Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => English Warbow => Topic started by: Marc St Louis on June 06, 2012, 07:31:50 pm
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I recently had a request for a heavy weight warbow and the fellow asked if I could do a build along here on it, to which I said yes. I started on the bow about 3 weeks ago by first going through my supply of Ironwood and picking out a suitable piece, I wanted something with some natural reflex to it. I then reduced it to rough dimensions and then sticking it in the attic of my shop for a week or so, it was sunny at the time and perfect for reducing the MC to very low levels. The reason for this is that this bow is to be a heat-treated bow and when the thickness of the wood gets somewhat thick you can get some nasty surprises when heat-treating. Even with a very low MC you need to go very slow when heat-treating a thick stave, it took me almost a week to heat-treat this bow. The problem is that the high heat pushes water ahead of it inside the wood and if it builds up to fast it can split the belly so I had to start and stop many times. The splitting doesn't affect the function of the bow but it does affect the aesthetics of it. Once I felt that the stave was dry enough I took it down and finished roughing out the shape and proceeded to get ready to heat-treat it. Here is a picture of the roughed out bow.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/Rawstave.jpg)
The stave was nicely reflexed and this was good as even with heat-treating I expected the bow to take some set.. Anyway as I said above it took me the better part of a week to fully heat-treat the bow. I let the bow hydrate for a few days then I started to do a bit of tillering, this was last week. I clamped the bow sideways in my vise and pushed on the limb tips, it was like pushing on a tree. The starting dimensions were 1 1/2" wide at the center by 1 1/16" thick and gradually tapering in width and thickness with an overall length of 75". I worked away reducing the width to just under 1 7/16" wide but still leaving the thickness to over 1" thick. Here is a picture of the bow at that point.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/Heat-treated.jpg)
I was slowly ably to "floor" tiller it, using my vise, then with the use of a long string I got it tillered up to brace height, which is where I am at now. The bow gave me a nasty one yesterday though. I was doing some long string tillering using a T stick with the bow clamped into my vise and hadn't noticed that the bow was twisting a bit. I had the bow pulled back and locked in place with the T stick at about 15" of draw so I could examining the tillered shape when the T stick twisted off. It promptly swung around and whacked me on my thumb. Today I braced it for the first time and tried to pull it back, yikes. I need to work it down it a bit more. Out of curiosity I used my hand-held scale I tested it to about 12", it registered 70#. I don't have any pictures of the bow braced yet but will shortly.
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Looking forward to following this one Mark.
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Well Steve, I have started on the bow but that doesn't necessarily mean it will survive till the end. It is a good piece of wood though.
I took the opportunity to adjust the string alignment this afternoon. Here is a picture of the bow braced and one of the string alignment.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/Braced.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/StringTracking.jpg)
Going away for a few days so I won't get back to work on this bow till next week.
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The splitting doesn't affect the function of the bow but it does affect the aesthetics of it.
But being a craftsman with some pride in your workmanship, you just avoid those things. It's just the difference between "good" and "good enough".
Looking forward to seeing the progression on this one, Marc!
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ill be watching this wrestling match....looks like your winning so far Marc ;) nice piece of wood
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Ya, this'll be a good one, I can feel it :) No breaks allowed Mark!
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Excellent, looking forward to seeing how this one develops.
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Lookin good . What weight/draw length are you aiming for?
Del
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This bow is destined to go up to 150# @ 32". I have a 14 strand FF string on it and it is feeling the strain. I have it tillered to 18" so far using my T stick but I have to switch methods as I can't pull it far enough with one hand to get it past that mark now.
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I'm eagerly awaiting updates.
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Yes Sir!
Looking forward to watching your progress.
-gus
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looking good, cant wait to it pulled back (or winched back) ;)
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It should be interesting but I'm away from home right now so any more updates will have to wait till Monday.
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I did some work to this bow today and have a few pictures showing the tillering progress. This first picture shows the bow drawn to 22"
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/22.jpg)
The shape is good so I continue and here it is drawn to 24"
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/24.jpg)
Again the drawn shape is good here so I proceed and here it is drawn to 26"
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/26.jpg)
The draw weight here is 115#. You can see in some of the pictures that I have to use a 2 hand draw on these with a glove to protect my drawing hand.
Unfortunately I have to go out of town again so I won't be able to do any more work on it for a few days.
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Looking very nice so far.
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That is coming around really nice, is it holding all it's reflex up to this point?
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No it has lost some reflex. It has a bit more than 1" of reflex after taking it down but that bounces back up to more than 2" after an hour or so. Makes it interesting to brace
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You have a great eye for tiller Mark, those long bows are so hard to brace I wince just thinking about it.
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Thanks Steve. I made myself a jig for bracing these bows several years ago so it's not hard at all as I just use my weight to brace them. You do have to have a good hold of these reflex bows though otherwise they twist in the hand and that can be nasty.
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Hi, Marc
One of your former students following along - looks great so far. I have managed to turn what would have been a Warbow into a (now) youth bow, after getting one end a little too thin. Very interesting Marc, and thanks.
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Hello Frank. How are you doing? You have to go a bit slower on your tillering and don't try to get perfection out of your first few. If you need advice then by all means e-mail me.
I was able to get back to this bow and do a bit more work to it. Here is a picture of the bow drawn to 28"
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/28.jpg)
You can see here that the drawn shape is good. Very smooth and uniform. The bow at this point is still holding an inch or so of reflex after taking it down. On to the next level.
The next picture shows the bow drawn to 30". Again you can see that the bow's drawn shape is good. The outer limbs are working just a bit with the last 6" not working at all. I tested the draw weight at this point and at 29" it's pulling just under 130#. It's not going to make the 150# I was going for but it will be close. Being a white wood the draw weight will fluctuate with moisture a bit. Right now the RH in my shop is between 60% and 70%, which you can actually see in the clock as the lower left hand dial is a Hygrometer.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/30.jpg)
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That is coming round really nice, almost at the 32". Looks like the weight is going to get pretty close to the 150lb mark as well.
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Outstanding as usual Mark, can the gentleman this is going to handle this weight or is he going to train up to it? I would really like to hear back on any distance shots he gets with it.
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I believe he can handle the weight Steve and I also believe that he plans on using it for distance shooting.
Here is the bow tillered to 32". It is quite the handful and I have to lean into it to get it back there. The bow at this point has retained perhaps 1/2" of reflex after taking it down but it bounce back up to over 1" in a very short time.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/32.jpg)
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Looks real nice, what is the final weight?
Badger - I know you are pretty involved in flight shooting, do you know what the official American ELB flight record is? (if there is one)
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Ian, in 2008 Marlon Torres shot one of Marks bows 353 yards for a new world record, a few days later it was broken by a European. I believe Marlon could have shot much further with a lighter arrow than he used. I believe his arrow was close to 600 grains. With a 400 grain arrow he would have easily shot over 400 yards. My bet is that the bow mark is building now has more than 400 yards in it.
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The shot after Marlon was in the UK, was 414 yds which currently stands. It was unofficially beaten with a shot of 438 but that is not considered as the world record.
600 grains is a pretty light arrow for what I image was a heavy bow if Marlon had it, can performance be gained by going much lower than that?
I sure would love to see a picture of the bow being shot if there is one.
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Haven't tested the final weight yet Ian and unfortunately I have to go away for a week due to medical reasons
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Take it easy, heavy bows aren't something to be trifled with if your not 100%.
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Hello Marc,
ammazing bow, as usual :)
One question, how is the cross section? From one picture I suppose that it's a flat back and somewhat shallow rounded belly. correct?
Good work!
gian-luca
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Looking great!
I'm also interested as to the cross-section because I made a 70@32 hornbeam elb for a friend of mine and when I was making it I kept on wondering how much rounding the belly could take. In the end the belly was fairly crowned on my bow.
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HHB is not as elastic as Yew so I have used a flatter cross section than I would have used with Yew but it's still well within the English 5/8 rule. The back is flat and the belly round, just not as deep as with a Yew bow. The width is just over 1 3/8" and the thickness is 1" with a fairly steady width and thickness taper.
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Hello Marc,
thanks for the indication about the cross section. I made a few heavy longbows of european ash and used the same setup: about 3.5cm wide and about 2.5cm thick at the grip , tapering to 13mm tips. The belly beeing sligthly rounded, not as high crowned as with yew and heat treated. they shot good.
I wonder if the other way round more would be possible: a perfectly flat belly and a trapped or rounded back. I just made a black locust bow like that and without heat treating. It took almost no follow and came out phisically very light and very well shooting. Black locust beeing very tension strong and rather compression weak benefitted extremely from this design and I must say that I like it also esthetically, I'm not affected by the english-design-is-best-of-the-world syndrome ;D
Regards,
gian-luca
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If the wood is elastic enough then having a round belly is much safer for the back plus if you want to use it in any competition then you must have the D section. I had a warbow flightbow disqualified from competing in Utah several years ago because it didn't have a round enough cross section.
I have been doing some work to the bow and have the tips shaped ready for the horn nocks.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/Shapedtips.jpg)
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Very nice looking bow.
I'm interested to see the shape you use on the nocks now :)
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Looks real nice, I always did wonder why there is so much emphasis on the D section, its a Victorian term. Warbows on the whole are much flatter.
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I have made the horn nocks and glued them on. I took a picture of them on the bow but it was blurry so I'll take another tomorrow. I did get my wife to take a picture of me trying to pull it back, didn't get very far
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/Trying.jpg)
And here is another picture
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/Bracedfront.jpg)
The bow pulls about 140# @ 32" on my scale but I suspect that my scale is a bit off and it most likely pulls a few pounds more. I can pull 90# with a bit of a struggle but this bow locks me up at about 16" of draw
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Excellent, nice small nocks to help with distance too. And boy do you make that bow look small Marc, never realised you were so tall.
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Well Ian I am 6' 2" and the bow is angled back as I am holding it. I was a bit concerned about the size of the nocks, they are quite small. The only problem with making bows like this is that I can't test them.
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Here are a couple pics of the nocks, they still need a bit of spit and polish.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/TopNock.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v355/Marc-St-Louis/Warbows/Heavy%20HHB%20Warbow/BottomNock.jpg)
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Superb, I think it's becoming a fashion to have smaller and smaller nocks for the added speed.
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I would tend to make them a bit smaller but the new owner can tweak them to his liking
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looking great man, im thinking about a war bow from a Hack Berry stave, it has 3 cm of reflex tho
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HAH! I just knew I wasn't the only person to use a micrometer to build bows! I can do fractions, just not quickly.
By the way, the repititious pattern on the belly of that bow from heat treating looks great. I like that look.
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Like to ask the ntn lenght of this beauty. Thanks!
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I think it's 72" N to N
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Thanks Marc!
I've tought a longbow with this weight and drawlenght needs more lenght arround 74.
But I'm not surprised if U push the limits.
I'll take my saw and cut all my tips >:D
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It is supposed to be a flightbow
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It is supposed to be a flightbow
I bet I'm not the only one in here waiting to hear what results this bow produces in competition. Any chance it's going to Utah to the Bonneville Salt Flats?