Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: DuBois on March 24, 2013, 06:00:42 am
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I have made a lot of mistakes in my short time working on bows and am sure I am currently making more but at least they are not usually the same ones over again.
I guess that would be what it's about; progress.
I look back and think "man I was dumb", and I will surely do the same in another year.
I am wanting to hear rookie mistakes that us new guys can learn from and you oldtimers can laught at :o
I somehow missed the section that talked about long string tillering until after killing several bows that may have been really good otherwise.
I spent hours working on an elm stave that I still think would have been a real good bow, I then promptly tried to brace itand was almost strong enought to get it there and then CRACK. I felt so stupid when I read about this thing called "long string tillering"!!
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One of the easiest to make is working on the wrong limb >:(
These days I always tiller with top limb to the right and the toggle on my tillering string (which I use to adjust it's length) also to the right.
One of the hardest lessons I learned was how to saw the right side of the line.
I was just a school kid and was making a crossbow with the prod made from a leafsping from a car. The taper was marked out as basically 3 straight line cuts.
So cut line one, saw off the scrap, cut line two saw off the scrap, cut line three. One side finished :) That looks good.
Now bear in mind this is pretty hard steel and a pretty long spring.
Turn it over, start again...
Cut line one, saw off the tip :o bwahhhhhhhh!
My brother helped me out, we got another spring and took it in turns 5minute shifts and we got another one cut, still took us 20 mins to saw that bad boy.
Del
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I once cut my nocks facing the wrong way... DOH! Sot a bow too close to a chair that had a chrono, the bow limb struck the chair and broke the bow, thats all i can think of for right now...
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I once cut my nocks facing the wrong way... DOH! Sot a bow too close to a chair that had a chrono, the bow limb struck the chair and broke the bow, thats all i can think of for right now...
That's my favourite one to do.
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Working when tired;
I sharpened the false edge of my knife then tried using it as a draw knife >.< Tired
My belt sander was slow hogging off wood so I tested the grit with my thumb. Tired
Tried to fell a tree against gravity. Tired
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My best rookie mistake was not listening to the "basics" being told to me from experienced bowyers.
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My rookie mistake was attempting a complicated laminated recurve design for my first bow. Needless to say, it blew up before I got to brace.
I've also made quite a few bad cuts with the bandsaw and gotten a little too aggressive with the belt sander a few times.
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I have made too many to list here, but one I remember was on one of my first 2 or 3 bows, I was in the final tillering stage...
First a little background. When I made my tiller tree which is mounted on the wall, I used a hand drill to drill holes for pegs to insert for various draw lengths. (not all the holes are completely perpendicular to the stud.
Anyway. I pulled the bow down to the 23 in. peg, or so, and walked back to view it from a distance and get a pic. Just as I turned around, the bow shot up in the air about 10 or 15 feet, then fell to the ground snapping off the tip overlay. I thought it blew up, but realized later that the peg was crooked and it just slipped off the peg. I really felt like an idiot that I didn't notice the peg had an upward slant. Believe it or not, I was able to replace the tip overlay and salvage the bow.
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i love character bows.when i first started,i tried to use challenging peices of wood like snakey osage staves.i figured that if i master one of those,the rest would be easy.i want to tell you that it don't work that way.after ruining alot of nice staves,i started looking for straight,clean staves with thicker rings.
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Impatience!!!!
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Once, while bending recurves in an osage bow I bent both recurves without incident until I realized one bent towards the back and one towards the belly. ::) And believe me this isn't the dumbest mistake I've made, just one I don't mind sharing. ;)
I believe most of these mistakes we make is due to lack of concentration or trying to work through anger or impatience and not staying focused. This is why I harp on patience being your #1 bow making tool.
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Impatience!!!!
me too
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My first bows where board bows. After cluing up a lam. And roughing it in, I went to put a string on it and it broke at the fade. So what did I do? Start over ,build, string, break!!! Then I realized that I wasn't leaving enough handle into the fades. There went a week of work :'(
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Taking wood off the belly without a plan.
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I think what Pat B said above about patience is right on. For me, I can only work on a bow for so long at a stretch before I stop. Put it down and walk away. Wait an hour or a day or maybe a week before I pick it back up. Surprising how often my perspective has changed as well as my judgement about a particular....somthin somthin. My rookie mistakes, regrettably, I'm still making them just not as often. I used a spring clamp the other day to hold a bow on my bench while I heat bent the handle. The little rubber sleeve on the tip slipped just enough to where the sharp metal edge was resting on the belly of my bow. As I applied pressure, yep. Fortunately, I spotted it before it was very deep so I was able to sand it out. Took a break at that point! I've said before, it's not a race for me. I love makin' bows. Think I'll get started now.
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Narrowing already thin tips! >:( >:( >:( I still also have trouble sometimes with being patient, I get excited and caught up in the moment. I need a big sign in my shop that says "SLOW DOWN YOU MORON!!!" My younger brothers are sure glad to have my though! ::)
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thinking this would make a good board bow
(http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f146/bigbratguy/IMG_0037.jpg)
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Biggest mistake I've ever tryed doing is roughing a really nice stave out with a drawknife and getting it down close to my lines and then accidentally tearing a big chuck of wood out. That's why I don't use a draw knife to Rough bows out any more I just take my time with a rasp
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Once, while bending recurves in an osage bow I bent both recurves without incident until I realized one bent towards the back and one towards the belly. ::) And believe me this isn't the dumbest mistake I've made, just one I don't mind sharing. ;)
I believe most of these mistakes we make is due to lack of concentration or trying to work through anger or impatience and not staying focused. This is why I harp on patience being your #1 bow making tool.
C'mon Pat... we want a picture of that one ;D
Del
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That evidence was destroyed many years ago, Del. You'll just have to take my word for it. ;D
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I once cut my nocks facing the wrong way... DOH! Sot a bow too close to a chair that had a chrono, the bow limb struck the chair and broke the bow, thats all i can think of for right now...
I can beat that, cut the nocks the wrong way, cut the tips off and did it AGAIN, compleat dumbass moment :laugh:
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That evidence was destroyed many years ago, Del. You'll just have to take my word for it. ;D
Heck, you could probably have sold it to a compounder, if you told him it made it shoot faster >:D
Del
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I used to always cut my nocks the wrong way, that led me to using pin nocks exclusively lol. Not using a hanging scale led me to alot of under weight very light bows. I was afraid of pulling the bow too hard and causing unnecessary set.
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My biggest mistake was deciding to make my own bow and thought I just needed to make one....boy was I wrong and now this stuff has taken over my life...HELP ME!!!!!!! ::) ;D :laugh:
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cutting string nocks the wrong way has been my mistake a few times. It isnt to bad because you still cut them off and re-do them, but then you lose the length that you wanted!
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When I cut the nocks wrong, I cut them off, then glued on a laminate on the tip to make it thicker, like a glued on recurve, so that way I didnt need to shorten my string, and brace height didnt change...
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When weighing my bows I had measurements on the wall under my spring scale. I didn't reallize that when I pulled down on the bow the hook on my scale pulled down as well. I was reading the weight about 2" short of what I was tillering it to so all my bows were a little on the heavy side. I'm ashamed to admit I just figured this out about a month or two ago :-[
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Sold and gave away ally seasoned wood before realizing I hadn't set any back fore myself, now I'm waiting for staves to season. And there is that first bow , I wanted a 45 to50 pound bow and ended up with one about 39 pounds , had plenty of wood to begone with just couldn't stop making those neat curly cues .
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Using alder to make a bow, cutting the string grooves in the wrong direction, leaving the bow in front of the wood stove too long, making the handle too narrow, mishandling how to work certain woods that are extremely prone to tear-outs, ( serviceberry, hawthorn, birch.) The list goes on and on, but i've figured out what i like best and what works best for me so those kind of mistakes have stopped. The learning never ends.
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my worst so far was when I steamed a bow, recurved the tip and had bent it the wrong way. the worst part about it was i didnt even realize it until my wife said "shouldnt that be bent the other way" so now my new motto "check twice bend once" :laugh:
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Ha, just remembered, I also made a left handed bow instead of a right handed on accident once....
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Thinking that my wife would be interested in my bows!lol!
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I'm right handed and have made myself two left hand bows:)
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Wow, we should burry this thread, new guys are gonna read this, think, what a bunch of maroons, and never ask us questions for advice again! lol.....
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"There's no mistakes, just Happy Accidents", Bob Ross
Spoken by an artist working with canvas and paint. Obviously he's never had a shattered bowlimb ear notch him like a hog in "Ol' Yeller"! And I don't wanna talk about it.
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Without pics... it didnt happen...
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OO fun I made a lot of these. Let's see... I thought a nice, straight, dense piece of pine would make a good bow. Tiller looked good, but it took 5" of set.
I also used some mystery wood for nock overlays. It ended up being too soft and the string (made of mystery cord I found in the garage) cut right through it.
I once tried to raise the weight of a perfectly functioning red oak board bow (That's right, fully shot in, 35# bow with 1" of set, and I thought it wasn't broke so I should mess with it) by backing it with a thick strip of hickory, which promptly killed it.
Once I was working on another red oak bow and the tiller wasn't balancing. One limb was far stiffer, so I got impatient and removed a crapload of wood. It was immediately unbalanced in the other direction, and only pulling 25# @ 30". I balanced the tiller out (to like 20# @ 30") and gave it to a friend of mine with kids. It's so over built for the draw weight they'll never break the thing. I think it ended up taking 1/4" of set.
That was only in the first 3 bows! If mistakes are for learning, then I learned a ton from those 3 failures. It's no wonder why I made half a dozen good bows after that before another failure! I think that was a lesson in preparing glue joints properly. More specifically, what happens when I DON"T do it properly...
The most recent mistake was me messing with a functioning bow again (didn't learn my lesson). I took the first and only penobscot bow I've made to date and replaced the artificial sinew back strings with dacron. No stretch in dacron, and it chrysaled to death shortly thereafter. D'oh.
Which one is best? You decide. The last one just goes to prove I'm still making a rookie mistake now and then. What is the cut off for deciding when something is a rookie mistake and when something is a stupid, should have known better mistake?
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Hmmm, this wasnt MYYYY mistake, well kinda but not really... I took a bow to see my wifes side of the family down in Florida. We were shooting an old couch in the carport. Her aunt wanted to try, having never seen a bow before in her life. She puts the arrow on the string and just sits there saying " Nothing is happening " . I was too shocked to really say anything other than, " Pull the string back ", to which she does, about half way. Again she says " Nothings happening!" " Let go says I " I see the hand holding the bow start to let go before I yell " STOP! Let got he string, not the bow ! " She shot finally, the arrow went 3 feet, and to my relief, she went inside...
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Lol.........made my share, How 'bout doing things backwards like shaping the handle before tillering is complete. Ya, ;D backwards is backwards does. Did 5 bows like that.
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Not sticking with wanting to build bows when I was a kid. I got distracted by other things. Here I am 40 and doing what I wanted to do as a teenager.
Greg
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Trying to start of making warbows when I couldnt even pull 70lbs. I was very young back then and for whatever dumb reason I wanted a strong bow. So that caused me to break many bows. I was 14-15 back then, that was 10 years ago.
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I
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I once thought I was wrong but I was mistaken.
Starting out the first couple years is not slowing down.
Now instead of makeing a bow in a day or 3 now I might that a month or 3. Maybe longer on personal bows .I always have 3 or 4 bows going at once at different stages.
I hang the bows on pegs and look at them everyday I go into my shop. If you slow down a look at it a couple, few days. You'll aways see something you did'nt see the day before.
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I made a 55" Cypress Bow with a stiff handle that pulled 28". Didn't know it wasn't supposed to work cause nobody told me. Actually was a sweet shooter for the first 100 shots. Than it blew to Smithereens! Got me wondering about what was "bow wood." That was 11 years ago. I still have the remnants somewhere.
Gabe
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My worst and most common mistake when I first started out was to try to cut the back to belly limb profile in one pass on my bandsaw. I was always using osage and often tried to slice off the excess belly wood with the limb standing on edge. I would end up with a limb that would be at my desired thickness on the side that was up and 1/4" thickness on the side I couldn't see because I would have my wood tilted the wrong way when I fed it into the bandsaw.
I ruined several great staves with this goof-up before I learned to cut each side separately with the wood tilted to make a peak in the middle of the belly that I would rasp off later.
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I started making bows in '89 of the last century. I can't remember rookie mistakes . LOL. All I know is I was a 3 year rookie. Jawge
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Thinking the tiller was 'Good nuff' or thinking the back of a bow was "Clean nuff".
I had a 48" hickory self bow I was drawing 24" and I still remember that one blowing up and the limb flying right by my face. :o
Also when I first started, the only things I knew about archer came from looking at FG bows and reading "Hunting with the Bow and Arrow". Well, I really skimmed the book and all I rememberd was that Ishi's bow was measured from hip to outstreched arm. Then Fiberglass bows were about an inch wide and had a stiff thick handle with a notch for the arrow.
My first couple bows when I was younger were made with this 46" 1" wide stiff riser, 1 hickory, 1 boo backed maple. By short drawing, one of them actually worked (the hickory), and after wrapping a couple of the back splinters with electrical tape, I had a bow that drew about 60lbs at 20" and it worked well for several months untill I made my next bows. I still have it today and it is unbroken, reminding me of where I came from a few years ago.
Hickory was good to me starting out and I still use it today. :)
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George you got me by a little ways. I start collecting fence posts in the winter of 89 but did'nt start my first bow to APR of 23. After 11 years I through my beloved compound away and had been shoot recurves and long bows for 6 years. I did'nt get to turkey hunt with my first bow was sinewed and did'nt thing about the time it would take and just missed gobbler season (DID'NT HUNT WITH IT AT ALL). Did kill a 5 point and doe that first deer season. With my second BL sinewed bow.
The only info I had was a boy scout manel BUILD A INDAIN BOW (1959). Wish Id had innet back then. It took me a couple bows to find out not all selfbows wer'nt sinewed. Sinew not a good way to start out. IBoy was I happy to find out (PRIMITIVE ARCHERY CAME OUT NOT LONG AFTER MY SECOND BOW )you could build all wood bows.
I GUESS MY WORST ROOKIE MASTAKE WAS. Not getting the weight I wanted. I have a bow scale and couple find out finished weight. And if I came out heavy I thought I was ok and I was takeing off wood going down to my disired weight. Did'nt know I was putting unneeded stress on my limbs doing it like this.
Then I make a trillering tree with a scale and slowed way down when tillerig. Ever since then I can hit it with in a pound to dead on.
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Don't stand anywhere near the overhead garage door rail when shooting in the bow. Upper limbs don't like it at all... >:(
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Thinking I know enough
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I
This sums it up pretty good.
I'd love to quote some others but there are too many, you guys are cracking me up. I love it.
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Ha ha ha Tom, done that one myself. Hit a roof joist too.
Gabe
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Thinking I know enough
I still got that problem!
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I made a bow that came in light so i decidec to pike it. Cut an inch off the first limb, reshaped the tip, cut in new nocks,went and got a drink, came back and did it all over again, then realised i piked the same limb both times. ::)
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Not listening to that little voice in the back of mind telling me not to pull the string anymore till I put the bow on the tillering tree, third or fourth pull ended it then all I herd was that voice telling me " I told you so" then it laught at me ( that was my first white wood bow and first blow up ) and missed the poundage on my first bow by about ten punds , wanted a fifty and got a fourety .
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I made a bow that came in light so i decidec to pike it. Cut an inch off the first limb, reshaped the tip, cut in new nocks,went and got a drink, came back and did it all over again, then realised i piked the same limb both times. ::)
That's a bow style I like to call "double asymetrical"! :o
Been there, done that, wore out the reunion t-shirt , and now use it for washing the car.
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Okay all you newbies , don't tell the others I said this but if you want to see them still make rookie mistakes go to one of the jamborees where they are teaching about one hundred or more new bowers how to build bows and you will see even the best make a mistake , you just have to know what to look for cause they know how to cover up little mishaps when nobody is looking ( seen a few little ones at OJAM while four or five newbies wher standing in line to get their bows cut out , handles can be glued back on) . ::)
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my best rookie mistake...
I think it was my first bow, I was attempting a red-oak board bow. I found a board with absolutely straight grain and growth rings, but didn't look carefully enough and found that the board was like a sponge--not dense at all. and it had a pin knot.
I eventually got kind of miffed because the draw weight was real low, so I piked it. And it was already only 62" before I piked it...unbacked...
I still have a slight mark on my head where the top limb blow on me ::)
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I was working on a nice little, would be, yew recurve, and had steam bend one tip. Now....you have to be quick about it between the boiler and the form....I was so fast that I bend the other tip the wrong way:-(
Cheers
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Drinking
Leavening the bark on staves
Heating the wrong side of the bow to bend it(the back)
Using the band saw as a tillering tool!!!
Rushing and using green unseasoned wood
I will stop there
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Using a bandsaw. Jim Hamm was correct when he said it takes a lot of time and hard work to get to a finished bow and only seconds to ruin one on a bandsaw.
Tracy
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Now I remember. Christian Soldiers comments jogged my antiquated memory. On several occasions the tiller WAS good enough but then I decided to make it BETTER! Bang! The mistake was not trusting my instincts. There is more to a good tiller than meets the eye. Further, as a bowyer I strive to use all my senses in tillering. So far I've only put 3 of 5 to work. Jawge
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I made a handful of Hackberry bows last year. On a little narrow side split, I was working the belly down on my belt sander....realized I was working the back down on my belt sander. Damn!
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Probably the worst rookie mistake was trying to "flip-the-tips" over some coals in the fire on a 30 year old ELB bow that had taken some set. I had no idea how exceptional that piece of yew was at the time.
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Cutting a lot of crooked wood because character bows are cool. nothing wrong with some character staves, but I wish I had cut some more straight clean stuff when I first started cutting.