Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: aero86 on August 30, 2010, 10:30:09 pm
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so, ive decided to man up and make an asian style bow that ive been drooling over. this is pretty much strictly a see if i can put it together, and hopefully have bow that will shoot an arrow ten feet! lol. this is what ive done so far. its all red oak. the handle is part of first failure at this, that one broke stringing it. the bow itself is a piece of red oak 4 foot long by 1.5 wide. cant remember the thickness, whatever you can buy at lowes, the thin one. anyways, the siyahs are laminated red oak, using a piece that was 4 inches wide, thats why the siyahs are kinda short. also, you can see how ive wrapped the ends of the siyahs with just some cotton string soaked with tbII. the string, im just re-using a the string that came with the bow KenH sent to me, the original all wood asian bow.
anyways, ive a few questions. i plan to back it, for the practice, with some heavy canvas that i found cheap at goodwill. it is a cotton canvas, but it should help keep me from dying if the bow explodes. now, my question is, anything synthetic besides fiberglass i can use and buy locally? id like the bow to stay together if at all possible. also, if i toasted the belly of the bow, do i just toast till changes color a bit? lastly, im just using titebondII for all gluings.
pics! no full draw yet till i get it backed and i havent tillered it yet because its not backed. i just couldnt wait to string it.
(http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t49/whiteneon98/bow%20stuff/001-1-8.jpg)
(http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t49/whiteneon98/bow%20stuff/002-3-3.jpg)
(http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t49/whiteneon98/bow%20stuff/003-1-6.jpg)
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Way to go for it. from the brace pic it looks like the handle could pop on ya. If you really want to cook the belly, doing so before you back it is a good idea. Got any pics of it drawn?
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thanks for the suggestion on the cooking of the belly. i think ill just go for it tonight while its still cool out back. i dont have any draw pics yet, as i didnt want to. ive never glued on a handle like that before, so i really wasnt sure if i had done it right. anyway to prevent that from happening? think next one i make, ill glue the handle on first full width before i shape it, not what i did with this one
also, instead of canvas, maybe ill order a good backing, to add back some weight. i know this is a primitive site, but i might go with fiberglass. id love to do bamboo, but as this is an experiment, fiberglass would be the cheapest. or if you guys think i should find a good hickory strip some where? or should i not since ive already glued on the siyahs? i just dont know where to go from here!!
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Once you have run wrung the guts outa this test run I am sure you are going to build something a bit more elegant. When you do, let me know, I'll send you some antelope rawhide for backing. Strong as steel and a heck of a lot lighter weight, while still retaining your primitive aspects.
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thanks JW! ive pulled it to about 22, just cause i couldnt help myself. being only a piece of thin red oak, it doesnt have much weight. im afraid this one never will have much to it. unless, maybe if i use a hickory backing on it, cut out around and blended into the siyahs.
ive found some fiberglass cloth online that people are backing bows with. anyone ever dealt with that, even though its not primitive? id be perfect for this little thing, i could coat the ends of the siyahs with it, removing the wrappings first of course..
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a hickory backing strip would add some draw weight and good insurance, thats what i believe ken uses on his.
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It's great to see people pushing for new skills. Way to go!
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well, i couldnt wait. i decided to pull it further. this has been killing me. lol. i believe i found a good piece of oak this time! to get the tiller it has now, i just used 60 grit sand paper and sanded 50 times back and forth on both limb sides, starting about mid limb.
if anyone thinks i should do it again, please say, im not sure how this one should be bending. also, does anyone think putting a hickory backing strip on this would even hold up? since the siyah is already glued down? or should i just save the backing for another bow?
(http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t49/whiteneon98/bow%20stuff/001-1-9.jpg)
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I wouldn't pull it any futher...looks like all of the bending is at the fades and very little on the outer 2/3's,
Looking good though I have a couple 48 x 1.5 x 1/2" boards...I'm just about done with a 48" OAL oak short bow. Menards has a stupid good selection of straight grained select oak and red oak boards.
I can walk in and walk out with 4-5 bows worth of wood every week from there.
Keep it up.
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it does look like thats where all the bending is. my lowes is the only place that has the oak boards that size. i think they are fine for the belly, but im working on getting some hickory for the back of my next one. plus an idea for the siyahs on the next one..
i may tiller this one out a bit more though
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You are getting schooled on this style of bow, though. The next one oughta come outa the gate good and strong!
Keep posting your work on this bow, it's saving me hours and hours of work! hehehe
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thanks again JW.
if your interested in doing it, its really easy, this one is all red oak! though, my next one will be hickory backed with a red oak belly. though hopefully the siyahs that im gonna make hold up to it.
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What kinda poundage are you looking for ? this would determine the backing for your next bow as well as this one. I think a material backing would work good you can buy polyester dacron at a fabric shop.Use tit 3 to glue on or go to lowes or homedepot and get some fiber tape in the drywall seaction and dope up with your tit3 bond.My choice is bamboo or hickory and maple for my bows. And I use urac 185 for glue up. Good luck looks like it is coming along well.
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well, anywhere from 35-50 really. im not being too picky as its just all wood. you use the urac 185 between the wood?
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any estimate what poundage you ot with this one? im guessing that longer siyahs would add more leverage thereby adding more draw weight. generally you would probably want to glue on a backing strip of wood before gluing on the siyahs i think. also im guessing you would tiller it like a normal bow, only this tillering would probably be with sanding instead of scraping.
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also what thickness are your siyahs, 1/2"?
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they started out that wide. ive been removing width as they dont need to be that thick. ive been removing it from the tips, tapering down. since im bored and its a long weekend, im gonna make another one. trying a different siyah design with this one, hopefully some more weight too
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thanks, ive been pondering trying my hand at one too. i had thought about making one based on this page http://www.hornbow.com/pa1098.html ,only instead of reflexing the tips before gluing on the siyahs i had thought about using the wood for the siyahs to glue in the reflex instead. i just got some wood today, so if i get one built ill post my results. best of luck to you on yours too, i was thinking you could also tiller your first one to your liking, then glue on some laminations of wood to the belly to increase your weight, similar to a normal laminate bow build approach.
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i thought of that too, but since its red oak, anything else would handle tension better. i did think of that though.. course the handle still hasnt popped of yet.. guess i figured that out!
im about to start on one that will probably break. found a piece of 6 foot red oak, and am gonna make one probably 48 inches long, with some different looking siyahs..
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Atta boy, that's the attitude. The more you break, the more I learn!!! >:D
Remember to post pics!
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haha JW. my siyahs are kinda small, but its just a test im doing on them, and to see if i can make one stay together from a bigger piece of wood
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bow making these things decent weight is gonna be difficult. idk if its because i was using just redoak, but my second attempt failed. failed a couple inches right outside of the fades. and it wasnt bending there as much. had been tillering the ends of the limbs. had it pulling to 24, bending pretty good, went to pull 25, and pow. might have been a defect in the grain.. i really think that 48 inches is kinda short for red oak to pull more than 24 or 25. 7 inches for the siyahs, 6 inch handle and fades.. so 35 inches of working limbs, 17.5 inches per limb not much compared to a 60 inch bow. or maybe its my craftsman ship on this one. i did take this one slow, i promise!
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Aero 86 , Answer to your question is urac 185 is used between the layers of wood and your handle and syiahs. I use a rule of thumb when building a bow, to determine the length /draw . I find the middle of length i am going to build and take half the width of handle and that will be about what draw length I can expect.Example Length of bow is 60 inches. Half is 30 inches less 2 inches for a fade on a 4 inch handle /equals =28 max draw unless you really have a good design and good backing material such as bamboo or glass.You would really push to get 30 inches or more. I know there are some bows and designs out there you can do that with, but for a rule to follow, it has worked for me. A 48 inch bow would be 24 inch less 2 inch = 22 inch draw max recommended. Does that mean you can't get more? No I am just saying rule will deliver a safe working bow as a rule. Denny
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yeah, i figured i was asking too much for my skill set, but it looked like it was going well. maybe my width wasnt wide enough, maybe two inches would be best..
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Denny's rule is similar to the one many of us also use...double the draw length plus 10%. And that rule works just great for the American Flatbow, and to a lesser extent to a modified English Longbow. But this bow design is different than what the rule generally applies to.
This style of bow depends on highly stressed working limbs, and that's why the Turks, Mongols, Koreans, Chinese, etc backed with sinew and hide glue and often had horn bellies on these bows. Aero86, what you are doing is what we call the "smoke test". Like the guys who build race engines with the idea of blowing them up to see where the weak link in the design lies.
hehehe, smoke'em if you got 'em.
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yeah, i knew i was taking a big risk. but ken made his work, but he used, what i believe, is a better wood for it. but i figured if i could get as much of the limb bending as i could, i could make it work. maybe im just horrible at tillering! lol. i know your waiting for me to do something great jw! maybe if you had some good wood i could make something that you could work with! lol
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At one point you talked about trying the "f"word for backing. I got to thinking about that for a while and compared it's properties to sinew/hide glue. The "f" will not stretch, thereby forcing the belly to compress even more. That could be a problem.
Maybe save the sinew for a later project and try silk or light canvas backing on the limbs for the next attempt.
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Nice job Aero! Good 'smoke test'. Now go get some good wood and do it up right.
I've been outa contact the last month, getting set up living aboard my small houseboat in Fort Myers, FL. Anybody else in this area?
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thanks ken, ive been looking for some wood. got some hickory coming, might try a hickory backed redoak next. also thinking about doing a bamboo backed bamboo bow..
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so, another update on this one. in an attempt to raise the draw weight a bit,ive boken it of course! lol heres the two things that i did
i backed the bow with hemp twine. not the thin stuff, or the thick stuff, the stuff in between. didnt raise the draw weight. will probably do this again on the next bow i try, but i will use the thin stuff.
also, i got tired of trying to find a good piece of bamboo so i split a bunch of the small shafting i had, ground it down by hand, heat treated it a bit, and glued it to the back of my bow. two things.. since i dont have a belt sander, i used a dremel, causing un-even glue lines and some seperating. and two, i put this on the belly of this bow, hence the heat treating of it. well, i knew i was dooming myself to failure with this one because at my handle, i didnt go up the fades, it cause a crack on the back of the bow. its done. buuutttt, i did learn a good way to attach the stuff to the belly, just cant do it all in one sitting. also, i need to make up a jig of some sort, to make them uniform in width. i know itll probably cause limb twist because the might not be uniform in thickness. i got the idea from it basically bundle bows and taking a split piece of shaft, and seeing how far it would bend..
question.. im planning to do this again. can i find a piece of red oak, that has just decent grain? i plan on putting the bamboo on the back of the bow this time..
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If you have a Menards near you...they have 10 times the selection of straight grained oak and red oak compared to lowes or HD
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nope, not one within 200 miles! must be a nawthern thing. i might have to get you to help me out finding some good red oak slats. might help my chances out on this endevour
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ive built bows from less than desireable red oak, as long as you have a backing you should be ok.
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Aero:
Ya gotta stop with the short cuts, the rushing and
[color=blue...in an attempt to raise the draw weight a bit,ive broken it of course!...i backed the bow with hemp twine....didn't raise the draw weight.[/color]
This appears regularly in the discussions here. Only wood or sinew backings will increase the draw weight.
also, i got tired of trying to find a good piece of bamboo
There's that "take your time" thing again, that we keep mentioning to you....
so i split a bunch of the small shafting i had, ground it down by hand, heat treated it a bit, and glued it to the back of my bow. two things.. since i dont have a belt sander, i used a dremel, causing un-even glue lines and some seperating. and two, i put this on the belly of this bow, hence the heat treating of it. well, i knew i was dooming myself to failure with this one because at my handle, i didnt go up the fades, it cause a crack on the back of the bow. its done. buuutttt, i did learn a good way to attach the stuff to the belly, just cant do it all in one sitting. also, i need to make up a jig of some sort, to make them uniform in width. i know itll probably cause limb twist because the might not be uniform in thickness. i got the idea from it basically bundle bows and taking a split piece of shaft, and seeing how far it would bend..
A Dremel to try and smooth something more than 1/4" wide with? Go buy a sanding block. Or a palm sander. Or a belt sander!!! Somehow I suspect using bamboo splinters is going to be more work, more time and more cost than just buying the Right Stuff to begin with.
question.. im planning to do this again. can i find a piece of red oak, that has just decent grain? i plan on putting the bamboo on the back of the bow this time..
Yes you can use "just OK" red Oak if you back it. Why not spend a couple dollar more and buy a couple decent pieces of wood and bamboo; or even a horse bow kit from one of the recognized dealers?????
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i should have said, finding one at a decent price. im practicing with this to make decent parts, my skills in making the parts that i need, and working on the patience i need to make a proper one before i get good quality parts and break it.
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using bamboo would be ok if you were doing something a little diferent, like making the limbs R/D and then adding simple siyahs like some of the asian horsebows use, the ones that are more like pin nocks. with the bamboo though you would have to actually tiller the lams together before glue up to make sure the bamboo isnt too thick, causing all the core material to be tillered away. im betting finding a hickory backing strip would be possible for the short length you need, thats probably what i would use, and at the same time a backing strip would add a little weight if your siyahs are short.