Osage bow for 33 inch draw

[Flntknp17]

I use tiny  tips on my bows, and D97, 652x, or BCYX for string material. Right now he is shooting 14 strands of B55. The build seminar had him tillering ,and shooting a fully twisted 20 strand B50 string, and testing the bow  with wood arrows.

That's a recipe for making sure people hate selfbows.....I could probably use a 20 strand string to pull my ATV out of the mud with the winch!  I can't fathom why anyone would do that....but I see it often.

[bassman211]

Wide knocked wood arrows with no string serving would be the main reason they make those fat strings I would think.

[Eric Krewson]

Early on in my bow making I tried to make osage bows for the long draw fellows, they just didn't hold up. Because I always replaced any broken bows no questions asked, I decided after making a bunch of replacement bows not to make a bow for a long draw guy unless it was bamboo backed. These bow have held together forever which was a relief.

I made two replacements for one guy with a 29" draw, when the second replacement broke I sent him back all of his money rather than make him another bow.

I have never had one of my personal bows fail, I have been shooting some of them since 96, about 10% of the ones I sent out did fail. I often wondered how they were treated and what made them fail but I didn't ask. I suspect that the owners' new osage bow was a bit of a novelty in their archery circle and they let anyone they knew shoot their bow, including their 6' 9" knuckle dragging cousin.

[Will B]

UPDATE:
At the request of my good friend Bassman I am providing an update on this post he had a few months back. It involved attempting to build a hunting bow for a friend of his with a long draw length. Bassman has been unable to do much bow building of late so I decided to pull out one of my longer Osage staves and get to work.

The stave had medium rings with some pin knots scattered throughout the stave. All in all a pretty nice piece of wood. I straightened the bow blank with dry heat and gave it to Bassman. He laid sinew over all the pin knots and returned it to me. I then flipped the tips and rawhide backed the bow.
I added tip overlays and finished tillering the bow out to 48# @ 32”. The bow is 72” TTT. It’s a basic flatbow design; 1-1/2” wide for half the length of the limbs tapering to 1/2” tips.

After re-reading this post I guess this long armed fellow has a 33” draw. I’m hoping this bow will handle it.  I pulled the bow to 32+” over fifty times on the tillering tree and had my wife snap a photo. I thought it looked pretty good to my eye but I guess time will tell…..Maybe when Bassman gives this bow to his buddy he can add a full draw shot.
Thanks for following along.
Will B

[Selfbowman]

Looks great and I bet it works out fine.

[RyanY]

Osage at that width and draw weight, I would expect to be fine. Looks great!

[Kidder]

That I like! Profile is really nice.

[superdav95]

Looks darn good to me.  Well done

[Del the cat]

Interesting thread... makes one realise why warbows (ELB) were long and bend through the handle.
They can still explode tho'. Bamboo backing is your friend
Del