making a simple short recurve with hand tools only.

[a finnish native]

So here is my goal: to make a 45# bow with little recurves and a handle that bends just a tad. The bow will be 48" long and the draw lenght will target at 21".
The wood I'm using for this simple bow is what we in Finland call Tuomi. in latin it's prunus padus (not sure about the spelling) and in english it's called european bird cherry.
I was going to back it with sinew, but I decided to make it a self bow. This being because the wood is quite soft and I dont tant to waste sinew on this kind of wood that would probably fracture from the belly with a 24" draw being only 48" long.
I am hoping to make this bow my hunting bow for the winter to come.

here are some pics

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[a finnish native]

pics from recurving the tips.
I made a mistake and roughed the tip width to the final size before bending the tips. Doing this the tips will not be in line, but I'll fix it with a heat gun.

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[JackCrafty]

Cool

[tsa yo ga]

Can a  hickory short bow say 44'' long be made without sinew backing?  I think they are so cool looking but have never attempted one as i am a rank amateur.

[a finnish native]

yes it can be made. depends on the draw lenght and wweight. I would recommend a 40-50 pounder with a draw of 20". I use a rule that I always devide the lenght of the bow by 2.3 and thus get the draw lenght to a self bow. with sinew I use devided by 2 and hornbows 1.5. I got these numbers from a finnish forum. someone did some testing and those were the ideal numbers for wood, sinew backed and hornbow. (not sure about the hornbow).

[a finnish native]

ok, so I got the bow down to floof tiller and I also chased a now ring after noticing that the original one was too thin.
I used a file that big ass knife/hatchet and glass.
I am going to tille this bow completely with a piece of glass. I'll add pics of that later.

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[tsa yo ga]

I'm enjoying your build along, i'm going to start something similar real soon.  Is it snowing over there, I think your part of the world is one of the most appealing enviroments on our earth.  Glad to see there are some fellow longhairs over there.

[a finnish native]

Update: I have been scraping the bow with a piece of thick window glass. hoping to brace it tomorrow. The right limb is a bit confusing to tiller because of the bumps in it, but I'll manage (I hope  ). I like to tiller my bows with a glass piece as a scraper, because it's easy to find glass here and because it takes a small amount of wood off, but does the job quicker than one would imagine.

Tsa yo ga: It has been snowing here, but now it's all melted off. should snow next night. winter is on our doorstep. further north they have snow already. I'm enjoying the hair while I can since I'll go to serve my military service in January 2010, and lose the hair, but it's a small price to pay for defending your country.

so here are the pics:

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[sailordad]

"I'm enjoying the hair while I can since I'll go to serve my military service in January 2010, and lose the hair, but it's a small price to pay for defending your country. "

yup,my oldest son had a mohawk that was 18 inches tall when it was up(hes into punk music etc) before he joined the US NAVY,my youngest (who graduates from US NAVY boot camp on this friday )had a full head of thick hair about 14 inches long,both more than happy to cut it for their country.
oh yeah,that bow is looking good too, nice use of minimal tools and using whats at hand

                                                   peace,
                                                            tim

[a finnish native]

thanks Tim!

Well.. this is what ya get with too much education and work. No time for bows guess I'll get it stringedbefore next week..

[Pappy]

Looking very good so far.Can't wait to see it finished.
   Pappy

[a finnish native]

Thanks Pappy!
well, I'm back. I got the bow strung, but predictably I concentrated too much on the bumpy limb and did not notice that the straight limb was bending too much near the fades. (In a normal pyramid bow that bend that you see would have been fine, but since my bow has it's widest spot in midlimb there wasn't enough wood near the handle for a normal fade bend). I noticed a small chryshal near the handle in the straight limb when I was looking at the bow when I first strung it. Fortunately it is not deep at all, so I think I'll manage to fix it.
I decided to add some reflex into the bow and heat treat the belly, since this wood is better in tension that compression.
Hope to work on it more today.
This wood smells fantastic when heat treated. nice and spicy . And I love the colour that it gets too.
The pics:

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[JackCrafty]

Very interested in this build along.....looks good...and interesting choice of wood.

[a finnish native]

thanks.
This is one of the only woods here on the arctic circle that one can build a self bow from, and I my self have made my best bows from this wood. I am a Little worried about those chryshals though... I have never tried this design before, but I remain optimistic.

[a finnish native]

well.. that optimism is now long gone. The bow held, but developed terrible chryshlals near the handle where the power emerges from towards the tips. the design was not fit for this wood. Have made several bows from European Bird Cherry, and they have held fine without chryshals.
Lessons learned: this wood is great for bows, but they have to be of a certain design. This would be that they would be more or less of a pyramid design. With quite wide limbs.
I'll see if I can fix this, but only as an experiment. But hey! It's only wood, and there is plenty more from where that piece came from.