Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Lehtis on June 19, 2017, 01:12:25 pm
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Last autumn I succeeded to negotiate an English well know bowyer to sell me some Osage Orange billets for three bows. He himself is making real English longbows according to their heritage and bamboo is grassfiber for him (relates to glassfiber...) so I promised to make at least one with hickory back. After some thinking I decided to make one with bamboo back and two with hickory and make one of these to Take Down. All have Ipe stripe as core, water buffalo horn nocks and arrow plate, leather handle, dacron string with one loop and several coats of TruOil. Because of I made these together I also do present these together.
The bows in the pics from top to down:
Bamboo-Ipe-Osage: 71,3" ntn, 71lbs@26" ja 79lbs@28"
Hickory-Ipe-Osage: 72,0" ntn, 70lbs@26" ja 78lbs@28"
Hickory-Ipe-Osage TD: 72,6" ntn, 71lbs@26" ja 79lbs@28"
Speed test results with my standard POC target arrows, weight 529 gr (34,3 g) and draw length 27,7" measured to the back of the bows:
B-I-O: 161 fps (49,0 m/s)
H-I-O: 156 fps (47,6 m/s)
H-I-O TD: 161 fps (49,0 m/s)
As a comparison I shot the same time my Estonian made Falco Force Carbon LB (65lbs@28", 68" ntn, 179 fps = 54,5 m/s) and my previously fastest ELB stylish bow, tiny, slim and light Bamboo-Purpleheart-Cumaru-Bulletwood bow (68,4" ntn, 79lbs@28", 161,4 fps = 49,2 m/s). As you can see this tiny one is still just and just the fastest of my self made bows.
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The nocks also...
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Nice clean look and lines
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fine job on those :)
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Nice bows!
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Some very fine work Lehtis.Congratulations!!!Sort of reminds me of the type of bows Howard hill used to shoot in his day.
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Nice work, Lehtis. And decent draw weight!
Perhaps my eyes are getting old but the nocking point in third bow seems to be a bit too high
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Very nice!
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Nice bows there! You have triplets!
He shouldn't have been too hard to convince, if you saw the amount of osage that man has.....phew...there isn't much left for the rest of us here in England!
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Handsome bows
Del
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Those are classy.
Great accent stripe.
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Beautiful Triplets, very nice work on all of them.
Pappy
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All those bows look awesome, cheers
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Very nice, Lethis. I like the way you used the full thickness belly so you didn't have to add a handle riser.
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Thanks to all for your kind words!
To Simson: The high-looking nocking point may be partly result in the picture from the angle I´m canting the bow. Also, the nocking points are still temporary until the strings have finally settled ( i.e = stretched and timber´s hitch tightened ) and then I´ll tie permanent ones. I´ve pre-stretched those strings with 140 lbs ( ca. 63 kg ) weight at least over night and that seems good to tame stretchy dacron. First time in my bowyer career I´m now going o use featherless arrow to fine tune the nocking point position. (Note: Dacron is must in IFAA´s Historical Bow Class; no more modern nor historical/natural string materials allowed.)
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Those look great. Classic.
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Great looking bows! How do you find the difference between performance on hickory vs bamboo?
Cheers,
George
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Wow, not sure how I missed these. All three look top notch. Excellent craftsmanship! :BB
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those looks very good, great job
Hans
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To shofu: Not shot through chrony yet but that´s in plans. The bamboo backed one feels slightly faster than the other two.
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very interesting! please post more info if you learn anything - that is a great way note differences/similarities!
Cheers,
George
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Jep, the weather here seems to stay rainy so I think I´ll visit to our hall and chrony there this week.
P.S. I´ve updated the specs in my first message after some more test shooting.
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excellent work...stunning
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Speed test results added in the opening message under the dimensions of the bows.
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Three very fine bows, well done. Interesting that they are all within a few fps through the chrono.
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To mwosborn: Yes, that surprised me too.
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Last week I used this Hickory backed Ipe-Osage TD bow on four days out of five in IFAA´s European Championship competition in Hohegeiss, Germany. Two Field Rounds, one Hunter and Animal round. The first Field Round, starting round, I shot with the bamboo backed sister bow. End result: Silver.
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The story continues... After returning from Germany and been shooting with that bamboo backed bow all autumn I found starting failure point on the first knot from the handle on the lower limb. So, the bow was forced to retire. In another chain I presented a build-along of two TD bows which, unfortunately, both failed. The aim was to make easy-to-travel-by-airplane-bows. Now I decided to cancel the retirement of this bow and I'm going to fix that small failure with glue and wrap string over that spot and seal it with epoxy. Then, after some test shooting and if the bow works fine, I'll cut the bow and convert it to TD. This time I'm trying to avoid damaging the fibers of the bamboo back to have better possibilities to have properly working bow. More in the coming couple of weeks.
By the way, the two other bows from this triplet are still working fine and I'm primarily using them now.
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Fast looking bows, love the Racing Stripes.
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Great looking bows! Happy New Year,
Phil
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The bow cut and the connector pieces fitted. Cutting to angle should give more solid contact in the joint. I´ll file the brass connector down to the shape after the resin has hardened.
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Very nice!
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"Forced-to-Retire" Bamboo-Ipe-Osage reborn as a TD-bow (carriage bow) and back at work. That tiny starting splinter superglued and tied, TD-connectors installed and covered with leather and the bow TruOiled several times. Scale shows now 78lbs@28" and 73lbs@26". Some pics added; full draw as in the original full length format in the beginning of this chain.