Hello bowmakers! I wanted to show my very first bow attempt, it is a bow that i made for larp, so like 20/25 lbs, it is 155cm long, made of very bad wood (pine), but i managed to pick a shaft that has fibers that goes from tip to tip. If is possible I wanted to ask for a tillering check, and if i should I should put something on it (right now i oiled it 3 times).

Thank you very much !

PS: I'm kinda scared to draw full length, I'm doing 1/2 or 3/4, sometimes it makes some noises, and im not sure if i have to remove more material

Anyone who might have advice?
Hope this is okay to post here!

Does anyone here recall a bow that was posted years ago where the bowyer cnc'd or jigsawed a very elaborate pattern in their backing strip? I think it was ERC or something.

I was just thinking about how dicey it can be to say something is or isn't possible when it comes to making bows. There's always someone with a niche skillset or a newbie who didn't read the rule book and goes off script and proves you wrong. I think that's awesome for the record.

As great as The Bowyers Bibles are, they can really lead to some dogmatic thinking.

I have wanted to make a bow since I was probably 10 years old. Finally found the time and over the course of 3 or 4 weekends I managed to make a board bow. I know I probably made a ton of mistakes and it's far from perfect, it took a lot of set in the process, and I may never even shoot it but im super proud of myself. Im not really looking for criticism or critiques, just trying to share my sense of achievement. Im going to try to learn from the process and make a version 2 next, and maybe even try my hand at some arrows so I can see if it holds up!

For thise interested, it's ~63 inches from nock to nock and pulls ~40lbs at ~26 inches. The handle is ~1.25 inches and tapers in the last ~12 inches of each limb to ~5/8 inch.

After trying to follow the advice from my last post, here it is now. Feels like it plays nicer and bends more in the outers than before, though I am not entirely sure if the next steps are to keep doing that as there seems to be a near hinge in the top (right) limb at the 2/3 out mark. Am I going in the correct direction?

Looking to get into bowery, so naturally I had to start by building my shave horse ! I'm a joiner but I don't have many tools at my disposal yet (long story), so I just bought a couple beech boards and built it with hand tools, except the hand drill (thankfully). It's a rather fancy wood but it's tough and beautiful. The finish is not perfect because I had splits while drilling, saw marks and such, but it's mostly sanded enough to be soft under the touch and good enough for working with it.

I have a few measurements oddities when I compare to the finished product of Greenhill Forge, I guess I made a couple mistakes. Ideally the back rest should be closer, and the third foot of the bench should be a little further away, because it actually blocks the axle if I use any other setting.

Well now I just got to get a diamond grit stone to re-flatten my sharpening stone so I can sharpen my drawknife. After that I can finally get myself a good ash stave and start carving the medieval English (or should I say Welsh) longbow of my dreams !

Here's the video of the design by Greenhill Forge if you wish !

Hi all!

I’m a prospective bowyer, fascinated with all of your beautiful creations and determined to make my own. I’ve watched many videos, gone over the wiki, been subscribed for some time, and am generally just very excited to start. I just got my first board, rift sawn red oak, and I think it’s alright. I plan on backing it anyway.

Here’s the problem — I’m a student with an extremely limited budget that gets used up on food alone every month, and I have no tools. I understand that I could do the vast majority of the work with a farrier’s rasp and some sandpaper, or a draw knife and a card scraper, but I’ve been struggling to find any appropriate tools in thrift stores and yard sales around me.

So, how should I start my collection of tools? Do you think I could do it with a paring knife and sandpaper? I’ve whittled wood swords that way before

Sorry for the long post.
TLDR: I’m broke, how should I get the minimum tools for a board build?

Thanks

Hi, I'm starting to build my 4th bow and I would love some advice. I have only ever made bows with drawknives, spokeshaves, and rasps. I want to try making one with a bandsaw to speed things up. Any tips for a beginner?

Trying to make some whistling arrowheads with finally some succes. Though exact details are still hard to nail down

I thought they were just superficial drying cracks, but these cracks really opened up badly during the steaming and bending of the recurves.

I left the tips pretty wide before recurving so probably at the very tip I can just use the very limited width I have left if I cut off both sides, but that leaves me with very little space for a string groove on the contact recurve.

What would you do?

Add a string bridge? Glue the three sections together? Wrap them? Cut off the recurve and make a shorter bow?

The plan is to build a Black Locust recurve flatbow pulling 55# at 28" from this. Its about 66" in length along the bow tip to tip.

so basically, I'm about to start making a bow using Purpleheart, this is my first time using this wood and my 1st time making a bow entirely on my own but 3rd time making a bow, if we include working with others so I'm not entirely clueless as to what i'm doing but I am still fairly new and i was curious about 2 things:

1. can you add an inlay to the limbs of a recurve bow

2. what effect would this have on the stability and durability on the bow

I just think having a purple bow with a gold inlay or something would just look really cool

I am still a beginner and so I'd like to build in more margin for error. A neighbor had to take down a hickory tree and let me have a massive 80" stave with a pristine back from smoothly removing the bark. Would you say this design is reasonable for a 50-55# recurve, potentially used for deer hunting (we do NOT have thick brush where I'd be hunting, if I even do got hunting):

Stave: 80" Hickory, extra long at 72" tip-to-tip for the actual working bow, leaving 4" of "safety wood" on each end to handle the recurve bends, to be trimmed later.

Design: Wide, flat-limbed semi-pyramid with rigid static recurves (I have no idea how to tiller recurve tips)

Handle: 12" total center section. 4" grip (1" wide x 1.25" deep) with 4" fades tapering smoothly out to the full limb width. (This is a part I'm just not sure about. Should the fades be more like 2"? Should I put the arrow rest at the exact center and then design the handle around that, or should it be more like 1.25" above the center of the bow?)

Limbs: 2" wide from the end of the fades down to mid-limb, then tapering evenly down to 1/2" at the tips.

Recurves: Planning to steam-bend the last 10" of the stave around a homemade ~7-inch radius plywood bending form then trim off the last ~4 inches to have some buffer against the tips splitting. Unfortunately I haven't made a form yet, so I'm first going to try to find a 6-7" radius circular object to use as a guide.

The brush where I'd hunt is not very dense so I'm not super worried about it being too large, my priority is more to give a lot of room for error, minimize set, and reduce risk of compression fractures with some heat treating.

Is this reasonable? Would it be better to do smaller fades and/or just flip the tips a little?

Thank you for your advice in advance!

Man this shits hard. Deer Hunting with a selfbow on the ground, playing the wind, highly pressured public land where everyone is using crossbows… but there is something that feels right being in the woods with a bow you made

Me dio 100 libras a 32 pulgadas, mide 2 metros

Los nocks son de encino entintado color negro

Some of the most impressive bows I've seen online are the rare ones that have a belly lam of some high performance material -- for example horn -- covering a large section but not quite the full area of the working limb on the belly. For example, these ones:

https://selfbow.ch/product/turbo-longbow-yew-edition-35-28/

https://selfbow.ch/product/the-take-down-turbo-50-28/

These bows (and this bowyer's work) blows my mind. I understand the lamination is bending itself, but with the horn lamination terminating on the belly, and different stiffness / resistance to compression between the horn and rest of the belly, I would think that would create a stress point and it would delaminate, similar to how when you glue a riser on a board bow but don't add extra thickness under the riser, or crush the wood at the termination point.

Maybe Simon himself is on this forum and can answer, don't know, but I'm interested to see if anyone else here has attempted this and any tips and tricks if so.

Cheers

Not named after the superhero, named after Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H because it prevents racism

After 7 times of failing, i finaly got a good bow. The lil guy is 175 cm and work pretty well

Can someone come in dm for teach me some things about bow crafting it would be very nice.

The arrow taking longer to stabilize after bending around the bow - is this just a fact of life shooting selfbows? I’ve messed with arrow tuning on all my bows trying to get that perfect arrow flight and I can get arrows to fly great once they recover from the paradox. But the stabilization happens at about 7 or 8 yards or so and I haven’t been able to improve on that. Am I just used to shooting center-shot bows and this is what archery is like when the arrow has a lot of flexing to do once it’s released? Or is there something in the design that I’m repeating that is causing problems?

I just made this self bow rough cutout and I’m shaping it currently but I got to the handle and it has a crack on it and the bottom of it doesn’t look great, obviously I’m really new to this but I don’t really know where to go from here anyone know if it’s done for?

i have a bow im making right now and its 48 inches. i was wondering if adding a recurve could allow me to pull it back ~25 inches?

First time trying this style and absolutely love it

Shoots faster harder and more accurate than anything else I've tried

One piece of ash (offcut from cabinetry/millwork)

60# @20"

52" Ntn

Also spun and made the arrows altho I plan on making some shorter with self nocks and 2 feathers

Been shooting off the hand (not feeling it actually touching the knuckle) however I've noticed the flights or nocks have started chewing up the wooden handle section

Is a leather wrap the only solution? Or any other ideas, I love the simplicity of this bow so reluctant to add extras if I can avoid it but want to keep it in good condition

Havnt finished it yet, may heat treat again and oil

Also any advice on natural ways to blacken the white color of the ash

Cheers

It is Elm wood, I am hoping to get a self bow out of this log. Any tips are much appreciated. I painted the end grains after splitting it into staves and removed the outer bark. Am now letting it dry.