This is a long story, but I really like helping all the enthusiastic youth I meet online who are dying to get into trad archery. I don't get around to many bows these days, myself, but I often am sitting with my smartphone in "hurry up and wait" mode. Due to the popular movies and the LARPing, I meet all kinds of young people with interest, but no contacts, and I love helping and answering questions. Usually, I steer them here. Sometimes it feels like I can't get it all across, or can't give them enough guidance. Many of them have little background even working with tools or whatever.
Anyway. a couple years ago I met a really smart teenage kid from Brazil, who just could not find a way to make a bow and wanted one badly. He spoke/wrote fine English, luckily. I went through all my normal suggestions; can you buy some hardwood tool handles?, Can you find a board? Can you get out to the boonies and cut a small sapling somewhere? What about bamboo? We went back and forth for weeks and none of that seemed possible. So many kids seem to want it done for them, or simply don't know how or where to start, but he seemed determined.
He had almost no tools (a kitchen cleaves, some knives, a small saw, and eventually he found a file/rasp). He lived in a suburb, and even hardware shops were a long way for him, plus he said they really don't stock much for woods (apparently in Brazil if you have ANY money you pay people to do that stuff, and he had no idea where they get supplies.....) We talked about ways to use anything he possibly could find, covered cloth backings and cables, simple handmade splices, glues and string types, etc ...and.....
Finally he got a break. The gardeners at his local city park were cutting back the bamboo, so he begged a few lengths of the bigger stuff, about 3-1/2" dia. I talked him through splitting and drying it on his roof. I had no idea what he had there, specie or whatever, but he had shown a lot of patience and smarts so far. I was imagining he'd have to laboriously hand-sand a handle block and work down limb-laminations to make a boo-backed-bamboo (something I have done, but not so much as to have total confidence in my own results), but why not try if he was up to it? He had more determination than many 15 year olds.
Then one day, he showed up with this! THE Frankenstein of hybrid bow designs, demonstrating both clever engineering and desperate necessity "mothering" his invention. What we have here is a lapped handle splice as found in Bhutanese bamboo bows, the narrowed handle held with polyester cord and tape. The front profile, though, is a Mollegabet, with wide inner limbs, narrowed outer limbs and shoulders at the transition. But wait! To protect the exposed inner bamboo which constituted the back of the bow, a cable like those found on Arctic bows, made of braided nylon cord, runs from shoulder to shoulder of each limb, and is secured by tape at the handle. Next, to stiffen the outer limbs, a cable of low-stretch vegetable twine runs UNDER the elastic cable at the shoulder, and is both glued down and fixed at the tips, either tied or seized with wrapping at the tips (I could never tell which). A ring of PVC pipe (later replaced by a section of bamboo) was then placed to bridge the elastic cable midlimb. Once strung then with a twisted polyester string, he touched up the tiller by working the sides of the inner limbs, and......VIOLÁ! His first bow.
He has shot it only for LARPING at the local park so far, but says everyone thinks it's cool as heck and can't believe he made it himself. It's 66" or so long and pulls about 30 lbs at his 26-27" draw. The exact numbers got fuzzy.
Anyway, I was pretty impressed. He did this all just from reading my descriptions, a few stock photos of various styles of bows, and a couple of crudely drawn illustrations. I don't even know the kid's name, and haven't heard from him since, but I'm glad I was part of this story. He's off to great things for sure, and I wish him lots of happy shooting.
Sorry I only have the one pic.
