Advanced warning: I like the stories surrounding something as much if not more than the thing itself, and I built this bow with what hopefully will be an epic story in mind…one that I’ll be able to remember and tell to my grandkids in great detail even after I’ve grown so old I can’t remember much more than my name. That’s the plan anyway, and I’m going to believe in it till it happens or it doesn’t. If you aren’t into the rambling details and possibilities of a long-winded wannabe writer, there are preliminary pics of my 7th bow build at the bottom of this novel. I’m happy with how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy the pics. Cheers.
For you curious gluttons for punishment…
Thanks to those who answered my random and possibly silly questions and provided support during this build. I have video of nearly every stage of this build starting when I shortened the bow, recurved the tips and started the sinew job. I have not attempted to tackle post-production editing of video yet, so it may be a while before I get all the video into a watchable format, but I will post the links to the vids once I get them edited; I truly believe they will be helpful to a lot of newbies as a baseline reference regarding the quantity of sinew, exact recipe for knox based hide glue, and drying times and methods with a lot of help regarding what not to do when making a fairly typical 62 ish inch sinew backed osage recurve in the American Flatbow Design. But enough of that...
This is my seventh bow build including two children's bows and the first two attempts at adult bows that both ended in tragic failures.
I jumped on this build in early June when I found out that I had drawn the coveted Area 7 type 1 elk tag here in Wyoming. I have never been elk hunting, and I have never camped out by myself a single night in my entire 53 years on this planet. That said, Huckelberry Finn lit an adventurous fire in me at a very young age, and I am a master at being able to pick apart and critique what everyone is doing wrong and telling my wife what they should be doing when watching any episode of Alone, Life Below Zero, and Nekkid and Skeered...so I've got that going for me.
When I drew the tag, I realized that I had a lot of learning to do, a lot of gear to purchase, and a lot of work to do to produce a bow that I felt good about chasing elk with. I did have "Umal Mugambi" that I made and hunted with last year, but I was not satisfied with its 52# final draw weight, the set it took, nor the consistency and accuracy with which I am able to fling arrows with it. Umal came from a wonky, side checked stave, and it ended up having a grip that is less than ideal and that does not lend itself to the "subconcious repeatability" that is necessary for consistent and repeatable accuracy. So I grabbed what looked to be my least finiky, most reliable stave and went to work.
My mom and dad were visiting in June, and I rushed through the tillering to show dad the process of building a bow; I really wanted to get it shooting while he was here. Subsequently, I blew past my target draw weight of 60# while still having negative tiller and far from perfect bend. Doh! I did manage to correct the tiller and get it bending nicely while dad was here, and it shot very well as a 49-50# @ 28" longbow selfbow, but it was not what I was trying to make and needing it to be.
At 65.5 inches tip to tip, I had room to shorten the bow and/or recurve the tips and/or sinew back it to bring it up to my target weight. After some good advice from folks on here, I decided to take 1.5" from each tip and sinew back and recurve the tips. This was my second sinew job, and the first one was a disaster, so I was not very optimistic about producing my own bow for this elk hunt.
Fortunately, I took my time, weathered a few mistakes, and ended up with a very quiet, shock free, and surprisingly speedy hunting bow, and I am absolutely...well, there is no way to describe the feeling of optimisim I now have when I'm daydreaming about my fletchings disappearing into a big bull's chest after this bow launches some cane-of-death into a quiet and flat and lethal flight. I have the first 18 days of bow season to persevere and get myself within 20-25 yards of an elk, and I plan on hiking my old arse and "Lil Eddy" into the backcountry and staying until I kill one or have to return for work.
I'm now just hoping Weylin and the likes enter self bow's this month or take the month off so that Lil Eddy has a chance in the BOTM contest...so that my kids will have a new reason to consider that I might actually be "cool" after all, of course!
The bow is 62.5" tip to tip, sinew backed with elk sinew from our local processor that I traded a future bow for, and copperhead skinned. The skins came from two folks in SC that kill copperheads when they run into them. One was 45" and it was used to cover from the fades to just shy of the recurves. The other was 20" and it was used to cover the handle section. The skins were very different in both color and pattern, and this was the only way I could apply them that made any sense to me. I used way, way too thin silk thread to thread wrap over the skin splices and where the skins played out at the tips. Helpful hint...if you are ever going to do a thread wrap, make sure your thread will not tear or break with modest pressure, because I spent the majority of an entire day getting this thread to work...and it was a frustrating disaster of a job that would have looked much better had I been using more robust thread. Live and learn.
Lil Eddy ended up at 62.5# @ 28". Immediately after unstringing the bow after a shooting session, the top limb shows a bit of follow at an area of natural deflex that I removed with dry heat early in the build. After a couple of hours though, it returns to and retains a steady reflex from the fades to the recurves. With a 16 strand B-50 string, it is shooting a 10gpp (625 gr) cane arrow consistently at 167-169 fps and a 538 grain cane arrow at 180 fps.
I attempted my first stone inlays on this bow for my maker's mark and an elk head, as I built this specifically for this upcoming elk hunt. The elk head is crushed mahogany obsidian from my debitage pile, and the maker's mark is some cool metalic purple rock and some cool greenish rock from my yard that I crushed and mixed together. The arrow pass silencer/plunger needs no explanation and is made from suede leather attached with gel CA glue.
I added the painting design on the sides of the limbs for no other reason than to add a bit of camo break up while tying together and smoothing out the transition from the skins to the natural beauty of the osage. I'd love to say that I made the paint from natural earth pigments, but I have not gotten around to making any paint yet...maybe on the next bow. This was done with acrylic paint pens.
Here are some pics after 10-12 coats of truoil were applied and cured. I have since decided to apply several coats of mineral-spirits thinned, satin Varathane spar urethane for added protection against relative humidity fluctuations and to knock down the high gloss truoil finish, as this is a hunting bow. After the spar cures for 48-72 hours, I'll take pictures of the truly finished bow with the FD profile pics and unstrung profile pics and post them here.
Hopefully the last pics added will be in a month or so and show this bow sharing space with a big Wyoming bull elk.
