Primitive Archer

Place your entries for the February contest here! You can enter more than once, and the BOM winners will get their name into the end of year giveaway.

Congratulations Robert Pougnier for winning January 2026 bow of the month!

As always, thank you everyone who joined in this month. Without you  there would be no contest. Im looking forward to February!

++ pics

This is my latest bow. It's from the very first Hop hornbeam tree I harvested in 2015. Other staves from this tree were either nice and straight or slightly reflexed.
This one was heavily deflexed and twisted so bad I left it aside in the shed for years thinking maybe some day I would know what to do with it.

Recently I ran out of HHB and since I'd brought this stave with some others down to SC for the winter I thought I'd see what I could make with it. I spent a lot of time steaming out deflex in a form and twist using dry heat and bar clamps for leverage, and finally gave it a bit of reflex in the last 6 inches with the heat gun.

By the time I was done, It had regained some of the natural deflex in the limbs but kept the the reflex I introduced at the tips, giving it a natural setback handle and a gullwinged appearance.
Because of the many cracks in the grain along the back I decided to add very thin strands of long sinew soaked in TB# and a very thin rawhide backing (goat) over it. This was added before tillering and I was hoping this would help the back hold together. It did.

The bottom limb is 3/4 inches shorter so I kept it very slightly stiffer. The top limb has a slight propeller twist which throws the full draw pic off a little bit. It balances real nice in the hand and shoots my favorite of any bow I've made so far. It's my first asymmetric bow too.

During tillering it took about a quarter inch of real set, so now after shooting and unstringing it keeps about 3/4 of an inch of string follow and comes back to a quarter inch shortly later.

Here are the specs.

66 inches ntn, 66 3/4" total. Limbs are 1 3/4" wide at the fades tapering gradually to 1 3/8" mid limb, then evenly down to 1/2" tips with self nocks.
Total mass is 21.5oz before string, wrap and shelf.
Thin goat rawhide backing along whole back, skived at the grip. Bark tanned python skin handle wrap (obtained at ebay estate sale).
The whole bow is tinted with Verolano red pigment in shellac (I wanted to title this Fauxsage orange) and decorations made with vine black and titanium white in shellac.
Finish is spirit varnish and paste wax. 16 strand b55 dacron string.

I took some chronograph readings
I took ten readings with a 530 grain arrow, drawn to 27" and averaged them out. I threw out a couple readings with poor release or under/over draws.  I took a few with a lighter one for fun too.
Results with 530gn were 155 fps on average.
With a 430gn arrow I averaged 164 fps
So nothing extraordinary but not bad and also not surprising based on the natural deflex in the wood.

I made some matching arrows with tulip poplar and dyed turkey feathers. I used the same stain on the arrows and the bow.

Full draw pic last.

Thanks for looking!