Making a bow

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TheMany

Squire
I've always wanted to make a proper bow. I made one with a friend when i was little but it was crap, just a straightish branch :razz: I really want to make a proper one.

I'm probably gonna follow this guild:
http://www.primitiveways.com/sapling_bow.html

Anyone made a bow before? Any tips? I know there are plenty of weapon enthusiasts here.
 
I am an archer myself.

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Bows are a dangerous thing to play with if you do not know what you do. If the bow breaks during drawing it will slam right on your face and you may get badly injured. If the arrow breaks during shooting, (they also need the right degree of flexibility, but not too much! and the adequate balance between bow power and weight at the tip) you'll end up with an arrow inside your arm or your hand.

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An accident due to an arrow breaking at the moment of shooting

Bows need to be done with the right wood. Need to withstand the full drawing of the string (from your left fist right to your face) without risk of the wood breaking. The wood needs to be strong, flexible and the bow needs to be constructed in a way that absorb as much vibration from the limbs as possible (Otherwise, all this vibration will go straight to your left arm and you may end up with serious injures in your arm's joints). The string needs to be done with a very good material with a very short elasticity and a high modulus.

Today strings are made of dacron filaments, and hunting bows (traditional recurved or longbows) have a power of arround 50-60 pounds and are made with a fine mixture of excellent woods and sintethic carbon laminates and fiberglass. English Medieval longbows were made just with wood and had a power of 120 pounds!!! this means raising with your right arm a chap of 60 Kgs... with each arrow you shoot. If you are not trained you may hurt yourself. (even with a 50 pound bow, you may hurt yourself if you do not have the adequate muscles trained to do archery). .

I have never even considered making a bow myself, but in the archery forums, many people have tried to do a bow themselves and most of them concurr that in order to make a safe bow you need patience, endurance to take the several failures, the perseverance to do the several trials it will take to make a rudimentary bow and at the end, will not be never good enough as the bows made by real artisans who manufacture perfect replicas of medieval bows as this one.

In any case, if you still go for it, make sure that you learn the adequate technique to shoot a bow. Protect yourself (arm, glove, and security glasses just in case the bow decide to fall on you) Make your arrow long enough (30 inches at least) and never never equip your arrow with a barbed hunting tip. Use the conical clasical tip for target shooting. (in case of accident, there is less risk of ending up with a permanently messed limb).

Make sure that before you shoot an arrow, you follow the same security advices you would follow as when firing a gun. (a target that will absorb the hit whithout bouncing it in any direction, target located in a place that will ensure that if you miss the target the arrow will dig itself in a land mound, etc, far away from other people, etc...).

Also, make sure that you do not break any local rule. for example, in most european countries, an bow is considered a weapon (even a self made one) and you can only shoot it in secured areas and you need to own the preceptive licenses to own and shoot a bow.
 
To make a bow is to try a craft that will bring you much frustration and grief. I have made a succesful longbow, several short flatbows and one recurved bow all with the use of wood and glue and other primitive materials.
My first piece of advice is not to follow the guide. It says many correct things such as what kind of woods to use and how to select them, but others are problematic for beginners or incorrect. For example, using the bark as the side of the bow to be compressed. It is the heartwood(the stuff in the center) that should be compressed when making a D shaped bow, his method would lead to breakages. Secondly. I would never recommend any beginner to try to make a D shaped bow. If this is your first real attempt you should make a flatbow as D shaped bows require a lot of practice, patience, and knowledge. I would recommend trying to find out how to make a flatbow first, I used to know some links, but unfortunately, don't anymore.
I have other issues with what the guide says. I would recommend buying your wood at a lumber yard and simply being careful that there are no knots, that the grain is consistent along the length of the piece of wood(with a denser grain being far more desirable). This wood should already be dry enough to work with, his recommendation of one month is far less than was used historically(staves for English longbows were usually dried for a year) and far less than I would recommend.
Now on to general warnings and/or tips about bows. Never use them when they are cold, make certain that they are fairly warm, if not, they will snap. If they are too warm, on the other hand, they will have little power. While working on a bow be careful not to draw it too far back, that can crack it, sometimes without you even noticing until it is too late. Let it remain strung for three days before you do a full draw on it, to be safe. Never let the string snap back into place after you draw it, always let it back slowly and gently, unless of course, you are shooting and arrow.
Hopefully this helps and remember, it is very frustrating, so if your first five attempts don't work, don't be surprised. Just remember to be cautious, careful, and gentle with your bows, while making them and in the early stages of their use.
 
I loved reading the post by Kronus. What I got out of it is don't try making a real bow unless you are ready to be an apprentice to someone who knows what he is doing because it is a skilled craft that takes many years to learn. And I liked the pictures. I also enjoyed looking at the link pictures of the replicas.
 
Thanks kronus, i would of cause be totally amazed if any of my bows did any damage at all, well actually i would probably be screaming. I will be very careful, those pictures look nasty.

Is an overbuilt bow the same as a flat bow? Could i try making a overbuilt bow first?

Thanks Capt, do you know any good books? I mean how did you make you first bow?
 
TheMany

My advice is that you attend to an archery center near your site and you take a couple hours lessons on how to correctly shoot arrows. Usually in the lessons it is included the rental of the bow for the practice. This will serve you for several purposes.

- You'll learn the adequate techniques of how to correctly draw and shoot a bow without taking injures in the process...and you'll also learn all the basic safety rules involved in archery practice. Nevertheless be prepared to suffer the "learner punishment"as it is called. Despite what instructors advice, while you learn, you tend to put your elbow in the way of the string. Then string hits your left arm until you learn to adequately position the elbow to avoid this to happen.
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Hit of the string over the arm protection with a 60 lbs bow.
This is why archers wear protections on the left arm, nevertheless, until you learn the right technique, the string still tends to hit just the part of the arm that is not covered by the protection :evil: You do not need a powerful bow to get a painful "souvenir" like this one, just a minimum force of 18 pounds will do nicely to create the effect of the photo if you put your elbow in the way of the string a few times during a shooting session. Don't worry when you get the firts string hits, we have all been there and there is nothing like pain to learn to position your elbow correctly.

- You'll learn wich is the drawing power you have, so you'll know how many pounds are the adequate for your bow

- Most important of all, -despite how idiotic it sound- you'll realize of what is a bow. There is nothing than the sensation of actually shooting one to realize of the finer points of the task that is ahead of you.

I hope it helps.

If you can not attend a seminar where they teach you the right way of how to build a bow, I would suggest that if you have the chance, check with any medieval reenactment group near your site. Most likely you will find someone in the group who is an archer and there is a high chance that he uses a replica or he has actually made his own bow.

The obvious alternative is to go to any archery related forum in the internet, there you will find a lot of advice about archers that are making (or have done) their own bows and can guide you.

http://www.archery-forum.com/
http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/
http://www.3dshoots.com/forums/
http://p206.ezboard.com/bbownetarcheryforum33726

The list is endless, just try typing "archery bow forum" in your google and see :wink:

It is not extrange to find threads under the title "making a bow"

Regarding your question about overbuilt vs flat.

Flat requires a more refined building technique and quite some wood lamination processes. On the opposite, the drawing is nicer and the tips are less loaded and are more stable on firing
Overbuilts (D cross section) are heavier and have more vibrations, but are much easier to build, nevertheless, normally the resulting bow requires a high drawing force (> 50 lbs) which makes it unfit for unprepared/untrained archers.

I stress the point that a bow is not a toy. An arrow fired from a humble 40 lbs bow will cleanly go trough a young deer at +35 meters. (120 lbs medieval long bows did go cleanly trough the knights' armours at excess of 60-70 mts distance!).
 
Very good advice from Kronus, I certainly recommend following it. With regards to how I learned, I learned from websites and reading books and magazine articles on medieval warfare and weapons. I never read it, but The Bowyer's Bible is supposedly great for beginner's making bows. Here is a link for buying it at amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/s...dex=blended&field-keywords=The+Bowyer's+Bible.
If you would like I could PM you with simple instructions on making a very simple self bow, that should at least get you started. I have unfortunately, failed in finding the websites that helped me, though to be honest most of them needed to be selectively perused as some of the things they instructed only led to kindling that could have been a bow.
 
that would be really helpful thanks. Yeah i've heard that the bowyers bible is pretty much a must for any novice.
 
Laurence of Arabia said:
**** Kronus, that looks painful. I'm starting archery in april, any tips? How to avoid that injury for example....

If you use your fingers to shoot the arrow, when you release the arrow the string does not go straight back to its original position. On the contrary, the pressure of the fingers releasing the string actually makes the string bounce from side to side. This is an oscillating horizontal movement, as it pushes the arrow forward. The string then hits your arm and causes minor to serious pain

Check in this AVI video an excellent arrow release by an olimpic champion. Notice the side-to-side motion of the string and the stress it applyes on a carbon arrow making it go out of the bow, flexing from side to side (remember that on another post I did mention that the arrows HAD to have some flexibility?) Normally, as we are not as finely trainedas an olimpic champion, the side-to-side motion of the string is much more exagerated than on this clip.

here you can see a movie of the string hitting the bow arm on a bounce (not directly). If it happens directly on the arrow release, it is when severe injures are caused. As it is, it is just a painful reminder.

This problem is caused by locking the left arm, in the belief that this will
(a) hold the bow steadier
or
(b) get a longer draw.
Actually, (b) is true enough, but any benefit is thoroughly outweighed by the disadvantage and the resulting shooting speed loss of the string hitting the elbow.

The solution? Relax the left arm a bit and rotate the elbow slightly clockwise, so it sticks out to the left a bit. You'll probably find that it's harder to stay at full draw in this position, but your muscles will soon adapt to the increased strain.

Nevertheless, This injuries are also avoidable by the use of Armguards

When shooting a longbow or recurve, as the string is released, it may strike the forearm of the arm holding the bow. This sharp slap is very common for longbows and for understrung bows and may leave a serious bruise or cut on an unprotected arm. An armguard, also called a bracer, is worn to prevent injury and to help the string slide smoothly along the arm. Modern armguards generally come in either a forearm-only style
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7 inch armguard
or a full-arm style that also protects your upper arm.
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12 inch armguard.

Whether you need just a single point of protection, protection for your entire lower arm, or a full-arm bracer depends on the type of bow, the bowstring, how you release, your body position, and the holding position of your bow arm. Since the bracer has a secondary use in helping to prevent your clothing from being caught in the string it may also depend on what you wear to shoot.

Most bracers are, and were of leather. A modern equivalent of this that is seen occasionally is molded plastic. Whether you buy one or make one be sure that: it is of sufficient thickness to protect you; it actually does protect where you need it; and it has no edges, straps, ridges, ties, or buckles along the inside of the arm that might catch or cut your bowstring

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In this movie about an study of limb vibration of a laminated recurved bow you can see a shoot right from the top of the archer. Notice the position of the arm, with the elbow rotated towards the outside in order to prevent the string to hit. Also note the vibrations that need to be absorbed by the bow. Check how the hand that holds the bow barely moves because the bow absorbs most of the limb vibrations. If the composition and the design of the bow are not correct, this vibrations may end up destroying the bow (This material fatigue, usually materializes by the limbs giving in during drawing for a shot, with the subsequent danger for the user) and will go straight to your compressed left arm's bone structure, with the risk of injuring your arm's joints if you keep punishing it with such vibrations.

Happy arrows! :cool:
 
I need to make a miniature bow for a mount and blade movie/animation thing I'm working on it doesn't have to work just looks somewhat realistic. Hope a cocktail stick and fishing line looks realistic :smile:

Edit: That being said, the characters in it are not that realistic so I don't suppose having a bow that looks real matters all that much.
 
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