Primitive Archer

Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: txdm on February 23, 2017, 09:55:51 pm

Title: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: txdm on February 23, 2017, 09:55:51 pm
I've been working on this little widget over the last few days that helps you visualize and get measurements for turning a board into a bow:

http://nullent.org/bbd/

Right now it's pretty bare bones, but I'd like to add:

Thanks for looking!
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: loon on February 24, 2017, 04:50:59 am
Leet.
Glad to see a fellow hacker

Other possible cool stuff:

Being able to calculate good starting thickness taper based on given width taper of limbs
Expected safe draw length/weight calculations, for a given design and wood
Allowing for "eiffel" tips
...Asymmetry?

Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: Sasquatch on February 26, 2017, 10:30:26 pm
Man that is cool  I appreciate the time it took to make that. I usually just wing it. Ha
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: txdm on February 27, 2017, 09:36:49 am
Thanks Sasquatch. The drop down menu of templates, and maybe ability to save your custom design are coming next.
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: willie on February 27, 2017, 10:27:58 am
have you seen woodbears excell spreadsheet? it capable of a complete design and has various graphic outputs?

It  calculates widths vs various materiel's, lengths, crossections levels of stress, brace heights,etc

very usable, probaly in version 3 or so, but has not had much development in the past few years
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: txdm on February 27, 2017, 11:28:30 am
Quote from: willie on February 27, 2017, 10:27:58 am
have you seen woodbears excell spreadsheet? it capable of a complete design and has various graphic outputs?

Never heard of it...but I'd love to have a look.
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: joachimM on February 27, 2017, 11:44:40 am
There are two such spreadsheets, neither of which are particularly easy to handle, but good things require some time. RTFM.
One was made by Woodbear aka Dave Dewey, the other by Alan Case. Alan's spreadsheet is known as "supertiller".

You can find Woodbear's spreadsheet (xls) here, but you need a yahoo groups account. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/PaleoPlanet/files
If you don't want to bother, I'll mirror it on a google drive.
Supertiller: see this page. http://www.buildyourownbow.com/build-alongs/how-to-use-supertiller-build-along/

Some time ago I found out there seemed to be a bug in Woodbear's spreadsheet, and I even found out how to correct it, but I forgot about it and am still stuck with it. But actually I don't use these anymore. It's easier and more fun to just build bows...

For more info: search the site for supertiller and Woodbear.
The yahoo support site (for an older version of the Paleoplanet site, by the way) also has a spreadsheet for Badger's bow mass calculator (see the mass principle).

Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: willie on February 27, 2017, 12:01:50 pm
I was looking to see if it is still there, when  Joachim got the link up......

do you recall the bug you found?, Joachim.  I did find that woodbears  sheet works better running in excel, rather than open/libre office calc or gnumeric
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: txdm on February 27, 2017, 12:02:57 pm
I'll take a look at those.

My biggest goal with the widget is to help builders easily calculate the distances they need to mark on a board based on whatever input they choose.
Title: Re: Made a board bow design tool
Post by: GlisGlis on March 02, 2017, 07:13:51 am
very well done!!
i'd make the "mid limb width" option a "x distance from center width"
that could allow more versatility