I've been seeing so many new guys online trying to make their first bow with limited tools, trying to pick the right board, figure out fades and flares, etc... and a lot of them failing and expressing frustration. Handle blocks pop off, ELB designs made of marginal wood like oak break a lot, stuff like that. Many seem intimidated by chasing a ring, using a stave, shaping fades and dips, etc.., or simply don't want to thin down a 2" wide 4/4 board with poor tools to make a pyramid bow. A lot of them seem to really want a longbow, for LARPing and stuff.
I've been on a personal push to get some of these guys to expand their options, not be so scared of chasing a ring, etc...and help them with techniques that allow making a bow anywhere, and with few tools. I know you can't cut out a wood bow to formula and have success, generally, but I want to help take some of the "voodoo" out of it, too, allowing at least a decent start by dimensions followed by method. That leads us to rake handles.
At Home Depot the other day I saw some hardwood utility handles about 1-1/8" diameter x 60" long, and one out of the stack had thick rings and nice grain, so I bought it for $4.79. I wish I knew what kind of wood it is, because it turned out to be fine stuff. It looks like ramin, but medium tan/yellow, and the rings were pretty pronounced. Felt heavier and harder in the hand than the ash broom handles of similar dimensions, and I forgot to check the label for country of origin.
I'd been wanting to make a short African style, deep section bow for a while so I decided on that, allowing I could drop the draw weight and make a kids longbow if I messed up.
So, I took it home and chased a ring, which only removed about 3/16" thickness, flattened the back, but left it trapped (due to the roundness of the blank), and roughed out a bend in the handle bow. For the front profile I took all the width I could keep for the inner 25%, of each limb, and tapered the outer 25% of each down to less than 1/2" wide. Then, using a set of wrenches as "calipers", I set out to establish a thickness taper. The exact middle 4" or so stayed just over 3/4" thick, and I tapered from there to 7/16" at the very tips. Between handle and tip I split the difference, for thickness, then split the difference between those spans, as far as measurements.
But, the METHOD I used to establish taper is to mark out 7" from the tips inward, with crayon, and shave it off. Then I mark up 14" and shave that off. Then 21" and shave that off.
This was all with a spokeshave, rasp, and scraper. Again, as a guide to newcomers, I mark out thick areas with crayon, then shave it off and check. Then mark out 14" , shave and check. Then 21", then the whole limb. THEN, to prevent stairsteps in my taper, I mark out 10", shave and check, then 20", shave and check, etc...... I alternate working in quarters, then in thirds, then quarters, and getting a consistent taper becomes automatic. Right by the handle, I do have to make sure I'm not creating a drop off, but otherwise, easy as pie.
Before long, I have the wrenches, acting to measure the thickness, evenly spaced down the length of each limb, the handle being the thickest portion, and the side to side tapers established. Even though the front surface undulates a bit, the cross section all along is basically square or rectangle. I ran the wrenches up and down looking for obvious high spots, marked them with crayon and scraped here and there. Then, I rounded the belly a bit using the faceting method: take off the belly corners at 45°, then take of those obtuse corners, then scrape a bit.
That got me to floor tiller, so I made pointed ends to tie the string on with, found an old string and modified it for the points and strung it. One limb was too stiff, so I made a couple passes ala Paul Comstock with the rasp and scraper. There was a soft spot about 2/3 out the upper limb, too, and a stiff spot opposite that in the other limb. Fixed the stiff stuff on the bottom first, then gently weakened that limb evenly while I worked the upper limb until that weak spot disappeared.
I purposely never put it on the tiller tree, and didn't measure curve with strings or slats. Just floor tillered until I could flex it over my knee, then strung it low, then higher, then higher as I looked for good tiller. All along I just made little adjustments like trapping the back once it looked like it was going to hold at a decent draw weight.
Hadza bows I see on Youtube seem to have ends that look whipped a bit at brace, but bend a lot through the middle and mid-limbs when drawn. I tried to follow that style. They are not big people, but my bow would be on the low end of normal, for length. The bow is 57" ntn, almost 60" ttt, an inch wide at the most, almost round at handle, flattens to oval through most of the limb length, and back to round tips. It took 1-3/8" of set, and draws 46 lbs at 26".
I haven't sanded or finished yet, and I plan to wrap on a handle, but because of my weird schedule and distractibility, I figured I better post what I had, or I'd wander off and forget.
Pics will be imbedded soon. I'm on mobile and can't pull them right off my phone. So far attempts to email them somewhere I can attach them haven't worked.
