hickory sticks

[danlaw]

Here's a stack of hickory bows I made for summer camp. Here's one of my kid's friends with hers.  She sanded it herself and finished it with a custom string, leather grip, fur silencers, and a feather for windage. I wish I had a pic of that. She ended up giving it away to a little girl who's own bow broke!

[dbb]

Haha a stack of bows,mostly you see a stack of staves here.Cool "community service"!
I happens to think archery is the perfect activity.
physical enough not to bore the "energizer bunnys" while it teaches them focus and concentration,
and calm enough for the lazy or sedate ones while it makes them move their asses from the computors.

/Mikael

[danlaw]

lol. Ok you're right. This are staves (though I did tiller them all!).  I figured the kids could thin the tips  and put their own nocks on without getting too discouraged. 
After awhile I could pretty much guess the poundage just by the weight of each bow. I wanted them to pull about 20-25# at 24". They were all the same dimensions but a few very dense pieces pulled in the 30s.   

[blackhawk]

Kudos to you sir 

[John D]

Outstanding!

I'm assuming board bows: Did you have to carefully select stock, or were you able to simply mill a bunch of Hickory that "looked pretty good" due to the low weights?  Will you please post some dimensions? 

[danlaw]

A trim and molding plant was throwing away a huge stack of 1x5/8" hickory (in ten to sixteen foot lengths). I was able to go through the pile and get a few thousand board feet of fairly straight grain pieces. Of these I then cut 61" and 51" lengths (and 36" lengths for arrows). Of these I then threw out anything that looked too unsafe or had knots I missed. In the end I had a little less than 200 possible staves (and same for arrows).
I made a few prototypes until I got what I wanted, then I made a jig for the table saw. The jig itself is approximately 1/2" at the grip, 1/4" at the nocks; however, I adjusted the position of the stave and jig on the saw to make the bows a bit thicker. I left a 5" grip.
The final dimensions ran about 60" nock to nock, 15/16ths wide, 1/2" at the grips fading to 1/4" at the tips (loose dimensions). These dimensions worked for the 12 and ups.
The final dimensions for the 51" bows were much the same, except that I then threw them all through the saw and reduced the overall width to bring down the poundage. These worked very well for the 9yo kids.
To tiller them all I strung a finished bow to the perfect brace height. Then I set two c-clamps on a bench so that the top of the c (or the side of the c depending on how I set them up) caught the end of the staves at the right brace. This way I could pop a stave in and see immediately if one limb was weaker without having to string each one. I then simply popped the stave out, clamped it and tillered with a spoke shave (for speed). Since the tiller was generally already good due to the jig, this went fairly fast. I also picked out any problem staves this way, and broke a couple over my knee for fun.
Because the little kids get really discouraged if the feathers cut their hands when shooting traditional style, I used a small rasp from lee valley to cut in an arrow rest about a 1 1/4" down on the grip. I would definitely recommend this (and the little rasps from lee valley are amazing!). Most of the older kids did this themselves (after everything else was done).
In then end I had 150.

[danlaw]

One more thing (this is getting long I know) instead of nocks, I drilled a hole in the bottom limb for the little kids. That way they only had to file nocks in on the top limb (once the string is in the hole and looped over, they can un-string the bow without the string falling completely off). I got that from the African bow section in TBB.
If there were any bows that ended up with a weaker limb, I simply had the kids move the nocks on the weaker limb an inch closer to the handle. This upped the poundage a bit, but it's a quick fix for a weak limb.
Here's a pic. In the back you can see some serious grain violation, but most were better, and the low poundage kept things quiet. Only three broke (all at final stringing and first draw by me or a counselor).

[lesken2011]

Nice job, Dan. I'm sure the kids appreciate that gesture. I'd love to see that pics of that jig.

[danlaw]

Sorry it's top secret (I don't have any pics of it), but for a brother in the Lord...
Picture a four foot 1x4 with a long skinny blunt ended wedge cut out of it, then add a few pencil marks, measurement notes, some saw blade gouges, and some blood stains (if you're going to try it use a feather board and stand sideways - that's all I am saying) - nothing much to see really.

[lesken2011]

Thanks, Dan. I think I have a visual image, now!!

[Pappy]

Nice job ,very nice of you,they will love that,the finished one turned out great,congrats to her. 
   Pappy