Hello everyone. My name is Jeff Hale, I’m 50 years old, live in WA state and and a complete rookie, noob, beginner with making bows. I’ve hunted my whole life with rifles and muzzleloaders but I’ve never let anyone arrow fly at a game animal. But that’s about to change! I need at least a year of intense pract then I’ll be ready to try some small game, and maybe a real close shot on a deer.
I’ve tried to build 3 bows over the last 3 months. My first one was an Oak board bow backed with fiberglass tape just to practice some basic skills. I had no expectations. It broke after about 200 arrows. Next I bought 2 yew wood staves for $80 each (I’m assuming that’s the going rate for average staves?). They both had some substantial knots, which I understand is more common than not with yew. I used only hand tools and got about 35 hours into bow #2 and I broke it tillering. BUT, I closely examined the break and read a bunch from people on this forum, and I was ready to try bow #3 out of the 2nd yew stave. Well, this time I was way more careful and I had to figure out what to do with the knots. So one I “built into” the limb by accepting it and the wood that flowed around it and left it proud. However, there were two smaller knots on the belly that concerned me with black, soft pithy cores. I decided to drill them out gingerly and plugged them with left over heart wood from the bow that broke only a week before. It worked. Well…so far. Who knows if this thing will last. Only time will tell. It is 45# at 28”. It’s really accurate for me so far. Unfortunately it has about an inch of string follow and it’s only throwing a 500 spine, 300 grain arrow at 140 FPS. So, this won’t be powerful enough to hunt deer with, but it’ll be fine for up close grouse, rabbits, squirrels and probably even Turkey. It’s very, very basic. Nothing fancy. I’m having g a ton of fun. Can’t wait to try another. I want to say thank you to all those that have posted information on this site. Without that information I couldn’t have been successful with my first basic bow. So THANK YOU! I will try to post useful things when I come across them but for now I’m so new that I’m not sure I have much to offer. Here are a couple pics of my basic self on out of Yewwood.
