Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: ssrhythm on August 10, 2021, 05:09:27 am
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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.
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more pics
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If anyone has any pointers as to how to take a quality photo and actually post the entire true photo on here, I'd love to hear it. I am having to edit these iphone photos and crop them in very, very close in order to get them under the 250kb max per pic. I'm not sure what I did last time, but I don't think I can get a pic of the entire bow or any FD pics that would show the entire bow and still come in under the limit with what I am currently doing. Help is appreciated! Thanks.
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If anyone has any pointers as to how to take a quality photo and actually post the entire true photo on here, I'd love to hear it. I am having to edit these iphone photos and crop them in very, very close in order to get them under the 250kb max per pic. I'm not sure what I did last time, but I don't think I can get a pic of the entire bow or any FD pics that would show the entire bow and still come in under the limit with what I am currently doing. Help is appreciated! Thanks.
You can post high-res pics by using a free 3rd party service like Imgur. You can upload your pics there, then copy the link into your post. You want to use the "BBCode" link, so when you copy it into your post.
Beautiful bow, by the way!
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You can post high-res pics by using a free 3rd party service like Imgur.
+1. Third party hosting is the way to go.
Bow looks very nice.
Mark
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Handle looks nicely shaped and it’s a very cool looking piece of hedge. The silk wraps are well presented. Good work, looking forward to seeing the bend.
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Keep us informed on the hunt. That is a nice weapon to take on your first backcountry hunt. Be ready and alert as soon as you get out there. Beginner luck is real.
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Nice write up and nice bow. It took me two sessions to read it, but I'd much rather read than watch videos. I wish more people would go back to writing, or at least do both.
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New Pics at link below.
Ok. I finished putting on the matte spar finish and it's finally dry. I wish I could get the cool colors of the crushed stone in the maker's mark to show up, but its really subtle and only shows up when you look at it from just the right angle with the sun hitting it, but it's really cool looking in person. I decided to re-do the suede crosses on the arrow pass and use contact cement vs CA, as the CA hardened the suede and killed its quietening properties.
I took y'alls advice and signed up on IMGUR. I can't figure out how to post the pics from there where they just show up on here...so tell me how to do it if it's possible. Until then, here is a link to the post. She shoots great, and I'm sure its going to shoot even better once I get some arrows that have enough spine to actually tune to it.
The last two pics are FD Pics, so scroll to the bottom if you want to get straight to those.
Thanks for looking.
https://imgur.com/a/2HxokQS
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Think I figured it out...
(https://i.imgur.com/V9Wl34D.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/Jziup59.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/SHJLgl7.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/Iz7zvRb.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/pEfZfJR.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/ENjlFTm.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/3OOxUU1.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/Di4PD7P.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/xJ09qgl.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/nFiM8Tj.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/QgeRdIT.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/EpxDu7y.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/zZcX7o8.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/dV96GPW.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/WI3fxCg.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/e1ALc9V.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/cYZXEyg.jpg);(https://i.imgur.com/bHy70Ml.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/fWoyy8a.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/SkM3PxX.jpg);
(https://i.imgur.com/mKJaP2w.jpg?1);
(https://i.imgur.com/UfnqNSv.jpg)
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Great looking bow in every way.Lots of fine details to it.Labor of love.Sure hope you get a shot on your elk hunting trip.
Are you sure you got big enough string silencers?
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Great looking bow in every way.Lots of fine details to it.Labor of love.Sure hope you get a shot on your elk hunting trip.
Are you sure you got big enough string silencers?
That's what came in the package ;D! I just wrapped them around the string like I would wrap a grip on a tennis racket. I never even thought about cutting one in half and just using one for both silencers...well, not until just now when I read your post!
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That is one, fine tillered bow. Actually the whole package looks Fantastic! A very fine job, Sir.
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Great looking bow in every way.Lots of fine details to it.Labor of love.Sure hope you get a shot on your elk hunting trip.
Are you sure you got big enough string silencers?
That's what came in the package ;D! I just wrapped them around the string like I would wrap a grip on a tennis racket. I never even thought about cutting one in half and just using one for both silencers...well, not until just now when I read your post!
I understand.It does'nt take much of a silencer to quiet a string on a recurve.
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I actually prefer wool yarn poofs, but I had a couple of these in my string drawer and figured I’d try them again. I’m probably going to build another string just like it and use the wool…which is much smaller and I think does a better job of damping vibration and killing noise, and have this string in my pack as a backup.
Thanks to all of you for the positive feedback…for any feedback for that matter. I’ve come from just trying to make a bow that would shoot and not break before finishing last spring to trying to make a bow worthy of taking into the field after whitetail or mule deer last fall to this build this summer. This bow is a product of me screwing it up initially and employing the advice of the good folks on here to regroup and recover. I’m still working toward being able to make a bow that’s tillered well enough to maintain its profile, strung and unstrung, for years of hunting without having to be backed. My goal is a pure selfbow made 100% of the chunk of hedge it came from, deeply saturated with bear grease, that hits hard and is worry free. (See Simson’s Recent Beauty). If I can keep improving my patience, I’ll get there.
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Nice work! Well, I prefer bows without a cut in shelf. but I see you have done a good job.
The unbraced pic looks very good.
In the fd pic it looks like the lower limb bends too much, have you canted the bow?
To discuss a bow it is helpful to take orthogonally pics, and unbraced, braced, fd in a row.
And I'm with Ed, smaller silencers do the job. If you have a chrony measure speed with and without the silencers, I'm sure about how you will decide.
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Nice work! Well, I prefer bows without a cut in shelf. but I see you have done a good job.
The unbraced pic looks very good.
In the fd pic it looks like the lower limb bends too much, have you canted the bow?
To discuss a bow it is helpful to take orthogonally pics, and unbraced, braced, fd in a row.
And I'm with Ed, smaller silencers do the job. If you have a chrony measure speed with and without the silencers, I'm sure about how you will decide.
Excellent…this is what I’m looking for. Orthogonally pics??? Please explain, and I’ll try to do it.
The FD pics were me using a tripod doing a timer agains the only solid background around here that’s not the same color as the bow. I’m trying, since this is a pic pointed up toward the sky, to can’t the bow in a manner that is perpendicular and square to the camera itself. Tall task single-handed. That said, The bottom limb bends more than the top, but doesn’t it HAVE to bend more to draw equally and return home at the same time? The handle is 4” with 1.25” above the center of the bow and 3.75” below the center of the bow with 3” fades…so the bottom limb is 2.5” shorter than top limb.
I shoot split fingers, so the bow starts 1/4” positive tiller at brace. After a couple of shots or 20 or so 3/4+ pulls to settle it in, it becomes ~1/8” or slightly less positive tiller at a 6.5” brace.
At my current understanding (which I admit is evolving as I learn more from folks on here and from Books) I was thinking that this configuration was what I was trying to achieve as far as dimensions and bend goes.
I am going to be making my next bows a little less center shot for sure, as this bow is giving me fits trying to get a shaft that is stiff enough with heavy heads I want to hunt with. It is currently liking a 108-110#, 28.75” cane arrow with a 190 grain head. I’m thinking about building out the crosses to get my arrow pointing a little left so this thing will tune better with a bit weaker shaft.
Thanks for the feedback; please keep it coming, as I’m trying my best to figure all this out to the highest degree that my brain will allow.
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I’ll just chime in on the photo sharing. Use Imgur. It’s easy! You just create an account, upload your pictures (I upload mine as private/hidden albums so no one but me can see them), and then click “get photo codes” next to your photos. There will be several codes to choose from, and you will want to copy the BB Code. Paste the BB Codes for each pic directly into your posts here and you’ll get full resolution uploads. Hope this helps! Killer bow! (SH)
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Very nice bow . Well done
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Orthogonal means having to do with right angles - I imagine Simon means it is easier to wrap your head around the full draw photos if you are not angling the bow up.
Your bow looks great! It should really do the job on an elk if you get the chance - good luck!