Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: bassman211 on June 02, 2022, 01:35:52 pm
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I have a friend who's knuckles drag on the ground when he walks. His true draw is 33 inches. This guy has killed every thing from elephants to white tail with a rifle , or compound bow. He built his first Osage bow at a build meet that really is sub standard in about every way. He wants Will B, and I to build him an Osage bow 50 lbs. at 33 inch draw weight. He wants it as short as possible for that draw. Non working handle with an arrow shelf. Normally that should be a 77 inch self bow. I think I will take a shot at it with with a 68 inch sinew backed Osage bow. He is 6ft 6 inches tall, so that should make a short bow for him. I never tillered a bow to 33 inches sinew ,or not.. Have any one out their tillered an Osage bow for 33 inch draw, and yes his true draw is 33 inches?
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Nope. Never tillered a bow to that draw length. I thought 29" was pretty far. Good luck, Bob, I'm sure you and Will are up to the task.
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Reflex deflex design can help keep the length down and sinew will help.
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Boy , I don't know Steve. Like you I have gone as far as 29 inches, but never any farther. Ryan is that my way of thinking also. I am going to insist on a knot free nearly perfect stave on this one. guys have posted break tests on bows on this forum that broke at some awful long draws, so that gives me some hope. Thanks guys.
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its relative,, 66 should be fine with sinew,,
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That sounds like a challenge build.I made flat self bow for a fella pulling 31" once.That was 68" long.It held up ok.He's killing deer with it.
Your friend will have to train himself to get a little closer to the game maybe.
2 minds are better than one with this build I'd say.
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Drawlength is no problem simply scale a 'normal' bow.
28" draw bow - this bow needs to be 18% longer and wider.
1 1/4" width becomes - just under 1 1/2" width. Length 66" becomes 78". This is for a 'scaled' flatbow.
If you add sinew you can go shorter.
If you go wider you can go shorter.
You can go shorter than you think BUT string angle is the problem. Make it too short and you will have a stacky bow that is hard to be accurate with - the last thing this guy will want.
I personally would go down the sinew backed recurve route. The recurves will stop the stack. I would make it 67" ntn.
Funnily enough I've just made an osage recurve for a young man with a 30" draw. I made it 65" for safetys sake and he hasn't stopped growing yet!
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That is very close to what we were going to attempt bownarra. Thank you for your input, and the rest of you guys.
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I helped a friend with a 34" draw make an osage self bow. We made it a kittle over 72" in length. Jawge
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If you make it a true D-Bow, you can do draw length x2 plus a little for insurance. In your case, 66" is twice the draw, but I'd stretch it out to 70". Almost all my personal hunting bows are 70", and they're no more cumbersome in the woods than any other longbow.
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if its bend in the handle,, he problaby wont draw that long,, if you want him to draw a little shorter just make it a bit heavier,, >:D
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a sinew bow just does not have to be longer than twice the draw,,,especially if you recurve the tips a bit,, its just not gonna break,,
but I do agree if its a bit longer the string angle makes it a bit easier to shoot accurately,,
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Go with a deflex/reflex/recurve design and you can pull impossible lengths. How wide of a stave do you have? Width will be your friend.
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agree the reflex deflex will draw longer,, I have not done it,, but simon recommends it,, that and sleek is enough for me
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Inch, and a half at the fades to 1/2 inch at the tips flat bow style is what I have to work with, and a good amount of sinew. The stave is 68 inches long, and clean but ,for one small knot on the back. I was thinking 2 layers of sinew. Thanks for your input guys.
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Nice thing about longer bows is that their bend radius is bigger so it’ll be thicker as well which should be helpful for not needing it to be terribly wide.
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Inch, and a half at the fades to 1/2 inch at the tips flat bow style is what I have to work with, and a good amount of sinew. The stave is 68 inches long, and clean but ,for one small knot on the back. I was thinking 2 layers of sinew. Thanks for your input guys.
At 1.5 wide, id recommend roughly deflex out the fade till the tips are 2.5 inches below the back. Then reflex until the tips are even with the back of the handle. Add in recurves that put 3 inches above the back. A bow of that shape should allow a bow roughly 62 inches long to pull 33 with no problem. Maybe even 60 inches long but unless you have experience in a bow of this style, I'd go with 62 long.
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Still pushing it in my opinion. Yes you could make a bow to those dimensions but the belly won't like you for it. the fastest bows are the ones with appropriate strain at full draw and the freshest belly after getting there. :)
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Sleek I under stand what you are saying. Nice to know that short bows will take that long of a draw. With half inch knocks it will be 67 inches long if I can pull it off. For him that is a short enough bow. His nick name is high tower. Bownarra how much sinew? I mostly use one layer, but it seems to me I would need more for this bow. Thanks for your input guys.
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Still pushing it in my opinion. Yes you could make a bow to those dimensions but the belly won't like you for it. the fastest bows are the ones with appropriate strain at full draw and the freshest belly after getting there. :)
I agree!!!
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Use all that stave you can!!!
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I have made a lot of long draw bows just for fun and they are mushy as hell, once you start tillering and they start to take set you are done wherever that happens to be.
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I ve built some 90-100 # bows for flight. One boo backed Osage , one complex composite boo backed boo core horn belly. They broke records at 28-29” . They blew at 32-33 inches 67-69” long 10” handles. The Osage bows of that weight just took set. just saying.
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Ok I made a 64 inch bow just to see at 32 inches of draw it was shooting in the high 170's,, I didnt put much reflex in, it was about even,, it had two layers of sinew,, but it was shooth and easy to shoot,, it was bend in handle,, narrow profile,,
I usually dont make long draw bows, but there had been several post, and I just wanted to see what it would do,,
power stroke and all that blah blah blah,,
what Badger said,, if its taking set,, extending the draw is usually just a wash,,
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Sleek I under stand what you are saying. Nice to know that short bows will take that long of a draw. With half inch knocks it will be 67 inches long if I can pull it off. For him that is a short enough bow. His nick name is high tower. Bownarra how much sinew? I mostly use one layer, but it seems to me I would need more for this bow. Thanks for your input guys.
At 67 inches long, you should have no problem. Just do your recurves to a degree that allows a 90° string angle at full draw. Also, deflex the fades to bring your recurves flush with the back of the handle, then reflex the mid and outer limbs to bring the recurves about 3 inches above the back. That will allow for some reflex to pull out and still maintain a good 1.5 inches reflex for a nice fast bow. And by the way, all that doesn't take into account using sinew. I don't think you need it if the stave is good
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Thanks for your input everybody. I have one more important question. The bow he made is a nice clean piece of Osage 66 inches long. His fades are weak, and his outer 1/3 limbs are wide , thick, and heavy. As a result the bow has 3 to 4 inches of set on the bottom limb ,and 2 inches on the top limb, and is bad out of tiller. Skinny handle with terrible hand shock. I was thinking of putting the bow back on a 4 inch reflex form, and giving it a super heat treat after correcting the outer 1/3 of both limbs to make it a better bow. He didn't heat treat the bow when he made it. In the past I have improved some bows using this method.
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Do your heat treat first, then correct the tiller. And yes, you can awaken the bow with the corrections you suggest here.
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Thanks Sleek.
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One other thing to take into account for limbs that long is to make SURE the tips are as sleek and light as you can possibly make them, or the bow will have excess vibration. I made a 70" stiff handle osage selfbow for a friend with a true 32" draw and it came out just fine. No issues at all other than having to extend my tillering tree beyond what it was built for! Also, use some sort of hard tip overlay like horn or micarta or bone so that you can safely use a fastflight (or even better D97/450+) bowstring material. Strings that long in B50/B55/B500 stretch a lot and aren't as pleasant.
Matt
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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. ???
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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.
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Wide knocked wood arrows with no string serving would be the main reason they make those fat strings I would think.
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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.
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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
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Looks great and I bet it works out fine.
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Osage at that width and draw weight, I would expect to be fine. Looks great!
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That I like! Profile is really nice.
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Looks darn good to me. Well done
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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