Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => HowTo's and Build-a-longs => Topic started by: jameswoodmot on July 04, 2025, 03:54:49 pm
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I’ve been procrastinating on this one for a while, might as well get on with it!
I’m pretty confident this is not going to be a good bow, or even a bow but I’ve got to get the experience some how.
After seeing styilian Stefanov’s Mongolian bow video years ago I’ve wanted to try it but I’m finding it pretty hard finding much info. Making normal bows there are loads of suggestions about dimensions but with sinew all I have found really is make the bow short.
So, likely outcomes are-
Too long to engage the sinew, rubbish bow
Too short for the wood to be able to handle it, too much set and/ or failure.
Other likely issues I can think of -
Limb alignment
Splice failure
Wood failure due to poor dimension choice
Chasing tiller and wood ending up too thin for the amount of sinew.
Other likely outcomes I can’t think of-
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Siyahs and handle are beech, natural crooks. Limbs are cherry. I’ve never used Cherry before so this will add more fun to the experiment!
Cherry cut and sanded to a fairly consistent thickness, it’s pretty wobbly but quite clean.
I’ve cut out the handle and siyahs with plenty of spare room so I can adjust angles.
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I spent a while moving the limbs around on the handle and the siyahs to get an idea of the angles and lengths. The longer piece of cherry is 28” so plenty of spare. I want to thumb shoot it so a 30” draw would be nice.
I cut down the handle and roughed in the spice on the bandsaw, I’ll fettle it later.
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I decided to go shorter, I’d rather it explode or not make the draw length that I want that be a floppy and slow bow.
I also then re steamed the tip of the limb so I could have the space going round the recurve to keep the overall length shorter and to not loose working limb.
My steaming set up isn’t the prettiest but it’s working and this green cherry just bends so easily.
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So this is where I got to today.
The Cherry needs to dry, no point in fitting the spices up when the wood is likely to move. I’m going to give the limbs a heat treatment too which is likely to make them move a bit as well.
The limbs are over sized in width and thickness, I’m not sure what sort of size to take
Them down to. They’re about 1 1/2” wide and 3/8 thick. I think I need to leave as much width in them as I can feasibly but I dunno how much that is. I’m also not sure how close to final tiller they need to be before sinewing. I imaging the thinner they are the more the sinew will be able to pull them into reflex.
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Whelp. You have 100% of my attention!