Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: nativenoobowyer86 on January 12, 2011, 05:10:22 pm
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here is my current project, not quite done yet, red oak board bow. not sure of the poundage due to a severe lack of scale. feels like it's right around 40 lbs. 66 tip to tip 64.5 ntn, 1.75 inches wide at the fades, half inch at the tips. Jus got finished a semi-rough tiller, still some spots to fix. I am planning to add a maple backing strip about 3/16 thick to help raise the drawweight a little and hopefully add alittle reflex. I am open to any and all criticism, constructive or otherwise :P maybe the maple strip is too thick an might overpower the belly?? can reflex be induced when adding the backing strip or will it shear the glue line? hows the tiller so far, any stiff spots or hinges that i cant see?
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looks good, I use stretch wrap, wrapping from the handle to tips, then wrap with strips cut from bike tire tubes, then you can put a block under the handle area, back of bow on block and then take some clamps and clamp the tips down and let it dry for two days, i use TB2 and works great, just don't go with to much reflex, ya might want to trap the backing just to be safe
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i think the tiller looks pretty good. I think the middle third of each limb could bend a touch more and the bottom limb just out of the fade looks like a slight hinge?
Good job for a first try.
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Looks pretty good to me. enjoy.Ron
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Looks like an excellent tiller. Jawge
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Native,
Very nice, excellent profiles. With the lack of set, and symmetry at brace and full draw.....dont see anything wrong with your tiller at all. Also dont believe that the maple will overpower the oak, but if your at all worried then do like bubby said and trap/round over the backing. JMO
Oh ya, go shoot that bugger!!!!
rich
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Looks great! Hopefully, adding the backing wont change the tiller.
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Very good job on tillering, unstrung shows very little set. Id leave this one be and build another. If not the maple should be fine.
Good job.
Jeff
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Thanks for the feedback everybody! I am still learning and it's all much appreciated. I am going to try and rig up a way to judge the draw weight, if it seems low i will add the maple and retiller. If its about 40+ ill just leave it and start on a new one ;D My lil sister has been asking for a bow for a while now and my confidence is growing with every stick i fail to break. :)
I have very little spare time until the weekend, I'll post a couple more pics sunday or early next week after i make some progress.
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Looks good to me. The 3/16 backing is goin to add quite a bit of weight.
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Looks good to me especially if you plan on backing it,then you will probably have to tweak it a bit anyway.Nice work. :)
Pappy
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I forgot about my arrows. This is one from the first real batch of arrows that i have made. Exceptionally straight grained oak cut to 5/16, rounded by hand with planer and sandpaper. Home-made trade points ground and filed from a laaaarge (an inch wide) bandsaw blade, hafted with sinew and contact cement. Glued on commercial feathers and self nocks with no reinforcing wrap.
As well, my draw is 28.5 inches. :)
Does anyone have a good recipe for making some pine pitch or natural alternative to contact cement???
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Looks pretty good for a first bow. If you back it and have to adjust you tiller, I think you should maybe get that upper limb bending a bit more about 2/3 of the way from the handle. Maybe it's just the picture, but it looks a bit stiff there. I would just keep the last 8 - 10 inches stiff.
Do you have any close-up pictures of the tips, from the side and from the front? You might be able to take some more meat off to lighten them up a bit yet without them bending, to improve performance a bit.
Or you could just leave it as is :)
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Its looking good to me too. Heck unless you jsut want to back that sucker I would say your there. Danny
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A great first bow. Tiller looks very good. Way to go! As far as pine pitch - it's been kicked around some, if you do a search for it I'm sure some of the threads will pop up for you to read.
Great work!
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I went to Canadian Tire and bought a cheap spring scale, and got a mid/late 30's reading for weight. I decided to add the maple strip.
I have just pulled off the clamps/rubber bands from the maple backing (Thanks Cameroo, for the backing help), it seems to have gone well with no lifted spots and a decent glue line. I had about 2 inches of reflex clamped in while gluing, and lost about half of that when i unclamped. Im hoping it sets to dead flat. :)
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you can check the weight with a bathroom scale.... and a tillering stick- hard to describe but easy to do. one end of the tiller stick goes on the scale, the other on the bow's string. then you draw the bow by pushing it towards the scale. some do this with the BOW on the stick rather than the string, but then you have less control of the bow and it may slip off the stick. just make sure you "zero" the scale with the bow and stick resting on it, THEN draw and measure. You don't even have to go to full draw, just measure it at, say, 20 inches, and we can tell you what it is at 28... good luck!
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Let's see some pictures man! The suspense is killing me!
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That's a cool bow. Nice work!!
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Here is my progress,
The 3/16 maple backing added alot of weight, the limbs are bending about 5 inches at 45 lbs so I have alot of scraping to do these next couple days. I added some moose antler tips :D And im planning on reducing the limb width in the yellow circles, how narrow can i go with the tips?
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I would think it would be safe to taper to around 1/2 inch at the knocks, but to play it safe, just remove the wood slowly and check your tiller often, until you see them just starting to bend. I keep them stiff enough to be straight for the last 8 inches.
Keep us updated with the re-tillering, now that you've added the backing.
Did you go on your wood shopping trip yet?
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Cameroo!
I got a split in the maple backing last night! I think i pulled it too hard too early, it happened at the handle area. It is still too heavy, my cheap 50lb pull scale gets maxed out at about 7 inches of limb bend. there is a diagonal split starting where the arrow shelf is cut in. It's very fine and runs for about 2.5 inches, nothing lifted due to my quick freak out reaction. what do you think? i filled it with super glue and made up a small batch of hide glue and shredded some sinew just in case it needs wrapping.
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as well, i had angled the edges on the maple giving a slight trapped effect everywhere but the handle aread, could the rough sharp edges also be a problem?
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Yikes! I've never had to deal with something like that, and without seeing it it's hard to say, but from what you describe, I think you on the right track. Crazy glue and then wrapping around the handle area where it's starting to split would be a good plan. It's a little weird that it would crack there, where the backing is under the least amount of tension.
I've never cut an arrow shelf into any of the bows I've made so far. To me it doesn't seem worth weakening the bow just to get a bit closer to being center-shot. I just glue a small piece of cork onto the side before I wrap the handle.
Another bit of advice for the future - it's never a good idea to bend wood with any rough or square edges, even when you're just starting to tiller. Those square corners just concentrate stress and are asking for trouble. Even if you just slightly round the corners off with 60 grit sandpaper it will help.
I hope you can save it yet. Just be patient and don't pull too much too soon. That's a pretty thick backing that you put on, so you're going to have to hog off quite a bit of wood to get her back down to weight. Good luck!
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Thats great Cam, thanks for the advice. I am learning alot from this one! 3/16 maple backing = alot of weight. I will round off the corners tonite and wrap the handle area (im excited! ive never sinewed something b4) I am almost 100 percent certain that the limbs were still too thick in relation to the handle area, and produced some bend at the handle.
I am also going to be more careful with arrow shelves in the future. I thought the strength of the thicker wood would allow it to be narrower, but the backing added mroe mass to the wide part of the limbs than the narrow handle, shifting the bend from the limbs to the handle......i think ahaha
ill post some pics tonite hopefully :)
Thanks again Cameroo! you have been a giant help! :)
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I have been too busy for a road trip, but located some ash from the local lumber mill, $25 for a quartered 9 inch black ash log 8 ft long :) i asked for pipe straight and no knots, but ill see how that works out this weekend. i have read that getting staves from someone who doesnt make bows can backfire sometimes :)
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That is one nice bow.
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the new bow looks good. i made an oak board bow once and took Georges' tip on using burlap to back it with. it seemed to help out a lot with the structural integrity and it was easy to do. maybe something to think about. keep up the good work.
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so i sinewed the handle section where the crack in the maple was, and it seems to be holdng up. I also just invested in a spoke shave, what an awesome little scraping tool! way better than scissor blades :P
I now have the bow tillered to brace height, just got one more slight hinge to work out. My wife took her camera to the inlaws for the weekend so ill have to post pics on monday.
And jus a side note, i scored a large piece of black ash with straight grain throughout a good portion, and purchased some canvas material to back the pieces that do not have straight grain. I think i can squeeze 3 or 4 man sized bows as well as a half dozen kids bows from billets out of it. :) All for $26. Gotta love local lumber mills and old high school hookups :P
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so a tradgedy has occurred, i snapped her last night. i had just put the string on at low brace height and was givin her the first pull/weight check and kaboooom! tiller was even and everything. I think i had a inferior pice of maple for the backing, or perhaps my crappy scale stuck and i pulled more than 45 lbs. :S
good thing is, she didnt snap where i had sinewed :D
on to the next one :D
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Bummer, I hate it when they blow at the very end. It was a very nice bow. Good luck on the next one.
George
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That sucks dude. Good thing you just got some more wood hey?