Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: superdav95 on November 25, 2022, 05:20:06 pm
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I’ve got a few bows on the go but this one is nearest completion and I’m undecided how to finish it up. It’s a very nice shooting bow zero handshock! And just a joy to shoot. I want to do it justice by decorating it nicely. As it is now it’s stained red and black with dye the several coats of true oil. I’ll end up doing few more coats with wet sanding in between to get that mirror shine I’m hoping in the end. This is a target bow and just pleasure shooting. I was thinking of doing a golden leaf painted onto the red back like ivy or something like tree branches maybe. Also had my eye on a Celtic style pattern stencils perhaps up the limbs as an outline then paint it in. I’m thinking some gold and black paint to do this pattern on the back to make it pop. Any ideas as to what paint of medium to use for this? I’ll be covering it all when done with more coats of true oil to seal it in. I was even contemplating adding some thin leather too but don’t want to add the weight. I’ve still got to add leather for the handle still and a bit of ray skin for my arrow pas yet so would ideally like to keep weight close to what it is now. Any ideas for me on paint or patterns??? Here’s some pics of it now. Thanks
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Nice looking bow. That one has to be a hard shooter.
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Thanks bassman! Ya it’s built for speed. I’m hoping to get this bow done and post some full draw pics and video clips of it shooting. What you think about the paint I should use?
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Golden leaf would look beautiful I think.
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be still and it will come to you :)
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be still and it will come to you :)
What Brad said
I will leave the paint up to you, but I don’t think it needs anything to make it stand out. That unstrung profile is all the looks I need. Well that and the braced and full draw.
Looks like a fast one
Bjrogg
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I'm far from an artist so my opinion and 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Anyway, I think Celtic stenciling in gold would look pretty neat on those limbs.
Great looking bow, by the way. The profile does look like a screamer. I'm sure whatever you choose will do it justice. Can't wait for the finished project.
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I would look at all of your options first,which I'm sure you are doing.Sometimes doing something different is always tempting.
In the end it'll reflect what you think is important.
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Thanks guys for the ideas and support. Great community here. I’ll post it soon.
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Looks great now .
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That’s a beautiful bow Dave! Looks great!
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Thanks guys! Lookin forward to putting finishing touches on this one
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Looks great! Jawge
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Couple update pics on this little bow. Still more to do but getting closer.
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Awesome Dave. Looking sweet right now. I’m a less is more kinda guy and I’d stop right there but, I’m sure you already know what you want next. Can’t wait to see what the finished product looks like.
Beautiful right now for sure.
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Your artistic touch definitely compliments that bow. It's looking really nice.
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Thanks mike!
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Your artistic touch definitely compliments that bow. It's looking really nice.
Thankyou sir very kind of you to say. My wife helped me a bit with the layout of the vines and leaves. I will wrap the handle and put arrow pass on as soon as I get my ray skin in that I’m waiting on.
Cheers
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I like it.I know it's hard to leave something alone.
It has a rosemaling look to it.
I attended a rosemaling display celebration once in NE Iowa.
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Nice bling.
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Nice looking bow all around. Got some serious reflex to it. Like the paint. I always enjoy trying to come up with ideas on how to finish off a bow.
Mike
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I like it.I know it's hard to leave something alone.
It has a rosemaling look to it.
I attended a rosemaling display celebration once in NE Iowa.
Ain’t that the truth. I’ve been struggling to know how to finish this bow. I got to the point of it being sinewed with a few layers and letting it dry to covering with thin rawhide and figured I’d call it done. But it just looked incomplete to me so I kept going with adding the stain. Still not felling like it was done. My wife suggested something simple and elegant and she drew out the design on paper for me to copy. I debated it a few days and decided I liked it so I went ahead with it. This has opened up another idea with this bow now to do some different thing regarding the handle. Gonna put some ray skin and salmon skin leather wrap I think next. I’ll post pics when all done. I looked into the rasmaling and it’s fascinating stuff. Sorta similar to what my wife came up with but rosmaling is more busy. Thanks again Ed.
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Hey gang. I’m on wait with my current build to cure so I had some time to put finishing touches on this bow. I added the binding wraps made from ostrich leg leather. Made a proper string endless loop. I had to make a jig for this one. It’s tricky to string up but worth it. It shoots like a dream and super fast! It’s bad weather here right now but I’ll put up a video of me shooting it with some full draw pics. Here is a short video clip. Thanks for following along
Video clip
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hE2UaNiNJME3GACZ6
Cheers
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More pics…
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Last couple pics…
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That is a very, very nice bow Dave.
Looks really fast. And well behaved
Bjrogg
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Ok do I understand this to be bamboo laminate or bamboo with the nodes on the belly with laminates then sinew ? Or am I completely wrong about it all.🤠 it’s beauty no matter ! I might need to send you an arrow.🤠
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That is a very, very nice bow Dave.
Looks really fast. And well behaved
Bjrogg
Thankyou bj. Very kind.
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Ok do I understand this to be bamboo laminate or bamboo with the nodes on the belly with laminates then sinew ? Or am I completely wrong about it all.🤠 it’s beauty no matter ! I might need to send you an arrow.🤠
Its both actually. It’s sinew backed on the node side (power fiber side) which is the back on this bow. The belly is a boo lam also using toasted lam strip consisting of outer power fibers side. So essentially power fibers on belly and back glued together then sinewed on back. The belly was made smooth of its nodes and stained black for esthetics. It’s very fast bow and absolutely dead in the hands.
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So double stretchy back with extra light core. Thats interesting ! I bet it is fast!
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I forgot to post a full draw pic on this build. Here are some stats. It is 42lbs at 28”. It’s 58 1/2” ttt and just under 58” ntn. It spits out a 9gpp arrow at 185-188 fps. It is a bamboo backed and bellied bow with a few layers of sinew covered with thin roo rawhide and stained with leather dye and painted up. All sealed with several layers tru oil. The black stained belly is also bamboo lam. Leather wrap handle with some cork for palm swell shaping. Red dyed Ostrich leg leather on the fades area. I used black sting ray for the arrow pass on both sides. I played around with the brace height a bit prior to settling on a endless loop string in red and black. Felt it shoots best at lower then typical brace. Thanks for looking guys.
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Wow, beautiful bow! Love the color scheme and paint job too. Really nice
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Looks great Dave and those are good speeds also.
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Thanks gents.
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That is a truly lovely bow! Very, very well done!
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I've made a bamboo backed bamboo belly bow with an osage core once. That's a tough build you pulled off. I got to ask though, why did you feel the sinew was needed?
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That is a truly lovely bow! Very, very well done!
Thankyou sir. It was a fun build.
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I've made a bamboo backed bamboo belly bow with an osage core once. That's a tough build you pulled off. I got to ask though, why did you feel the sinew was needed?
Thankyou sleek. When I initially finished this bow it was just a boo backed and bellied bow at about 38lbs. It shot just fine and was gonna just leave it as it was but my curiosity took over and thought why not! It spit out an 400 grain arrow in the high 170’s. I added about 60grams of sinew to the back and then added the thin kangaroo hide over that. Then I thought I was done. I just couldn’t leave it alone. I kept adding to it little decorations and such. So it didn’t need the sinew but had some on hand and was more or less just curious on what it would do to the bow if anything. It did improve performance some too. It also retained its reflex with added sinew. It’s speed increased with the added sinew by a few fps. It pulls around 40lbs now or just a hair over that. Got consistent reading in high 180’s fps with 10gpp arrow. Was pretty happy with that. As a side note the idea of Osage core sounds like a great idea. On this one I toasted the belly lam fairly well on both sides to harden it up a bit. I did another bow like this one too without any bindings that was glued together with handle power lam of black walnut and thin wedges lams at the v notched tips at each end. This enabled a strong glue up that didn’t need the bindings. This bow came in at 45lbs and also shot in the high 180’s at around 9gpp with no sinew. Anyway I ramble on. Thanks for looking. Here’s some pics of that bow similar to this one.
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Well color me impressed. It makes sense why you added the sinew then. Glad you got some positive gains from it. That's good knowledge to keep on hand. I also heat treated my bamboo belly but I did it by putting the two belly lams ( one for each limb ) into an oven and baking them at 400 until I chickened out, I mean, u til they were golden brown. That bow is narrow but way to stout.
Id not say osage core is a GOOD idea, it's just kinda how it happened for me. A lighter weight wood would certainly be a better option. I had a bow I didn't like so I boo backed it. It turned to be a dog, so I decided to grind the belly down and do a boo belly. It's so heavy now I just let it sit in the closet. The bow is too narrow and the recurves made it unstable. I had to cut the recurves down to keep them from twisting, but of course, that made it even stronger. I think it's around 60@26? I prefer 45@26.
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Yup that’s a puller for sure. Not sure I’d be able to pull much more then that now these days. FYI. There is an interesting study that was done in the heat treatment of bamboo for structural strength for building and such that was done years ago by someone over in Asia I believe. They also recorded moe and moisture content too if I recall. The take away I got from this study was that they found that there was not much benefit over 180 degrees for heat treatment of boo. I’ve done some of my own crude in comparison tests and found that anything higher then 200 I was breaking limbs or having more failures as the wood was too brittle. When I heat treat my limbs I use only radiant heat source as well and found positive results vs heat gun forced air. The radiant heat element worked nice to more control a slow even cook on the belly and back sides. You’ll notice that only a slight Color change occurs and moisture escapes the end cuts and leaves a hard discolouration almost sugary like substance at the end. There are lignins and pectins naturally in the boo that harden up and transform it into something that is already good in tension even better and better in compression then before. You’ll find that a simple fingernail test will prove this too after heat treating the belly. You don’t want much Color change on the back power fiber side that will be under tension. Just my thought on this. Compression side is fine to toast a bit more if putting boo belly lam on your bow. These bows are essentially no core bamboo bows with power fibers on both belly and back. I broke a lot of these testing the limits of various heat treats and thicknesses. Bamboo is crazy strong stuff and I feel I’m just scratching the surface with its potential. Getting the thickness of the lams down is the biggest thing to get a shootable bow. My first few lam attempts were all way over heavy and hardly bending limbs. The glue up adds so much more then expected. My first successful boo back and belly lam bow was a challenge. I ended up with a decent shooter but in the end still had to scrape so much of hardened belly lam off just to get the thing strung up. My thicknesses were tapered too. From handle area thickness was If I recall I started at around 2.5mm thickness at highest point on the boo for both belly and back slats. The belly slat tapered slightly toward the tip starting about mid limb to about 1.5mm. These are rough numbers I’ll have to see if I can dig up my written down stuff if your interested. Cheers
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Amazing work, BRAVO!!
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Shooting those speeds at that poundage is impressive at the very least.
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Amazing work, BRAVO!!
Thanks jbl. Much appreciated
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Shooting those speeds at that poundage is impressive at the very least.
Thanks bassman211. Yes I was surprised at those speeds being what they are. I blew up a few along the way here to get the speeds I ended up with in the end. All worth it for sure. Thanks again.