ask hellfire he seems to know a bit about this I know how but myself never executed it

Thanks, I'll try your suggestions. And about carving, what kind of knife will I need?

I sure do like to make bows. What kind of wood do you have access to? Tools? How about bowstring ma terials?


Use a hardwood like elm, oak, ash, hickory, maple, most any hardwood will work. For a first bow, buy a five dollar 1by2by6 (actually 1 1/2" by 5/8" by six foot) foot piece of red oak. Make sure the grain lines on all sides of the board are striaght and there are no knots. You can work down a bow with a hatchet, or a chisel, if you dont care about finished appearance. If the store has maple available, use that also.


Bow Layout

Take the six foot redoak board stave, and find the middle. Measure 2 inches on either side. This is your handle. If you have a big enough hand, leave the handle full width. If you have difficulty doing so, you may narrow it an eight of an inch, but not any more than that. These are directions for a 45 pound bow, at 28" of draw. A regular old pocketknife will work.

Make the tips of the bow 1/2" wide. Dont cut in nocks just yet.

Now comes the difficult part. Tillering is basically making wood bend by making it thinner. For a good, efficient bow, you will want to make the entire bow bend equally at full draw. Like this pic, of an elm bow I made.



Therefore, you want to remove a lot more wood near the midlimb of the bow, than you would near the handle. So procede on doing exactly that. If you want something to work on, make the handle full thickness, and the tips about 1/2" thick, and draw a straight line taper between those two points. Take a jackplane (if you have one), and leave the handle alone, plane a little on the immediate wood by the handle, more wood further out, and test the bend of the bow by setting it up, and pushing the limb, so the tip rests on the ground. If it is correct, with no "hinges" or areas that bend too much, or stiff spot, areas that dont bend enough. Make sure you leave the tips stiff, and the wood right by the handle stiff or barely bending. This is to reduce set, which is the tendency for wood to remain in a bent position after unstringing.

The tiller on that elm bow is good tiller, it hasn't taken much set, even though it is not much more than an inch wide, and 45 pounds. It is plenty enough weight to kill a deer with, and I think that at 10 grains of arrow weight per pound it may shoot something like 147 fps, based on shooting tests.


I have to get going, I'll finish this later today.


While you are waiting, here are some excellent sites to look for. When dealing with topics like archery, it is better to learn as much as you can, and just go out and make a bow, learn from your screw-ups, and dont ever lose your determination. So while you all wait to know how I make bows, here are some othere peoples sites where I learned from.


http://www.primitiveways.com/sapling_bow.html

here is a good one on tillering

http://www.primitiveways.com/sapling_bow.html


You should dig in the archives on this one, jam packed full of info. Took me about four hours to read a lot of it.

http://b16.ezboard.com/bpaleoplanet69529


Another good forum

http://www.xsorbit4.com/users/buildabow/index.cgi


George Tsoukalas is a great guy, been making bows for a long time. Here is his website. Check out all the bow making parts of it.

http://mysite.verizon.net/georgeandjoni

Millions of threads about bows here

http://www.bowsite.com/stickbow/tf/threads.cfm

Hope you like all the websites.

Another good bow wood, supposedly the best is Osage Orange. The good thing is that the shavings can also be used for dyeing material.

Welco to the site,
Try this:
http://groups.msn.com/ferretsarcherywebpage/welcome.msnw
Hope it helps

An easy bow to make is what I call the half-tillered bow. Just take a straight stick 1"-1.5" in dia and 6'-6.6' long. Then, for each end third of the stick, carve away a quarter of the wood on the back (part facing the shooter?) of the bow, so it sort of looks like a circular round "U." I hope this makes since. Basically, it is easier to minimally tiller like this because there is less chance to mess up and take off too much wood, and it won't break as easily. The one I made is pretty sad- 25# pull, but if you make a shorter, wider bow with a better wood than maple, it should be more powerful.

Thanks for all the help, I haven't had time to check the websites yet, but just a few questions. The wood that is closest the the dimensions that Hellfire posted was 1"x4"x8'. Do you think a hardwood round that is 3/4" in diameter and 6' in length would work? Also, what type of material would I need for the drawback string thing? (Sorry, not really sure what its called)


Well, then buy a nice piece of that lumber, and ask a neighbor if he will rip it down its length with a bandsaw. The bowstring should be made of dacron, linen, silk, sinew, hemp(real hemp, not abaca), polyester artificial sinew, rawhide, nettle. 

What kind of bow do you want? Just for fun? Hunting?