Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Ardent on March 22, 2015, 04:21:20 pm
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This is the account of the making of my second bow, another English longbow-esque red oak board bow from the same board that I used to make my first bow: http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,50836.0.html. I decided to try for a heavier draw weight this time, since I already have a set of arrows spined #45-#48. I am going for #50 @ 29”.
Imgur album of all images: http://imgur.com/a/EQJHH
The piece of board I started with was 73” long, 1-3/16” wide, and 3/4” thick. The dimensions I marked out on it were as follows: Length: 73” tip to tip. Width: from center, the first 6” are full width, then begins to taper to 7/8” at 12” from the tip. From that point, the limb tapers to a 1/2" wide tip. Depth: from center, the first 6” is 3/4" thick, then tapers to 1/2" at the tip. We haven’t been running our air conditioner lately, so the relative humidity is high in our house, 70%. The board weighed 1 lb. 12.2 oz. before I started working on it.
My first bow has a very blocky rounded rectangle cross section. This one is a little wider, so I felt I could get away with a flat-backed D-shape cross section. Because I don’t have a band saw or drawknife, I used an angle grinder with a sanding disk to remove wood to get down to about 1/16” from my layout lines. I taped the end of my shop vac hose to the handle of the grinder so it would suck up most of the dust as it was produced, which it did. Way less dust in the garage than when I made my first bow.
(http://i.imgur.com/PEUDzQ7.jpg)
Then I went after it with my brand-new Shinto saw rasp (a tool I can now highly recommend) to get the rest of the way there. I faceted the belly so that the D-shape would be more uniformly even, then rounded off the facets. I rounded off the corners on the back to a 1/8” radius (is 1/4" diameter “the size of a pea”? Eh, close enough…). After getting to the layout lines, weight was 1 lb. 4.6 oz. After faceting (but before rounding) the weight was 1 lb. 3.3 oz. After rounding everything, the weight was 1 lb. 2.5 oz.
(http://i.imgur.com/vfqcLjq.jpg)
Another new thing I wanted to try on this bow was tempering. I decided to do it after I got the bow to starting dimensions but before I started on the long string. I bought a Wagner heat gun, set a stopwatch on my phone, and started toasting the belly. I started 5” from the tip and stopped at the center line. It took 38 minutes to do one limb. I let the gun cool off for a while, then did the other limb, checking the stopwatch every so often to make sure I was going at the same pace as I did with the other limb. I’m not sure I toasted the belly enough - it is definitely uniformly darker with some dark patches - but it is not the “chocolate brown” that I have read about. Maybe I will heat-treat it again after I start tillering. Immediately after tempering I weighed it again, and it was 1 lb. 2.2 oz. The bow lost .3 oz. of weight to the heat gun.
(http://i.imgur.com/wGFxWCw.jpg)
At this point, I set the bow back down on a shelf and I am going to let it sit for at least three days to rehydrate before I start long string tillering. I will weigh it again at that point to see if it is back up to where it was before tempering.
(http://i.imgur.com/H0XXScs.jpg)
I think I am going to try not backing this bow. The board has really good grain, so I think it can take it. I figure once I start tillering, if I start getting nervous I can always do it at that point. I know a linen backing would give a little insurance against breakage, but I think the bow would look much nicer without it. What do you think?
Any comments or advice on my progress so far would be appreciated. I will keep posting to this thread as I go to keep y’all updated. Thanks in advance for your input!
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Looks like you're off to a good start. As long as the grain is straight, I wouldn't back it. Shinto rasps rock!
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Not the best design for red oak boards, but you should be okay at that length and weight. Keep that belly flat as a pancake.
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I know red oak is not the best (at all) for being skinny and D-shaped, but once I do get my hands on some wood that allows me to make a "proper" ELB, I want to have already had some practice at that design. My first one is still kicking, so I figure I'll just keep pressing my luck. The belly is perfectly flat, it just has rounded corners.
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Sounds like your on track. The side grain in that picture looks a little scary (runoffs) but hopefully she holds for ya. good luck!
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Nice post it's great that you're talking us through your process. I hope it comes out shooting hard for ya! :)
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So I accidentally tillered a big hinge in the right outer limb. I have been trying to fix it, but the bow is not cooperating. My target draw weight is out the window – I’m just doing this to get the tiller straight now.
If you look at the braced pic, you can see that the right tip is lower than the left. However, when I bend the bow on the tree, everything is fairly even and the tips are lined up. What am I doing wrong?
(http://i.imgur.com/JenJr0P.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/ip4ukh7.jpg)
And with ellipsis overlay, if it helps:
(http://i.imgur.com/MagKCd9.jpg)
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Tiller looks good.
I like a little less bending at the tips.
I could not tell if you hit your draw length yet?
If yes, I'd leave that area alone.
Jawge
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Here it is at my draw length, 29":
(http://i.imgur.com/okypvrm.jpg)
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How does the amount of set look in the unbraced profile?
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The right limb has about 1-1/2", and the left has 1". Ugh.
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Tller looks very good. I've often seen one limb with a little more set. Shoot it. Jawge
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I think that the tiller looks more elliptical than a lot of the bows you see on here but for a long bendy bow I think its absolutely beautiful. Looks great! 1.5" of set isn't bad. I'd be a happy bowyer! ;D
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Thanks for the feedback, guys. I will sand her down and seal her up. Since the draw weight ended up so low, I will probably donate this one to a friend who has no bow. I will post again when it's all finished.
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I would cut the tips off to make the bow 68 inches long and heat bend the tips to remove all string follow?
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So I accidentally tillered a big hinge in the right outer limb.
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I can't see what you mean, tiller looks pleasing to my eye. Nothing wrong with 1.5" set either.
Flipping tips might be an idea, but flipped tips will increase stress on bending areas as well.
Well anyway: always headroom to make a better one for all of us... 8) 8) 8)
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I was thinking about piking it just to get the draw weight back up. I'm not crazy about the idea of trying to flip the tips on a red oak board bow. Seems like asking for trouble. I figure I'll have plenty of time to learn how to do stuff like that in the future - this is only my second bow.
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I sanded the bow with 220, 320, 400, then 600 grit, raising the grain in between. Then I burnished the whole bow with an unused huge steel S-hook that came with the scale I use on my tillering tree. You can see my hand reflected in the bow in this picture:
(http://i.imgur.com/TWrHtra.jpg)
I made an arrow pass (strike plate) out of a piece of walnut and accidentally glued it down with the bottom of it even with the center line instead of the line I had drawn one inch up. I had already clamped it and let it dry for an hour before I caught it. I used Titebond III and I remember Pat B saying that Titebond glues release at 150 degrees F, so I gently heated the area with my heat gun on low and pried the arrow pass off with a box cutter.
The string I had made for this bow was a little too short, so I made another one. Each time I make a string I carefully measure how long the wrap-backs are and how long the resulting string is, and record that info in a Word file along with which peg I used. I also record the length after stretching the strings on my “string stretcher” (a 2x4 with a ratchet strap wrapped around it lengthwise). That way, with each string I make, I am removing some guesswork for next time. I think string-making is one of my favorite parts of making a bow. I love turning out a perfect string that is exactly the right length.
(http://i.imgur.com/FSPKkip.jpg)
My son was looking at this new bow and asked, “So when you shoot it the first time, if it breaks, how do you avoid getting simultaneously hit in the crotch and the head?” My answer is: wear safety glasses, cant the bow dramatically so the limbs tips are no longer lined up with crotch and head, shoot the bow from chest height at very close range rather than anchoring somewhere on your face as you usually would, shoot at half draw 50 times before moving on to full draw.
I broke the bow in by taking 50 half-draw shots followed by 50 full draw shots, stopping periodically to check for chrysals, and looking and feeling for lifted splinters. There were none. A few minutes after I unstrung the bow I measured for sting follow. The limb that had taken 1-1/2” of set during tillering had picked up an additional 1/8” (for a total of 1-5/8”), and the other limb which was at 1” after tillering had taken another 1/4" (for a total of 1-1/4”). I noticed right away that the fletchings were really giving the walnut arrow pass a beating. At one point the tip of one of the feathers actually broke off under the arrow pass:
(http://i.imgur.com/CkD53c0.jpg)
I checked the brace height, and it was about 5-1/2”. I raised it to a little over 6” by twisting the string so that when I nock an arrow, the front of the fletching is not touching the bow. The arrows are 5/16” diameter, but I am unsure exactly what their spine is because the guy who made them never told me. He only asked me for the draw weight of the bow they were made for, which was 30-35@28”.
I gave the bow a once-over with 600 grit to get rid of hand oils, then put on a pair of nitrile gloves and applied a coat of Tandy Leather Eco-Flo All-In-One water based leather dye with a cut up T-shirt. I used the Fudge Brown color because that’s what I had. The dye dried almost immediately, and I buffed it with a clean piece of T-shirt. After about 15 minutes I gave it a second coat. It looks gorgeous! However…(there’s always a “however”)… I think I should have used my Minwax Pre-stain Wood Conditioner first to try to seal up some of the oak’s open pores before dyeing. Maybe next time. And actually, because that stuff is designed for use with wood stain, it might not even work under leather dye, so some experimenting with a scrap piece of oak is in order.
(http://i.imgur.com/6rBWUZs.jpg)
Unhappy with my walnut arrow pass, I used my heat gun to remove it. I bought several rectangular, flat pieces of water buffalo horn - each about 3/32” thick - from a knifemaking supply company on the internet and cut out a new arrow pass. I think I made it slightly too large, but I used it anyway. I shaped it mostly with sandpaper, then polished it with a fingernail buffing block. I glued it on with TBIII. I also bought a dog chew toy - a piece of cow bone cleaned and bleached white - and made another arrow pass just like the horn one. I learned that horn smells like fingernails when you are working it, and bone smells like… bone. Which is to say, it smells foul.
(http://i.imgur.com/A2jNQFU.jpg)
I put 3 coats of linseed oil on the bow, one a day, then applied about 6 coats of Johnson’s Paste Wax, one a day. I only have brown leather, and I wanted a black grip for this bow, so I dyed a piece black with Fiebing’s Leather Dye, then let it dry for a day. Meanwhile, I used Elmer’s Rubber Cement to glue a piece of 1/8” thick cork sheet to the future grip area on the belly of the bow, then carefully shaped it with my Dremel using a sanding drum. I then wrapped over that with thin hemp string, wrapping over the ends just like serving a bowstring. I measured and marked with a sharp pencil the location for the stitching holes on the leather grip, then pierced the holes on at a time with an awl while the leather was laying on a piece of soft pine scrap wood. I soaked the leather in water, then stitched it onto the bow with about 18” of black artificial sinew from Tandy. The leather shrank into a nice tight fit as it dried. Once the grip was dry, I gave the whole bow - grip included - another coat of paste wax.
(http://i.imgur.com/FRWrR61.jpg)
Except for tying on a nock point and writing my maker’s info on the belly, the bow is complete. I took it out to my back yard and ran 60 shots through it. Here are the pics of the finished project:
(http://i.imgur.com/0slKdxe.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/LxYSJXq.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/WrX1gN2.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/al7Kw5m.jpg)
In summary, I don't think my tiller was very good on this bow, and I missed my target weight by about 20 pounds because I had to fix a huge hinge I made by mistake. On the bright side, it is only my second bow, and first unbacked one, and it hasn't broken (yet). I learned a lot from making it, and am eager to move on to Number 3!
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looks very nice .. congrats :)
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Very nice! Congratulations! Jawge
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Looks great! I like to wrap the leading edge of my fletchings with thread, so there is no possibility of a feather digging into either the arrow pass OR my hand.
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Very nice, already learned what I can do better with my finishing :)