A while ago my two niece's asked for a bow. I kinda put them off for a while because they are pretty rambunctious and ruff with the little kit bow their dad bought them.
A couple weeks ago while at OJAM they were giving away rattan bows to all the kids. I talked to one of the guys that helps run OJAM about the left over bows. He said that they were pretty much indestructible and showed me how to tiller them the right way. All they had done was cut them in half notch out pin knocks and kinda rough out a handle. Then they just strung them up with some nylon rope. They pretty much just bent in the handle. So I decided to purchase two of them from him for just 10 bucks.
The other day I pulled them out and tillered them down with just my belt sander. Believe it or not they are pretty tuff. I managed to get them to a good even tiller in just a couple of hours. The first one I weighed was almost 40lbs at at 28in. I was surprised at the amount of strength they had. I worked on them until they were right at 15@20. I found they were pretty much indestructible, I could pull them to my ear with any trouble and they didn't feel bad doing it. The other thing is they guy told me once they start taking set just string them up the other way and shoot them like that. So I did, the weight pretty much stayed the same and I could still draw them to my ear and not hurt them.
I thought they were kinda ugly so throwing caution to the wind I took my torch and "colored the cut side and burnt diagonal lines on the other. I roughly sanded it to 120 grit and wrapped the handle with some leather lacing. I sprayed a coat of shalac on the whole thing then when it dried I sanded it to 220. Then put 4 more coats of spray shalac on them. I repepoused a couple of old red b50 strings and served them. Then I tied a double knocking point so the arrows would stay in place with some bright yellow string I had.
All in all it was a fun little project and the best part is my girls loved them. I don't have any pictures of them shooting but we spent about an hour just having fun.
If you want a fun project for the kiddos try rattan. I may try to make me one as well. Thanks for looking!
Patrick
Ellie on the left and Kate on the right.
