I've always wanted to make one like I saw in high school. A friend brought one in to school (yeah you could do that back then). It was one his brother, who was quite a bit older than him, brought back from Viet Nam. It was as simple as could be. Memory doesn't recall the woods but it was a tapered stick with a groove on top for the bolt, a simple L shaped trigger mounted in a mortise that basically works the same way as this one. At the business end, there was a square hole that was where the bow slipped through. The "bow" cross section was square in the center where it fit snugly in the stock, was around 36" NTN and had a "D" cross section, fairly straight taper to the tips. I remember it had a natural fiber string. The bolts were pretty small in diameter and looked like giant bamboo skewers that were fatter at the back end. This thing was whisper quiet and very fast! You could take it down and fit it into a sleeve in about 10 seconds. I would imagine stringing it would go pretty easy with a boot type stringer.
