I have been serving as a consultant on a bow building project with my 9yr old daughter, Lily, over the past year (new baby, moving, and health issues all interfered). She had expressed interest in shooting but needed a lighter bow to shoot since she was diagnosed with Juvenile Dermatomyosistis when she was 6 (just like Landon from the Dec/Jan issue). The disease affects her muscles and skin, and she had a flare up last fall and the project was on hold for a few months. She has responded well to treatment and is more or less back to normal but still needs to build some of her muscles back up. I thought bow building and shooting would be just the ticket. I manage to be "good" and keep my hands off the tools and made her do all the work. +90% of the work was done by Lily, she even cut out the bow on the bandsaw (I only helped cutting in the arrow shelf, trapping the back, and tweaking the final tiller). Here is what she has to say about her project:
"Hi everybody! My dad was the one who started the idea of me making my own bow. He usually makes the bows so I didn't think it would be so hard & take so long. At one point I got really bored and tired of working on it, but he pushed me on and now I have an awesome bow! The tiger stripes were kind of hard, but he encouraged me to keep doing it. I did a tiger design because I really like big cats, and my favorite is a Siberian tiger. When the bow was done and I could pull it back to a full draw I was so excited because I had never been able to reach a full draw before
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Pictures of the build and specs to follow:
Hickory Laminations glued up with some reflex added
2" of glued in reflex
Serving the bowstring
