Ive started another attempt at a longbow.. aka a board bow because it made from a 1' by 2' by 6 red oak board.. So far ive messed up 4 bows.. one was broken...by my brother.. and 3 were tragically lost on incidents involving a saw of some sort.. a tip.. dont try cutting angles on a table saw.. it wont work :P... I messed up one becase my bandsaw is really cheap.. 89$ ryobi 9' band saw lol.. so now im taking another shot at it.. Ive almost finished roughing it out.. and im about to glue on a block of wood that will be the riser.... I have horrible luck making bows and almost messed this one up once already lol... you would think even a mentally challenged person could follow a line.. your wrong.. lmao but it was only a miniscule error so its no big deal.. now Ive just got to finish roughing it out and the the dreaded (by me) tillering process...

I'm following this tutorial  http://www.geocities.com/salampsio/oak.htm

while I was at Lowes I also saw Cedar boards and also douglas fir.. I was excited Ive never seen them there before :D so im gona buy one or two and split them for shafts also

http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php/topic,453.0.html (tutorial for shafts)

douglas fir will not make a bow.
much too hard and brittle.

if it's anything like the stuff i have then the orange stripes are also impregnated with resin, giving a very uneven bend - not that it actually bends :-)

This page might be of help too. ::)
http://www.vintageprojects.com/archery-plans.html

Curious Aardvark wrote on Jun 29^th, 2008 at 1:30am:

douglas fir will not make a bow. much too hard and brittle. if it's anything like the stuff i have then the orange stripes are also impregnated with resin, giving a very uneven bend - not that it actually bends :-)

That is why I said I was going to use them for (arrow) shafts :P ... while ive had several failed attempts at making a bow I have spent alot of time learning about them.. its more of a equipment issue lol...

try yumi-bows.com  they are world famous.

I've made two bows of red oak; the first one (my first attempt at a bow) failed after about two weeks.    The second is going strong.
Here's another good site with tons of information:

http://groups.msn.com/ferretsarcherywebpage/buildingbowsfromboards.msnw

There are several more.

My advice is to keep your design simple.  A "bend in the middle" design is very simple, and puts less stress on the wood than one with a built-up handle.

Second, use a backing.  It's very hard to find a "perfect" piece of red oak; you're almost always going to get at least one grain "run-out" on each limb.  A backing will prevent failure, and prevent injury if it does fail.    I used silk for mine; linen is just as good.  
Old pure-silk neckties can be had from thrift shops for a buck or two, and they work great.   take 'em apart with a seam ripper or sharp pocketknife, and glue on with plenty of Titebond.

After roughing out your basic shape, remove wood with a 4-sided rasp or Stanley "sure-form" rasp.  Use this ONLY for the rough work.  When it gets to the point that you can "floor tiller" the bow a bit, work carefully and slowly with the 4-in-one rasp and even scrapers.
Plan on spending some time at this; but it will be worth it.  You cannot replace wood!

Bikewer wrote on Jun 30^th, 2008 at 1:46pm:

I've made two bows of red oak; the first one (my first attempt at a bow) failed after about two weeks.    The second is going strong. Here's another good site with tons of information: http://groups.msn.com/ferretsarcherywebpage/buildingbowsfromboards.msnw There are several more. My advice is to keep your design simple.  A "bend in the middle" design is very simple, and puts less stress on the wood than one with a built-up handle. Second, use a backing.  It's very hard to find a "perfect" piece of red oak; you're almost always going to get at least one grain "run-out" on each limb.  A backing will prevent failure, and prevent injury if it does fail.    I used silk for mine; linen is just as good.   Old pure-silk neckties can be had from thrift shops for a buck or two, and they work great.   take 'em apart with a seam ripper or sharp pocketknife, and glue on with plenty of Titebond. After roughing out your basic shape, remove wood with a 4-sided rasp or Stanley "sure-form" rasp.  Use this ONLY for the rough work.  When it gets to the point that you can "floor tiller" the bow a bit, work carefully and slowly with the 4-in-one rasp and even scrapers. Plan on spending some time at this; but it will be worth it.  You cannot replace wood!

Ferrets site is really cool, Ive known about it for about 2 years probably.. Ive probably went through every pic on his site 3 times :P jawge on Leatherwall has a great site also.

The bow im currently working  is going pretty well.. The board I started with is almost perfect in every way lol thick grow rings straight grain on every side. I know how to make a bow... im just impatient and usually end up messing something up lol. I have A bandsaw, two different size sure-form rasp and alot of other tools ive bought over the last two years... A large knife didnt work very well on a dried red oak board lol.. I'm confident this one will be successful. Most of the bows ive messed up were because of mistakes during the roughing out stage.. tillering went ok but it ended up with a very bad hinge and wasnt worth finishing..it was shootable but I never shot it.. lol so I guessy I have  finished a bow :P

I've taken to using scrapers for almost all the final tillering.     A guy on the Primitive Archer site sent me some banding material; this makes excellent scrapers with a bit of file work.

Primitive archer is a fine site too, lots of great bows for inspiration!   Genuinely helpful guys too.

I get a dead bandsaw blade if anyone wants it ?
Could make good scrapers maybe.

i dont know C_A, scrapers blades are usualy put on a weird handle thing and shaped like a box knife blade, just bigger.

This is a project I've been dying to try for years.  When I was a kid my library was selling off some of their old worn out books, and I managed to get my hands on one called "The New Archery: Hobby, Sport, Craft" that was made in 1939.  It's a great book that talks about making longbows, arrows, bowstings, targets... you name it.  Ever since I have dreamed of trying my hand at making a good longbow.  Now that I've taken up slinging I haven't given it much thought... but I think I'll start looking at it again.

The definitive source for bowyering is The Traditional Bowyer's Bible series.   They just issued a fourth volume.
The first is actually the most informative for the beginning builder, it covers wood selection, board bows, traditional yew and osage construction, making strings, the whole ball of wax.

They run around 12 bucks per book in paper, readily available from Amazon.  Most good libraries can get them as well; that's what I did before buying the set.

Bow: try this site (its Dutch but the pics speak for themselves)
http://home.planet.nl/~veen0804/

yours sincerely,

HHornblower

thanks HHornblower  for the great site.

I´m dutch so that made it very easy too read for me :)

I gotto lok for a nice piece of wood so I can start on a bow myself!

You could try making a bow out of kiln-dried ash! It's supposed to be relatively cheap and the wood can take a lot of punishment before failing. Red Oak certainly isen't the only wood out there.

yours sincerely,

HHornblower

HHornblower wrote on Aug 11^th, 2008 at 12:18pm:

You could try making a bow out of kiln-dried ash! It's supposed to be relatively cheap and the wood can take a lot of punishment before failing. Red Oak certainly isen't the only wood out there. yours sincerely, HHornblower

Im very aware of that lol... Unfortunately the only lumber yard isnt very well known for Quality... and lowes, home depot ect... only sell building materials which means oak and pine...though I was lucky enough to discover a stock of cedar! for arrow shafts =)

Might as well pay a visit, you never know where you can find that perfect stave.
Maybe it is an idea to search the area for ash which will be cut down in the near future. You might get hold of some decent size trunks and thus loads of staves.

yours sincerely,

HHornblower

I'm lucky to have a good hardwood lumber outlet only a few miles from the house.      Also, hickory is extremely common in Missouri; I still want to try to cut my own stave.

The big box hardware stores near me tend to have oak, maple (good if you find a board with good grain) poplar (useless) and occasionally ash.  

Osage orange is common in Missouri as well; and there are several suppliers of staves that grow their own here.   One of the guys on the Primitive Archer forum sent me a very nice osage stave all ready to work; it made into a fine bow.