Wood bow logic and common sense and words of wisdom

[Badger]

      I say common sense even though it might take some of us including me a decade or more to figure it out on our own. Somethings only make common sense once you realize it. Somethings I consider logic and common sense may or not be 100% correct. I wanted to start a thread that should be helpful to any bowyer new or experienced that we can use on the bow bench when building a bow. I have to admit that I have learned more while helping others learn because I was forced to explain something that I had been doing by habit for many years. More often than not when I started to break it down so I could better explain it I would find a small hole in my logic and something new would be revealed to me.

     I doubt we will come up with more than about 10 items. Feel free to challenge and debate, I promise to stay open minded. The goal is to come up with several little jewels that can be passed along within our community. Logic and common sense are things that could apply to any weight bow of any style or length. I suspect a lot of it will be a just finding a better more understandable way of saying something.

     You go first!

     

[PEARL DRUMS]

The first piece of advice I hand out is always the same, think three steps ahead at all times. Always consider how what you are doing now will affect the build later on.

[Badger]

   Yea Pearl that's a good one. I think the way I address that is mainly roughing everything out a bit oversize until I find out how the wood is behaving. Nothing worse that going from floor tiller to brace or the tree and finding out one part of the limb is already bending to its limit, now the whole tiller shape has to be built around that one section of limb.

[tattoo dave]

The best advice I was given when I first started making bows was, "don't over think it, we're just trying to make a piece of wood bend evenly."

That piece of advice made me really slow down, which is what I needed to do more than anything back then.

Tattoo Dave

[osage outlaw]

For beginners:  Start slow and learn the basics of tillering.  I don't know how many times I've seen a beginner on here want to make a complicated bow like a horn composite for their first attempt. 

[BowEd]

The memo some seem to overlook as hinted to by badger.Make it wide enough and long enough to begin with until you get to know the woods characteristics.Basically that has a lot to do with density.

[Dances with squirrels]

Draw the bow on the tillering tree as close as possible to how it will be drawn by hand. Balance limb strengths relative to that. That seems like common sense/logic.

[gfugal]

something that took me a bit to realize at first was "build a bow to the wood's specific limits and characteristics". For some reason, I used to think that if you tillered good enough you could make a bow from most any wood and design. When the truth is some designs are downright impractical if not impossible for some woods. Material choice is one of the most important aspects of bow building. I'm not saying every bow has to be Osage or yew, but just don't expect the radical designs you see with Osage to work on a red oak board bow, I learned that the hard way. I don't know why I thought this way at first, maybe because of my fascination with making great things out of mediocre stuff, maybe even what other people consider junk (you know the "one man's trash is another man's treasure" deal). I also think it might have been because I didn't want to buy bow wood, especially when the good stuff can be quite pricey.

[Jim Davis]

++++++++++++1 gfugal


I disagree with the "start slow" school. I say start with decent but inexpensive wood and charge ahead. We learn faster from mistakes than from success. We also learn SKILLS faster from repetition than from contemplation.

When we fail, we should recognize the reason, if possible, and try again.

Remember the adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?" It's worth more than the idea that you MUST succeed the first time. My first attempt was nearly done and looking good when it exploded. I realized that I had used a stick that had a bug problem. I learned something about choosing a stave....

[Badger]

  I agree with starting off with easier basic designs until we get the tillering aspect and understanding of wood down a little bit.

  One of my favorites, thickness controls how far it can bend and width controls how far it will bend.

[Hawkdancer]

Perhaps the KISS principle, along with the planning/considering 3 steps ahead as to what you are doing, leave a margin for error, and remember: Murphy's Law is governed by Mc Connell's Therom, I.e. Murphy is an optimist!  Watch what you are doing, look carefully, listen to the "old guys" and use their knowledge!  And don't be afraid to ask questions - the only dumb question is the one you don't ask!  And learn how to post pictures! .  I'm still learning this craft!
Hawkdancer

[gfugal]

  One of my favorites, thickness controls how far it can bend and width controls how far it will bend.

Quite honestly I never understood that quote. Can vs Will is what? Can implies theoretical, will is a future tense of what is going to happen. I think they are too similar. I offer my own take on it for debate. I think it makes more sense this way "thickness controls how far it can/will bend, and width determines how strong it is at that bend" (i.e. width determines the poundage of your bow). Hypothetically let's imagine two bows of the same thickness but one is twice as wide. I think both can bend theoretically similar draw lengths as the fibers are stressed the same, since they are just as far from the neutral plane as the other bow. The only difference is the wider bow has many more fibers stressed, thus it has a higher poundage. Think of it as adding more workers hoising something up, not by adding the extra workers to the same rope (that may cause the rope to break) but by adding another rope alongside the first rope and its workers.

[George Tsoukalas]

Let the stave determine the design. Jawge

[Badger]

  One of my favorites, thickness controls how far it can bend and width controls how far it will bend.

Quite honestly I never understood that quote. Can vs Will is what? Can implies theoretical, will is a future tense of what is going to happen. I think they are too similar. I offer my own take on it for debate. I think it makes more sense this way "thickness controls how far it can/will bend, and width determines how strong it is at that bend" (i.e. width determines the poundage of your bow). Hypothetically let's imagine two bows of the same thickness but one is twice as wide. I think both can bend theoretically similar draw lengths as the fibers are stressed the same, since they are just as far from the neutral plane as the other bow. The only difference is the wider bow has many more fibers stressed, thus it has a higher poundage. Think of it as adding more workers hoising something up, not by adding the extra workers to the same rope (that may cause the rope to break) but by adding another rope alongside the first rope and its workers.

    If you read it carefully it is worded just as it should be worded. If it is confusing you need to keep thinking about it until it is no longer confusing because it is one of the most basic and important fundamentals of bow making. For any given thickness there is only one minimum radius that the limb can bend to at that particular spot without damaging the wood. Any time a bow takes set in a particular place it is because the width was too narrow for the particular thickness or the thickness. Once this concept is understould it will always drive your designs. If a bow has paralell limbs and even thickness it will bend next to the handle and the wood will be more stressed there. If you start tapering the sides of the limbs it will start to bend more ( Pyramid) and your even thickness will be right. If you choose to leave the limbs parallel then you will have to start tapering the thickness so that the limbs bend more as they go away from the handle, this will even out the stress on the wood.

[dragonman]

stay calm dont rush....never rush, it always goes wrong..be patient..

measure three times and you'll get it right when you cut

best advice I know