Primitive Archer

Quote from: Bob Barnes on February 03, 2026, 01:26:53 pm

What happened with this bow Dave?  Thanks.

I still have this bow but never finished it.  It was way too overbuild and wasn’t happy with the sinew on this one.  It was a good learning experience anyway.

Hate to hear it... maybe you can thin the horn some more and reduce things to drop weight and salvage it some day.   

  I played around with bamboo bows just a bit now and then. Like you, I did the 5 pc with Syhas. I had often wondered whether pressure cooking might make them more bendable, but a large high-pressure cooker isn't really a practical solution. Harvesting and bending when green is a practical solution.

very well done!
I have a couple of them in the making.... in six years

My progression on bow making is to bandsaw out a blank, I could do the same with a draw knife and horse shoe rasp but I have a bandsaw. It is very important to draw out a perfect bow pattern on the back of your stave before you start cutting it down and don't cut inside your lines, I trim to the lines with less agressive rasp or a large half round file. I draw out side lines on the sides of every limb as well before I start tillering, the roughed out the stave is too thick to bend.

I use the circle method to lay out a bow after I draw a centerline.

I use this;



To achieve this;



Handle layout with circles;



The sidelines keep your limbs exactly the same, I almost never have a limb dogleg to the side after I layout and cut to my sidelines. I start at some random depth at the end of the fade, usually 5/8" for osage, a little more for white woods, I drop the depth 1/16" every 6" until I get to 1/4" and carry that depth to the tip. I leave my bow bellies rounded to start, they flatten out a lot during the tillering process but are still rounded for the last 8" or so. If I have too much poundage when I cut the limbs down to my sidelines I drop the lines another 1/16" except for the 1/4" measurement and start the process over. My limb tips are never less than 1/2" thick with a 1/4" sideline and 1/4" of rounded wood above the line.

This limb tip is very narrow but deep in thickness. Wood is 7 times stronger in depth than width so you can make your limb tips very narrow, just leave them thicker.



This tip looks scary thin but it is 1/2" thick and plenty strong, the extra groove is for a bow simple parachute cord bow stringer.



Sidelines to keep everything uniform and controllable, free hand wood removal without a plan just doesn't work.



I use a rasp to get the limbs bending at which point I switch to a scraper and follow the scraper with various grits of sand paper for the final tillering. The key to success is NOT to get in hurry. The longest part of the process for me is the shoot-in (several hundred arrows) and the final tillering adjustments with sandpaper and an occasional light pass with a scraper.

Headed to the cabin this morning, hope yall all have a good one, the weather is supposed to warm a bit so maybe can start a little clean up, I will be limping around doing what I can.  Life is Good.
 Pappy