Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: JoJoDapyro on August 02, 2014, 11:02:53 am
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How long will a good built bow last? Is there a life span? Just curious. I recently refinished a Dan Pearson for a coworker. I assume it is probably 30 or 40 years old.
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If taken care of a bow, glass or wood should last a lifetime.
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The only reason I brought up the Pearson bow is that the guy I work with said he shot it when he was a kid. He used electrical tape to make a shelf, and it was clearly left in the sprinklers a few times.
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Wood bows are more like people. Most live a good long time. But there are those on either side of the bell curve. And just like humans, take better care of them and they tend to last longer.
I semi-retired the bow I have been carrying since almost the beginning, 12 yrs ago. Sinew backed osage. It has been rained on, left in a hot car, slammed in a car door, fell off a roof rack in a pvc tube at hiway speed (bow survived, pvc shattered at near zero temps), overdrawn on about one third of all the shots put thru it, and asked to do these things with little or no regard for what it wanted! It shows almost 3/4 inch of deflex to the tips when it had an inch of reflex new.
You might say it is like a 60 yr old man that used to be a professional bull rider then rodeo clown. Not as spry as it once was, but ready to hand out some punishment if it came to a fight.
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Good answer JW !
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Look at the Sudbury bow, made from hickory, from the mid 17th Century. It was probably left strung for years and still survives. Jawge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCm6VNbITwU
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Probably means working order, not just existing.
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I made an osage bow for a friend that has by his calculation over 125K shots through it. It just started cracking so I fixed the cracks, put a superglue soaked thread wrap on the repaired area and put it back in service for another 100K shots.
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If you make a few bows for yourself at one point you will like some other bow more and retire that one. I have gone through 6 bows in the last year or two
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I'm still shooting some Bear's that are over 60 years old, an Osage that is eleven years old.