Odin - Osage ELB (Warbow)

[Adam Keiper]

Making a heavy, military weight ELB out of osage has been on my to do list for a while.  I recently had off work for a full week and went on a bowmaking blitz.  It was the perfect week to tackle that to do list.  The longest suitable stave that I had was stored in a gravel floored crawl space off of my basement.  I could tell as soon as I laid a drawknife to it, that it wasn't as dry as I would have liked.  But I wanted to start on the spot, so I began working it a little damp.  The stave had some nice rings and almost no twist, but it did have a few knots, some lateral snake, and a wicked deflexed dogleg on the upper limb.  It took just two rounds of dry heat correcting to straighten everything out and get the string tracking down the handle.  Just a little kink remained in the upper limb. 

The weather was Heavenly that week and I worked on it mostly outside.  Wanting to make the heaviest bow that I could, I just kept floor tillering the stave until I was physically able to push-pull string it.  It took probably 10 attempts to get it strung after the last round of shaving.  The first brace looked pretty good.  I cleaned up the tiller, and then lopped off the temporary string grooves and glued on pronghorn antelope horn nocks, shortening the bow by 2".  I kept the bow in my hotbox for a couple of nights during tillering to expedite drying.  Nearing final tiller, I braced bow for 12 hours straight to help the limbs settle in.  After final tillering and shoot in, the bow pulled 84# @ 30".   I returned it full time to my hot box when it was done to fully dry.  After several days, the draw weight stabilized.  Now, after 30 or so warm up pulls, it draws 88# @ 30".  I know that's barely a training weight to some of the serious warbow guys, but that's my heaviest bow to date.

I named the bow, "Odin", after the pagan god of war and death.  That seemed appropriate for a warbow.  The measurements are 70" ntn with a 2" longer upper limb, and 1-1/8" width at the handle.  The belly is deep cored and very round.  Here are some pictures.  I hope you like them.



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[Adam Keiper]

Unbraced and various limb photos.

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[Adam Keiper]

Pronghorn antelope horn nocks.


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[Adam Keiper]

Last ones.  War & peace girl showing braced and me trying to amputate my ear.

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[Loki]

Beautiful,the horn tips are a little long for my liking but the transition to the wood is perfect! If you bend your body into the bow you'll find that beast's easier to pull back.

[coyote pup]

Have you shot it yet? I started to make a 70" long bow once from osage, but it ended up becomming a 62" flatbow. I found the longer version to be sluggish and heavy. I'm curious if mine wasn't a good design or I just did it wrong.

[Pat B]

Very nice bow, AK. I like the tips. 

[Kegan]

I like it !!! My kind of weight too 

[George Tsoukalas]

Looks great, Adam! Nice tiller. Jawge

[Dano]

Looks great Adam, you didn't hurt yourself in that full draw did ya?

[John K]

WOW ! Looks painfull 

[adb]

Very nice tiller. Your top limb is long. With warbows, I prefer more equal length limbs, but it's working nicely for you. I love your nocks... especially the bottom one. The nock to wood transition is spectacular. The top nock is a bit long for me, but it's nicely finished. How is the hand shock?

[ballista]

 beautiful bow, i love the nocks- like adb said, that limb-tip transition is great craftsmanship. keep em coming, hope to see more of youre work. -jimmy

[Adam Keiper]

Thanks guys for the comments.  So far, I've put 200+/- arrows through this bow during shoot in.  As long as I draw the bow back to where it's supposed to go, it shoots very flat.    It's overbuilt to use with my normal 25" draw, but due to draw weight alone, it's no slouch with a short draw either.  As a test, I took perhaps 3 or 4 dozen shots at the 90 yd butt.  It shot noticeably flatter than the 67#/25" flatbow that I compared it with.  I think if a little more circular tillering would be used, a 68" length would be safe and effiecient, too, for the width used.  Possibly even 66" if the stave were exceptional.  It has no hand shock to speak of. 

I bought a pair of those pronghorns a few years ago.  I intended to use one for each limb, but when I started eyeballing things, I realized that I could get both nocks from just one horn.  I used the strongly curved tip section for the upper limb, of course, and the lower, thicker section for the bottom horn nock.  I liked the natural hook of the horn and wanted to incorporate that into the nock.  I removed all the scaly stuff and sealed the furrows with superglue just before final sanding.  The bottom section contained some soft pith, which I bored out with a drill bit.  The pith actually daylights on the very bottom of the nock, directly in line with the conical shape of the wooden tip.  I filled it with epoxy to seal out moisture and rasped it to shape.  It's interesting how the whole horn was black on the outside, but grew almost transparent in color towards the core.  You can really see the transparency of the bottom horn nock in one of the photos.  Cool stuff.  I plan to use the other pronghorn just like this on another bow.

Mike, Any resemblance of the paranthesis to nazi symbols or anything else is purely coincidental.  That's just my squiggly penmanship.  I'm going out to stump shoot tomorrow with this bow.  It should be fun having the ability to use a corner of mouth draw on focused shots, but then haul way back to sink one deep when I want to.   

[George Tsoukalas]

Adam do you anchor that bench to the ground? Jawge