? I can't tell. If it is with a long string, try shortening the string as much as possible. Do you know at what draw weight you are now? When making a heavy warbow, you should try to pull your bow to full draw weight as early on in the process as possible.
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Looking good :)
It looks like there are two strings on the bow in pic *IMG_4254.JPG*. Is it braced there, or with a long string? I can't tell. If it is with a long string, try shortening the string as much as possible. Do you know at what draw weight you are now? When making a heavy warbow, you should try to pull your bow to full draw weight as early on in the process as possible.
thank you~
it's still at long string phase now. the short one is just what i used to check the height, not a string for this bow. you mean if i want a 100# bow, i should pull it to 100# as early as possible, and then tiller it from that draw length to 30-32"? What if the belly wood over compresses before i get the ideal poundage and would it cause a set? i really don't know much about the warbow tiller. it seems that there are a lot of secrets!
tell me, pls.
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Read this post on my blog, it tries to explain the difference in poundage with a long string and a braced bow.
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/yew-stick-bow-and-draw-weight-to-brace.html (http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/yew-stick-bow-and-draw-weight-to-brace.html)
Del
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Read this post on my blog, it tries to explain the difference in poundage with a long string and a braced bow.
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/yew-stick-bow-and-draw-weight-to-brace.html (http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/yew-stick-bow-and-draw-weight-to-brace.html)
Del
I draw a picture to show. is that right?
if I didn't get my purpose poundage using a long string at braced height, i would never get it later, right?
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No!
In picture number 3. The important thing is the tip deflection of the bow. (NOT the string position)
When the tips come back 6", then fit a short string.
See new picture...
Also long string should be only just long enough to get on the bow... not like in your picture.
Del
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No!
In picture number 3. The important thing is the tip deflection of the bow. (NOT the string position)
When the tips come back 6", then fit a short string.
See new picture...
Also long string should be only just long enough to get on the bow... not like in your picture.
Del
I see. A picture is worth a thousand words! you are always an encyclopedia!
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I think your doing a great job so far. If I had to tiller critique, I would say the outer tips of your bow are still a bit stiff, and you might wanna get those bending a bit more. Still good job.