Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: jameswoodmot on January 10, 2026, 05:46:13 pm
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Having had no interest in short draw bows, Native American bows, arrows and quivers turned up today, now I want to make a short bow!
I’ve got quite a few short elm staves that should be ideal for this but it’s lead me to wonder about the trade off between draw length and draw weight.
If I’ve got 50 something inches of wood I can either tiller to a low poundage at a longer draw length or a higher poundage at a shorter draw, how do I know which is going to give me the best arrow speed for that stave? Somewhere there is a sweet spot in the middle but is there any way of getting a rough calculation? I suspect there are too many factors for it to be viable to work out.
I have only ever got a bow to my draw length before and just let it turn out at the poundage it wants to be.
Is it know what sort of poundage and/or draw length any of these bows were historically?
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Short bows... my favorite 😍
Im decently studied up on them and have made a few over the years. A couple are pretty fast. Ill tell you a few bullet points on short bows.
Short bows are not limited in their draw length and weight by nature of their length alone. Their width and amount of recurve at the tips make up for the rest of the equation.
A 50 inch bow can pull all the way to 26, even as a stiff handled bow if the handle is its smallest size, the tiller is good, and the tips have enough recurve to keep the string angle down from stacking.
It can have any draw weight you desire as long as there is enough wood in the bending section to absorb the bending stresses. This is controlled by how wide the bow is made to be. By nature of how things work, a 50 pounder will need to be twice as wide as a 25 pounder with all things equal, because two 25s equal a 50.
So, your stave width will be your primary limiting factor.
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Fantastic, thanks Sleek
So with the bows in the book, the length and width are listed. Lots of them are only just over an inch wide.
If I wanted to make a replica of one with very similar dimensions, the higher the poundage I make it the shorter the draw length will have to be to prevent it taking loads of set or snapping.
If I were to set the limiting factors to those dimensions, I can vary the draw length and weight within reason. Is a lower poundage at a longer draw going to give more arrow speed than a higher poundage at a shorter draw?
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Set only happens when a bow has too much draw weight for its working limb volume. Its not related to its draw length, even though thats what is commonly blamed for set.
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I’ve removed what I just wrote, let me think about this a bit the cogs are going
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Ok, I’m up to date on the volume thing.
Question stands about finding the sweet spot with draw length and draw weight.Or draw weight and limb volume, if that is another way to put it.
Increasing the draw length, I will have to decrease the limb volume to maintain a suitable volume to draw weight ratio. Which in turn means I will be continually decreasing the draw weight as the length increases
A bow with set length and width, I assume, will have an optimum where the draw length is long enough to have good power stoke and the draw weight is high enough to be storing a good amount of energy. Beyond experience and trial and error is there any way to calculate that optimum?
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This is a good question. You could probably approximate this by drawing out some FD curves at varying draw lengths and poundage’s and seeing how energy storage compares. There’s probably a ratio where the draw length and draw weight can change proportionally to make equal energy storage at any given combination. My guess is that maximizing draw length is more important for transferring that energy storage efficiently.
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Good questions. Good advise from sleek. I’ll throw this wrench in all this. I made two shorty bow. Both 45-50lbs. Both bendy d style Osage bows. Both from same tree. In fact both were narrow sister splits from same short stave. Both had same dimensions of 50”ntn about an 1” wide. Both had small steamed recurved tips. Both seemed to be good till it wasn’t. One took set and then exploded at 26”. The other one is great. Little to No set yet and plan to finish it up for a 26-28” draw. I’ll post some pics here of it when I get back to it. And if it survives. I have other pressing projects on the go. lol. My point is that sometime we can do everything right and the wood has other plans. I’m sure there are rule of thumb methods to follow when it comes to short bows and even bendy handle bows. That will give you more certainty moving forward. The other thing that can be done for shorter bows to extend their draw is sinew. If done right a little does the job of extending your draw length with a measure of safety.
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I kept records on all the short bows I made, then plotted them on a spreadsheet, and found they followed predictable patterns. I found a came up with a formula that works with them and have used that formula to design my flight bows, with good results. Recently I built a simple program that will give you the predicted set a bow will take based off its working limbs dimensions and its draw weight. Im hoping to attach that program to this site as part of this years upgrades. But im happy to help run some numbers for you if you like.
Edit: I forgot to add, the density if the wood is another plug in for the formula. But, you can go off the standard density for any wood on Google. The working limbs dimensions and its density will give you how much draw weight it can handle without set. The draw length is determined by the bend radius, so its thickness is not a factor.
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This little bow is 52” long and bends in the handle. Made by Kenny Cartwright. 1-1/4” wide at fades 1” mid limb and slightly under 3/8” at tips. The bow is 40# @24”!! Impressive little bow. I ask Kenny how far it could be drawn. He told me I don’t know. He has about a 26 inch draw. The bow took very little set. This might mess with your theory sleek. Leave it to Cartwright to pull this off. The bow is Osage by the way. I would love to pull it to 26” with a flight arrow but have not had the opportunity yet. The bow weighs 11.9 oz
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Handle pics
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I don’t know how wide your staves are but if it was me I would probably make a billet bow 67” long.28” draw.
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Based on those dimensions my calculator says it should take .48 inches of set. But I dont know the actual density of the wood, but I calculated it at .9 for a higher quality considering who made it.
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If I wanted to make a replica of one with very similar dimensions, the higher the poundage I make it the shorter the draw length will have to be to prevent it taking loads of set or snapping.
yes, at that width.
consider also that many NA bows were shot at what we would consider today, a very short drawlength. Perhaps with a pinch grip on the arrow.
if you want to shoot longer drawlengths, you need to go wider or longer. longer may be best as
wider would neccesitate a redesign of the handle to decrease the width at the arrow pass to something pratical.
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Sleek, I've got 57" of Wych Elm cut, 1 1/2" at the handle and 1 1/4" at the tips for now, i will potentially have 3" or so of flipped stiff tip. Do you need more info for your calculations?
We'll see how it does but what i'll probaby do if im patient enough is to tiller it to 18" or so and then start taking chrono reading. IF im patient and dillegent enough i think the arrow speed will start to plateau before its starts to drop? Im going to heat treat it though so as I scrape through the heat treated wood and then potentially re heat treat it that might render the reults inaccurate as far as future bows?
If it doesnt seem to be able to take the bend early on i'll sinew it as you suggest Supedav as a practice for that little yew stave.
Selfbowman, i've got plenty of long staves, I just fancy making a short bow
Thanks for all the input everyone, im starting to get my head round this wood bending! certaily is complex
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Well, that didn’t last long! I’ve been trying to get this gas burner heat treating method sorted but it’s being a real pain. There are so many variable to getting it set up I’m finding it hard to work out how long to cook stuff. Also, with small diameter staves there is that gap where the back can get cooked.
I started with these western red cedar slats. Smelt like a sauna until it smelt like a burning sauna. They didn’t last long.
I had the burner on the ground and then realised at ground level there are all sorts of gusts and breezes blowing the glaze around.
Then I lifted the whole thing up and balanced it on various things. (Which is what I was trying to avoid) and then it worked better.
Then I cooked it all the way through!
Ive decrowned it as I wanted to see if it was the hot air getting to the back or if it was cooked through and it looks like a combination of both.
Just cooking the other limb to match now.
I’ll back it, options are; Ash, bamboo, sinew. What do you reckon?don’t think the bamboo will work without deflexing it in the middle.
The last photo is of the decrowned back
. The photo of the burner is just when I set it up, it was about 6” away in the end
I’ll get this thing sorted one day. I think I need a larger burner with more hole, there or four rows, and less flame per each hole.
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Couldn’t help myself, got a slat of black locust cut and planed. Any reason that’s a terrible idea?
I’ve also cut another piece of elm, a little shorter than the original, to continue with the plan. I’ll just not be heat treating it with gas 😂
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Too slow I did it anyway
One heat treated elm/ black locust stave.
I’m have zero investment in this, I might work but I’m not 100% about the backing strip, got a pin knot in it that I didn’t realise until I was flexing up was on the back side of the strip not the belly side as I had intended for it to be. Just got mixed up.
Glueing with cascamite and I scraped the mating surfaces with a hacksaw blade.
I use silicon spray on the bed of the thickness planer, I ran the glue surface over the belt sander and then scraped and then cleaned with isopropyl. Silicone spray is possible the worst thing for a glue joint so I hope I got it all!
The new elm stave is going to need some work to get it straight
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Elm makes some of the best bows. Its not a common wood only because of the Dutch elm disease. Its has an interlocking grain so id wager it makes a fine backing. That silicone spray may be the death of this though, as once its on, nothing removes it. It coats sandpaper when you try to sand it off, only making you grind it deeper into the wood. Perhaps a scraper can scrape off the layer the silicone is one to remove it all the way. Im watching with interest.
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Fingers crossed. Good job I have a lot of faith in cascamite. I used a 24 grit 2.5 meter long belt so it’s a lot of abrasive surface area and very aggressive. The bits that come off are more like saw dust than sanding dust, I think I got it off.
It’s got a stupid amount of reflex, I ended up with more than I expected in the elm stave, and I expected the bl backing to straighten it out when I glued it up but it didn’t much at all
If I can get 30lb at 20” I’ll be very happy with it. Then I’ll probably get too over confident and break it 😂
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Yao could have saved you some trouble going down the rabbit hole of gas burners. Too bad. They didn’t work well for me either. The only things that ended up working for me was a good heat gun which take a lot of time even if you build a holder, and a hot coal bed. The coal bed is the best in my opinion to get a thorough cook. You will benefit from protecting your back with a heat resistant material like insulation or insulating foil perhaps. I used a roll of pink insulation layer out on sticky foil tape that worked. I’ve since moved to roxul the green stuff held in a strip with foil tape and then weight that down as is cooks. I find it doesn’t send glass fiber floaties around in the air like the pink stuff does. Anyway some thing to consider for next time. I also don’t heat treat woods like western or eastern cedars or junipers or yew really. At least not the same as we would with white woods. If doing corrections in twist or alignment fixes use steam. It will make the corrections more safe and drastically reduce your splinter lifts or breaks if done right. Overheating can cause wood to become too brittle and snap. White woods generally take more heat better the other woods even Osage. So long as you take measures to avoid too much wrap around heat effect on the stave white woods can tolerate a lot. I’ve got many hhb, hickory, elm and others in white wood category that have taken darker then normal heat cook over coals and been great shooters. Even bamboo is a great candidate for heat treatment. I know a lot of guys don’t do this but for me I’ve found some noticeable benefit from doing it. If using bamboo for backing only heat treatment on the non rind side. Especially for backing. If using a bamboo backed and bellied bow then there is benefit to doing a treatment on the compression belly side boo only. Some of my fastest bow have been these ones. Anyway lots of info here on the forum. Do some searches I’m sure you’ll see some good examples to give you a good reference. Message me directly too if you like. superdav95@gmail.com
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Sleek, I've got 57" of Wych Elm cut, 1 1/2" at the handle and 1 1/4" at the tips for now, i will potentially have 3" or so of flipped stiff tip. Do you need more info for your calculations?
We'll see how it does but what i'll probaby do if im patient enough is to tiller it to 18" or so and then start taking chrono reading. IF im patient and dillegent enough i think the arrow speed will start to plateau before its starts to drop? Im going to heat treat it though so as I scrape through the heat treated wood and then potentially re heat treat it that might render the reults inaccurate as far as future bows?
If it doesnt seem to be able to take the bend early on i'll sinew it as you suggest Supedav as a practice for that little yew stave.
Selfbowman, i've got plenty of long staves, I just fancy making a short bow
Thanks for all the input everyone, im starting to get my head round this wood bending! certaily is complex
I need to know the dimensions of the working ( bending section) limb so I can calculate its surface area. For example, the bow is 1.5 at the fades, and 1 inch mid limb, tapering evenly to .5 where the tips get stiff, and the limb from fade to where the tip stops bending is 27 inches.
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I’ll get back to you both properly in the near future.
For now, we have a resurrection 😎
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Yao could have saved you some trouble going down the rabbit hole of gas burners. Too bad. They didn’t work well for me either. The only things that ended up working for me was a good heat gun which take a lot of time even if you build a holder, and a hot coal bed. The coal bed is the best in my opinion to get a thorough cook. You will benefit from protecting your back with a heat resistant material like insulation or insulating foil perhaps. I used a roll of pink insulation layer out on sticky foil tape that worked. I’ve since moved to roxul the green stuff held in a strip with foil tape and then weight that down as is cooks. I find it doesn’t send glass fiber floaties around in the air like the pink stuff does. Anyway some thing to consider for next time. I also don’t heat treat woods like western or eastern cedars or junipers or yew really. At least not the same as we would with white woods. If doing corrections in twist or alignment fixes use steam. It will make the corrections more safe and drastically reduce your splinter lifts or breaks if done right. Overheating can cause wood to become too brittle and snap. White woods generally take more heat better the other woods even Osage. So long as you take measures to avoid too much wrap around heat effect on the stave white woods can tolerate a lot. I’ve got many hhb, hickory, elm and others in white wood category that have taken darker then normal heat cook over coals and been great shooters. Even bamboo is a great candidate for heat treatment. I know a lot of guys don’t do this but for me I’ve found some noticeable benefit from doing it. If using bamboo for backing only heat treatment on the non rind side. Especially for backing. If using a bamboo backed and bellied bow then there is benefit to doing a treatment on the compression belly side boo only. Some of my fastest bow have been these ones. Anyway lots of info here on the forum. Do some searches I’m sure you’ll see some good examples to give you a good reference. Message me directly too if you like. superdav95@gmail.com
fantastic, Thanks for all tha info! I had no doubt i was not the only one to try gas burners but i couldnt find any info anywhere, its good to know you had the same issues as myself.
I have also found coals to be vastly superior as a heat source but I am limited on outdoor space and can only do one limb at a time so it becomes a bit of a pain. The next bows i do ill go back to coals.
great tip on the insulation board, i use a lot of small diameter staves as so there is always a big gap where the heat can get around, i'll try some insulation next time!
Im planning on keeping the burner and seeing if i can get an isualted box built to contain the heat and use it as a kiln for heat treating belly lams. I've roasted wood in the oven for appearences and its quite eaxy to get a consitant through colour. would be great to do a 40" piece that could be used for belly billets.
So the orginal bow turn out to be a wild sucess, after laminating with the black locust i got a great little bow. It was pulling 35lbs at 25" and shooting 316 grain arrows at about 161fps average which i was well happy with.
i tillered it almost symmetrical, not realising how much the tiller would change in the hand. I videoed myself shooting it and realised that i needed to weaken the top limb, it ended up being 32 ish lbs at 26" which is great as thats a full draw bow for me.
It had a bit of a twist after glue up and somehow the whole thing ended up bent but not twisted after tillering. No idea what happened there but it dictated to me which side to shoot off.
I barely took the bandsaw marks out of the centre, i didnt realise how much thickness was needed in the middle. The thickness taper caught me out a bit too, ive never made a bow with such wide tips, in hindsite its obvious but i ended up thinning the backing a lot on the outer thirds.
got it painted up with oil paints now so ill have to wait a month or so to shoot it again.
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The second bow was a great success, im dead pleased with it.
That wonky stave i posted earlier strightened up great with dry heat and loads of clamps and wedges. I have it a hot air gun heat treatment/ reflex bend with the slats clamped to the side like Del does. Getting it bending nicely before stringing I cut through a lot of the heat treatment so i gave it a second going over.
Again, even though i cut this one thicker, i still didnt have enough wood in the middle. Both these bows too set in the centre quarter so I need to remember to keep them really thick in the middle.
I couldnt get on top of my tiller on this one soon enough to take any reading of arrow speed at shorter draw lenghts. It was a bit seat of the pants and I got it to behave just as i was reaching 25". i was planning for 45 ish at 24" but it ended up 40 at 25" which is completely fine. It took a bit more set than the last one but its a couple of inches shorter and pulling quite a bit more so again, no biggie. After hald hours shooting it comes back with its tips inline and half- 3/4" reovered in half hour or so. I really liked shooting this bow but i gave it away already!
Its interesting how quickly i went from turning my nose up at these bows becasue i thought they were inelegant and didnt like the design because of the wide tips and straight lines, to them being two of my favourite bows ive made! Books by coveres, eh?
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Here is the first bow that ended up as a laminate.
The photo outside is right after shooting and the one inside is 20 or so mins after. Flat through the middle.
You can see the odd side bend too, it’s got a bit of a twist when strung but you kinda have to look for it
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This is the only other photo I have of it, just after painting. Once it’s dry I’ll get proper photos and full draw pics
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I took almost no photos of making the second one but I took a few videos of pulling it in-hand along the way so I could keep an eye on the asymmetric tiller. This is the only full draw pic I can get.
The other photos I took in the woods after half hour of shooting with the guy I gave it to. It looks like it’s got string follow off to one side of the centre but it’s actually the knot that’s there making it look off, the string follow is dead centre.
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Pics
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Pics