HHB Warbow: A build along

[mikekeswick]

Looking great!
I'm also interested as to the cross-section because I made a 70@32 hornbeam elb for a friend of mine and when I was making it  I kept on wondering how much rounding the belly could take. In the end the belly was fairly crowned on my bow.

[Marc St Louis]

HHB is not as elastic as Yew so I have used a flatter cross section than I would have used with Yew but it's still well within the English 5/8 rule.  The back is flat and the belly round, just not as deep as with a Yew bow.  The width is just over 1 3/8" and the thickness is 1" with a fairly steady width and thickness taper.

[gianluca100]

Hello Marc,

thanks for the indication about the cross section. I made a few heavy longbows of european ash and used the same setup: about 3.5cm wide and about 2.5cm thick at the grip , tapering to 13mm tips. The belly beeing sligthly rounded, not as high crowned as with yew and heat treated. they shot good.

I wonder if the other way round more would be possible: a perfectly flat belly and a trapped or rounded back. I just made a black locust bow like that and without heat treating. It took almost no follow and came out phisically very light and very well shooting. Black locust beeing very tension strong and rather compression weak benefitted extremely from this design and I must say that I like it also esthetically, I'm not affected by the english-design-is-best-of-the-world syndrome 

Regards,
gian-luca

[Marc St Louis]

If the wood is elastic enough then having a round belly is much safer for the back plus if you want to use it in any competition then you must have the D section.  I had a warbow flightbow disqualified from competing in Utah several years ago because it didn't have a round enough cross section.

I have been doing some work to the bow and have the tips shaped ready for the horn nocks.

[mikekeswick]

Very nice looking bow.
I'm interested to see the shape you use on the nocks now

[Ian.]

Looks real nice, I always did wonder why there is so much emphasis on the D section, its a Victorian term. Warbows on the whole are much flatter.

[Marc St Louis]

I have made the horn nocks and glued them on.  I took a picture of them on the bow but it was blurry so I'll take another tomorrow.  I did get my wife to take a picture of me trying to pull it back, didn't get very far



And here is another picture



The bow pulls about 140# @ 32" on my scale but I suspect that my scale is a bit off and it most likely pulls a few pounds more.  I can pull 90# with a bit of a struggle but this bow locks me up at about 16" of draw

[Ian.]

Excellent, nice small nocks to help with distance too. And boy do you make that bow look small Marc, never realised you were so tall.

[Marc St Louis]

Well Ian I am 6' 2" and the bow is angled back as I am holding it.  I was a bit concerned about the size of the nocks, they are quite small.  The only problem with making bows like this is that I can't test them.

[Marc St Louis]

Here are a couple pics of the nocks, they still need a bit of spit and polish.

[Ian.]

Superb, I think it's becoming a fashion to have smaller and smaller nocks for the added speed.

[Marc St Louis]

I would tend to make them a bit smaller but the new owner can tweak them to his liking

[kurogane_84]

looking great man, im thinking about a war bow from a Hack Berry stave, it has 3 cm of reflex tho

[JW_Halverson]

HAH!  I just knew I wasn't the only person to use a micrometer to build bows!  I can do fractions, just not quickly. 

By the way, the repititious pattern on the belly of that bow from heat treating looks great.  I like that look.

[fusizoli]

Like to ask the ntn  lenght of this beauty. Thanks!