I have Quite a bit of bamboo... very fresh, some  not so-fresh.
I am planning to make a bamboo backed longbow.
I will probably either use eastern red ceder for the belly or use black locust. Those are the only two woods i can get enough of to make a bow... out of honeysuckle....
Any advice?
I am planning to make a small bow (about a meter)
then a full-size longbow with about a 40 pound draw.
THanks!

Season the bamboo really well?  That's about all I can think of.  I plan to do some bamboo-backed red cedar at some point, so I'll be very interested to hear how yours go.

Thanks..
THis will be like my 3rd SUCCESSFUL bow if it goes well.
I also had a ceder javlin... but it broke, It was truly beautiful.
It is really wierd to think that a weapon is beautiful...........

I have heard -over and over- that bamboo is really strong in both tension and compression. If the bamboo backing is too thick it can cause compression fractures in the weaker wood that it's laminated to.

What about 2 layers of bamboo?

Thin the snot out of the bamboo.  Do not cut the outside of the bamboo, do all your scraping and sanding on the inside.  Be very careful when you sand the nodes on the outside, you do not want to damage the fibers, sand using high grit sandpaper and just enough to remove any sharp edges.  Don't use any with mold on it, the mold will keep growing and eventually weaken the long fibers in the bamboo.  When using a rasp, go from the back to the belly, start on the bamboo and go into the wood.  Use a hacksaw blade and srore both the 'boo and the wood prior to glue up.  Use Titebond II or III, you can get them from Home Depot.

I called my brother, he's the one who has made several BBO (bamboo backed 0sage) bows, that's his advice up top.  His other piece of advice was to build the bow as if you were not planning on backing it, then put the 'boo on as insurance, the same way as when you use linen or silk or something similar to keep it from breaking...and you may have to retiller slightly once the glue is set.

You posted as I was typing, there is a guy who makes bamboo laminate bows, he puts a 1/8 inch (2mm) layer of wood between the 'boo, he also uses heat to add reflex and deflex.  He glues the inside of the 'boo to the wood.  The center wood is just a spacer, the 'boo does all the work, he knows enough to get his poundage from knowing how thick to thin the 'boo down to, he makes them from about 35 to 70 pounds.  Be advised, he has made a whole bunch of them.

Topic added in Weapon's Index  ;)
Greetings,
Mauro.

What Bill said.

Also, using the BL and the boo is a recipe for chryssals. BL is usally pretty weak in compression as is, and with the extra tensions support on the back the back will likly over power the belly.

The ERC backed with boo would probably work pretty well. ERC isn't great in tension so the bamboo should totatly compensate.

Have you made a self bow before?

I'd definitly suggest doing that first before you invest all the time and effort in a backed bow.

Yes ive made a self bow....
But i have access to only ceder in 3-7 foot pieces about 2 inches, ceder 3 ft 2-5 inches,
and black locust up to 3 inches by 6 feet....
Bamboo, any length and up to 2 inches...
So just a bamboo, wood spacer, bamboo?
or how bout bamboo and oak?
3 foot bow, about 20 pounds is what im looking for.

You can back ERC with boo but I would not.  You will need to get that bamboo strip really thin.  That's just my own personal tastes though.  Black locust would be a better bet IMO.  ERC works like a charm with sinew and pre stressed silk though.

A question. What does ERC, IMO, Etc mean?
I am not exactly an experianced bowyer....

ERC=Eastern Red Cedar
IMO=In My Opinion

Thanks.. so a piece of oak.. would make a good belly?
on the bow.
I have very little eastern red ceder...
Maybe another honeysuckle...
Also.. If i made an all bamboo bow and put a spacer in the middle...
Should I make the belly thicker than the back?

What Masi said.  :)

Oak will work better than ERC.  But still, bamboo is really strong in tension. Try thinning it to a 1:4 ratio or so.    Your best luck will probably come from Osage, Ipe or other woods that are very dense with high compression strength.

... What is Ipe?
I have never heard of that wood....
Supposedly it is good, given that it has been mentioned in posts twice...
I am planning on a honeysuckle bow (already done) to be re-shaped and backed...
With bamboo.
And I am planning to just make a self-bow from Black locust..

Ipe is sometimes called Brazilian Walnut.  It is a tropical hardwood, very good in compression, very commonly used with bamboo backing for longbows.  I have one, gorgeous bow, good shooter.

My favorite bow is Boo backed hickory. You can use more common bow woods than Ipe to pair with bamboo since it sounds like you might have trouble sourcing woods other than oak, honeysuckle, ERC, and BL.

I would imagine that if you have oak, erc, and black locust, you've probably also got hickory around.

Be careful with Ipe ... some people have severe allergic reaction to the oils it contains. A friend who is a long time wood worker did his first job with Ipe and got to spend several days in the hospital. Use a respirator and keep covered up when you work with it.

That's actually true of most tropical hardwoods in general.  And I've heard bamboo can be like fiberglass if you sand it with a power sander, so make sure to work with a respirator in a well-ventilated area.  And if you've got one of those dust collectors or whatever, use it.

Just to throw this out there as well, I've made around a dozen wood bows, none of them are backed.

A well made self bow (wood based longbow) will preform just as well as any backed bow, for a lot less work.

Now if you make a perry reflex style bow with boo backed hickory, you'd be in pretty good shape. But a good 65in hickory or oak selfbow will serve you just as well.

The big advantage to baking is when working with highly stressed desines like short bows, reflexed and/or recurved bows or war bows. A 40lb LB is pretty safe.

I've also seen bows made entirely from laminated bamboo, but I very little about them so unfortunately I can't offer much assistance there.


I'd start with that BL self bow if I were you. BL is the great teacher of bow woods. If you mess something up, it will let you know.  :)

Make sure you round the corners and that the belly is very flat, not rounded otherwise you have an increased chance with chrysalls. While I've seen BL bows have been made with round bellies, they had perfect tillers and they were quite long to handle the stress.

Dan wrote on Jan 7^th, 2013 at 9:24am:

A well made self bow (wood based longbow) will preform just as well as any backed bow, for a lot less work.

This is way not true.  You'll never get the kind of performance in a self bow you'll get from a fiberglass backed bow.  It's just not really possible.

IMHO fiberglass backings are an exception, but Dan is mostly right. A well designed self bow will perform as well as a wood, rawhide, sinew, or cloth backed wooden bow. Emphasis on well designed. In theory a backing like sinew will add to the cast of a bow, but a the cost of some weight over the same bow unbacked. Practically, sometimes the added oomf to the cast doesn't effect the already stellar performance of the bow in any noticeable way.

All generalizations are false, including this one. ;)

Yeah, sorry I was all primitive oriented there. I sasn't reffering to glass bows there, sorry.  :)

Not to be argumentative, however, a well made selfbow has the capbillity to match the performance of an average glass bow. Read the back cover of the Traditional Bowyers Bibles, its pretty clear there. They use the exact words:
"Many archers and bowhunters will be surprised to learn that a wooden bow, whoose ancestory dates back thousands of yearsm will shoot an arrow as fast and as effectively as the most modern fiberglass laminated bows"

Their words, not mine.

Their bows have much better performance than mine, but its still possible.

I was mainly refferomg to sinew backings or the other ones Masi mentioned. With longbows, backings make them more tension safe, but generally only add to the fps by a bit, and thats because of because they then have less set which could have been done by making the bow a little wider or a perfect tiller. However, fiber backings will also add to tip mass so the advantage in cast might be negated by more limb tip weight. Short bows tend to take more set and limb mass isn't as much as an issue so the benefit a lot more from backings than longbows.
Its an ongoing debate between self bow and backed bow advocates.  :)


I strongly suggest reading the 'Other Backings' chapter in TBB 1. Reading that book series revolutionized my bow making.

I have a self osage longbow and a bamboo backed ipe longbow.  Roughly the same draw weight, roughly the same length, roughly the same cast.  It's just a question of how safe the wood is in tension.  However, backings give you the option to create radical designs that put way more stress on the limbs than a self bow can tolerate - like asiatic composite bows, for example.  They also provide an easy avenue (so I've been told) for learning bowmaking, as you can create functional bows without having to pay as much attention to growth rings and knot holes and tiller and all that as you would otherwise.  Not that you don't have to pay any attention, just that your margin of error seems to be higher.  Again, from what I've read in TBB and other places.  I'm not much of a bowyer myself, just an archer.

As to the glass bow question - no way.  I'd love to see their best work go up against something like a Fox triple crown and see if they can get near the cast of it.  I'd be really surprised - and that's still a longbow, we're not even delving into recurves yet.

Just remember that they're not necessarily comparing bows of the same draw weight.

wrote on Jan 7^th, 2013 at 1:31pm:

As to the glass bow question - no way.  I'd love to see their best work go up against something like a Fox triple crown and see if they can get near the cast of it.  I'd be really surprised - and that's still a longbow, we're not even delving into recurves yet.

That's probably why they use the words "Many archers and bowhunters will be surprised to learn..."

Its your word against theirs, and while I greatly respect your opionion as an archer, they also usually seem to know what they are talking about.  

At a certain point it comes down to preference as well. I prefer self bows, I like the way the look, feel, and shoot. Though I don't think you (SS) or anyone will be disapointed with a well made backed bow. Just keep in mind backing a bow won't make it magically sublime, and that a self bow with a clean back will get the job done just as well.

Again, I'd suggest read the 'Other Backings' chapter in TBB 1 before you start anything big.

Masiakasaurus wrote on Jan 7^th, 2013 at 1:42pm:

Just remember that they're not necessarily comparing bows of the same draw weight.

That's the only way to make a real comparison in how they shoot.  If you're saying a 120 pound self bow can have similar cast to a 30 pound fiberglass bow, you're not really saying anything.  Granted, I don't think they are necessarily that far apart, but modern "traditional" bows, using wood and fiberglass, and experimenting with high stress limb designs can produce bows that have a cast substantially better than a self bow of the same draw weight.  This is nothing against self bows.  My favorite bow to shoot is my self-osage longbow.  However, if I go shooting a tournament, particularly one with long ranges, with a self bow, and somebody else uses a modern glass-backed design, I shouldn't be surprised when he has a much easier time of things than I do.

Dan wrote on Jan 7^th, 2013 at 1:58pm:

wrote on Jan 7th, 2013 at 1:31pm: As to the glass bow question - no way.  I'd love to see their best work go up against something like a Fox triple crown and see if they can get near the cast of it.  I'd be really surprised - and that's still a longbow, we're not even delving into recurves yet. That's probably why they use the words "Many archers and bowhunters will be surprised to learn..." Its your word against theirs, and while I greatly respect your opionion as an archer, they also usually seem to know what they are talking about.

It's not my word against theirs.  Fortunately, there's a little something in the world called science, and it can help us out of quandaries like these.  I'll see if I can get FPS figures for my unbacked and backed longbows.  The next bow I get is going to be a modern glass-backed longbow.  I'll put the same arrows through the chrono from each bow, and we'll see what's fastest and what isn't.  Granted, a D-section English longbow isn't going to be as efficient as a flat-backed American-style longbow, so my self-bow will be doubly disadvantaged, but the point is that these comparisons are possible, and we don't have to take anybody's word for it.  For my part, it's from firsthand experience of seeing the incredibly flat trajectories attained by modern glass-backed longbows in competition settings shooting over a distance of 50-80 yards.

So... what about an all-bamboo bow?
I am thinking something like this-
http://sensiblesurvival.blogspot.com/2012/03/build-bamboo-survival-bow-in-30-minutes.html
But with multiple layers of bambooo glued together so it is more powerful.
I will post pics the moment i am done
Thanks

The bowyer that Bill mentioned who uses bamboo on the belly and the back essentially makes all bamboo bows. It looks like -to me- the bamboo does all the work.

Google Harrelson Traditional Archery and zoom in on his Kolomi model.  These are not a fast bow but are one of the smoothest I have ever shot.  I used to have one but I gave it away a couple of years ago.

wrote on Jan 7^th, 2013 at 5:01pm:

Dan wrote on Jan 7th, 2013 at 1:58pm: wrote on Jan 7th, 2013 at 1:31pm: As to the glass bow question - no way.  I'd love to see their best work go up against something like a Fox triple crown and see if they can get near the cast of it.  I'd be really surprised - and that's still a longbow, we're not even delving into recurves yet. It's not my word against theirs.  Fortunately, there's a little something in the world called science, and it can help us out of quandaries like these.  I'll see if I can get FPS figures for my unbacked and backed longbows.  The next bow I get is going to be a modern glass-backed longbow.  I'll put the same arrows through the chrono from each bow, and we'll see what's fastest and what isn't.  Granted, a D-section English longbow isn't going to be as efficient as a flat-backed American-style longbow, so my self-bow will be doubly disadvantaged, but the point is that these comparisons are possible, and we don't have to take anybody's word for it.  For my part, it's from firsthand experience of seeing the incredibly flat trajectories attained by modern glass-backed longbows in competition settings shooting over a distance of 50-80 yards.

They have FPS measures in the books as well and I'd highly encourage you to read over them.

Some of them are sub average glass bow, some are about average. But at the time the average now was state of the art then. So perhaps some context should be mentioned.

A lot of the times you see the flat 60 yard trajectories may also depend a lot on the arrow. Carbon fiber target arrows that are around 7gpp, will fly a lot faster than youir normal hunting arrow out of a self bow.

I agree that the glass backed bow has the potential to be faster than the self bow, I just rembered that quote on the back of the most revolutionary and best sold book series on bow building and I thought I'd bring it up.

This thread is discussed by bowerys and archers much more expierenced than myself, hopefully it can clear some things up.
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=8239.0

SS, here's the all boo bow I was talking about. http://www.3riversarchery.com/All+Bamboo+Reflex%2FDeflex+Longbow_i8564X_baseitem.html

Fiberglass is sooo 20th Century.  Well designrd bows today use carbon fiber and carbon foam limbs, and titanium frames.  

Bill Skinner wrote on Jan 8^th, 2013 at 8:19pm:

Fiberglass is sooo 20th Century.  Well designrd bows today use carbon fiber and carbon foam limbs, and titanium frames.

Yep, but I don't think you could construe carbon-foam composite limbs as a "backing" on wood.

Some of the first models had carbon fiber on maple.  

.....
I dislike backing.

Backing can be your friend.  Natural wood self bows are a heck of a lot of fun too though.  I don't think there are many pre-modern bows around that I don't crave.  Even the "trad" bows from the 50s, 60s, and very early 70s are gorgeous.

Out of all the mistakes I've made bowmaking the one thing that never gave me trouble was backing them.

Smart ax comments aside, there aren't very many fiberglass backed bows.  Most bows are fiberglass laminates of fiberglass/wood or bamboo core/fiberglass, the fiberglass does all the work, the core just keeps the limb from collasping.  A backed bow is a bow with a layer of something on the back with the primary purpose of keeping a splinter from lifting, which will cause the limb to break.  If you get added performance, that's just a bonus.  Some backings actually detract from the bows' performance.

So, SS, I kinda agree, I don't like backings all that much either, BUT, they can keep a bow together.  So the real question is, "How confident am I in my bow making?"  And "How PO'ed am I going to get if it breaks?"  

One thing you might want to practice on a different piece of woor (say just a log like a foot long) is cleanly removing the outer and inner bark and getting down to just the outward ring and not going in any further. It'd be a lot better to practice on a septerate piece of wood than on your stave when it really counts.

While I still prefer the natural appearance of wood on the back of the bow, you might also want to look into silk backings. Its lighter and much easier to set up for lamination on the back of the bow.

I've only made one backed bow and it was my second bow. I made it before I had read any of the TBBs and with little advice from anything. It didn't really work (mainly because it was way to short and narrow and the boo was too thick), but that was more of my fault than the concept of the backed bow.

My later bows I took care not to nick the outer rings and they work to this day.

Whether you put on a backing or not is up to you, but regardless, its good to practice removing the bark to just one layer of clean undisturbed wood for when you do make a self bow.

Don't mind me, just dredging up more old threads here.  

Sometimes you have to back a piece of wood to get the best out of it.  Some woods are stellar in compression strength per mass but their tension is not up to par.  Your only two options is to make them too wide for their compression strength or back them.  I have a pile of broken china berry bows that illustrate this point very well.   :)

I have one limb from a broken chinaberry bow that comes from a 62 inch bow.  1 3/4 inch at widest, pyramid taper.  Would have pulled 65 lb at 28.  I had to finish tillering it with a hanging weight because the other limb was not perfect enough for such a high efficiency/high stress profile (none of the ones mentioned were for that matter) and broke.  After I finished tillering it, it took no more set or perhaps less set for that matter of most hickory bows of the same dimensions.  All with .50 SG wood.  Unbelievable stuff, but without a backing it's just not safe.

If you've got China Berry, you should have Hackberry/Sugarberry, that's a pretty good whitewood, especially if you are in a low humidity area, it soaks up moisture worse than hickory.

Dude, ive got box elder, a board-stave of oak, and a board stave of maple. nuthn else, minus thin-wall bamboo... probably abot 1/16th thick.
grows up to 1 1/2 inch diam...
oak is gonna be a longbow already tillered, gonna finish it and final-tiller and tune it. I have the 1st bowyers bible and no ability to get the others... i dont have trouble with makin it one growth ring.
my problem is that i have a sur-form rasp plane thnigee... and a actual hand-plane.. and a hatchet...
and some sandpaper. once i finish the oak-bow, picture time! can a bow pose for pics?
-Squirrel

Bill Skinner wrote on Feb 13^th, 2013 at 7:44pm:

If you've got China Berry, you should have Hackberry/Sugarberry, that's a pretty good whitewood, especially if you are in a low humidity area, it soaks up moisture worse than hickory.

Hackberry has been on my list of woods to try for years now. Just looked it up and it is native to California.  Cool.

Never heard of Sugarberry though.

Morphy wrote on Feb 13^th, 2013 at 8:13pm:

Bill Skinner wrote on Feb 13th, 2013 at 7:44pm: If you've got China Berry, you should have Hackberry/Sugarberry, that's a pretty good whitewood, especially if you are in a low humidity area, it soaks up moisture worse than hickory. Hackberry has been on my list of woods to try for years now. Just looked it up and it is native to California.  Cool. Never heard of Sugarberry though.

there is a 6 inch hackberry tree 10 miles from my house
there is a TON of GREAT bow wood at the Dinsmore woods... too bad i can't cut ANY of it!

Hackberry is a good bow wood. I've made a couple bows from it (Holmegaard and a WC paddle bow; polar ends of the bow spectrum  :) ) and I plan to make some more too. Kinda like elm, definitly works a lot easier green.

Hackberry and sugarberry are the same tree, sugarberry is a western name.  Figured you would know one or the other.