Hey all! So I've made a few bows in the past couple of years, and it has been something that I will do once in a while. It can be a bug sometimes, and I tell you, when I get it I can't stop thinking about it. So far I have only, made two wood bows(I have made several PVC bows), so do not take my word as the truth, I sometimes do not know what I am talking about. I've begun to work on another one, and thought I'd bring you along

Anyways here is the first bow I made, and is similar to the one I will be making over the next few days/weeks.


It is a Red Oak Longbow(not English style, that is way different), 72" from tip to tip, a 10" walnut handle, with about a 55# draw weight. It also has a secret backing I will divulge here in a little bit. This is the first traditional bow I ever shot, and I have to say I love traditional so much more than a compound.

Now for the bow I will be building. This one will be 66" from tip to tip, same 10" handle section, about 1-1/4" limbs tapering down 15 from the tip to about 1/2", made from red oak. Other suitable woods would be hickory, maple, or just about any hardwood with straight grain and no knots. I also decided to go fancy and put some Caribou Antler on the tips. Antler/horn tips have little to no point except for aesthetics, unless they are used on a softwood like yew, in which case they make the tips stronger without a need to make them wider/thicker. But on a hardwood like Oak you would be perfectly fine without. Also unless you are the lucky winner that happens to find a perfectly straight grained board you will want to put some sort of a backing on it. This can be just about any cloth, but linen is one of the best. Shoot, the entire flax plant is awesome for bows, but I digress. For my backing on these ones I used 3 layers of drywall tape, which is awesome because it is dirt cheap. You can back about 15 bows with one roll, which is $8 I think. Here is what I have so far:


I had a closeup of one of the tips, but it got lost in the making of this post.

Anyways, you will need some tools to shape your wood, and here they are, various files, rasps, clamping devices(By the way one of those traps you are no longer using anymore make a great clamp of sorts ),a cheap saw, Ohh and I guess I'll showed you guys the Drywall tape as well. I also use a hatchet and drawknife once in a while to get rid of the bulk of things



That is all I can really post today, I will post a bit more tomorrow after letting glue dry. A great resource for those of you wanting to make one of these, and how I made my first one is Sam Harper here at PoorFolkBows He goes into much more detail

Alright, just got back from working on it some more. I am almost done with the tillering stage of the bow. What is that you might ask? Well tillering is the process of teaching a piece of wood how to bend properly. You see if you were to take a regular old board and bend it you would break it in the middle. Tillering is tapering the bow limbs evenly so that you distribute the stress evenly. That is about all I can really explain, there is more, but that is the gist of it. I only took a few tillering pictures, but if you guys ask for more I can certainly post more.
Ohh and here is a picture of the tips. I had to put nocks in so that I could tiller it. It is pretty easy, just grab a chainsaw file(or any thin rat-tail file) put in one 45 degree on the side, over the back make a slight groove, cut down the other 45, and then deepen it and work on any sharp corners.

Anyways back to tillering. First I use a loose string.

I guess I need to tell you what a tillering tree is now. You see that thing the bow is resting on? It is also pulling the string for you. It is essentially any kind of doohickey that you can use to make the bow string be pulled while you look at it. We already had this post right here to use for the draw-knife, so I just grabbed a few nails and pounded them in partially so that they could hold the string. A good background really helps with determining tiller

You can't tell much from that last pic, I think I pulled the string down a bit more to get a better look at it. Also here is a trick I learned:

You can slide that board along the bow, looking through that gap, and whenever you see the gap disappear or lessen you can marke it like so:

And take a bit more wood off that spot. I have gone back and forth from the tillering tree to the rasp and files about 15 times now, so take your time.

Anywho I kept tillering untill I got to this point:

Then I had to shorten the string, so I got it to about half the brace height I want it to be. Also sometimes taking a picture and looking at it can help you. When I took this I thought it looked fine, but now I think I need to take a bit more off the tips. Again a good background would really help with this, especially if it had a grid on it. Here it is a half brace:

It is exciting! I am almost done with this bow, I can probably have it done and shooting by this Saturday. I dunno, I still have quite a bit left to do.

Nice Billy, that's impressive. Keep us posted I would like to see your finished product.

Thanks, I will keep posting. I probably won't be able to work on it much, if at all, today because the way my schedule is at school. I am at the school until 4:30, then I have a meeting at 6:30 in town, so I will only have about a half hour to an hour of free time today.

I don't know why, but I am especially excited about this bow, maybe it is because I am making it a bit more fancy than I have my other bows.

Alright, I got it finished. But there was one major mistake, so I am not sure what to do with it now. Right-o on to the build.

I first finished the tillering, witch didn't take much, just removing wood in a few different places. My first bow I probably spent 72 hours or more tillering it, where as this one I only took about 12 hours to tiller it. I guess I must be learning something. Anywho after I decided finished the tiller I decided I would put a arrow shelf on it. I have shot bows left and right handed, but in the past few years I have been strictly right handed. Weeeellllll, when I went to put in the arrow shelf I put it in on the right ride of the bow, making it a left handed bow. This is the mistake I was talking about. Oh well, I guess I will learn to shoot a bow left handed, although I suppose I could give it away, or sell it. Maybe I could arrange a giveaway with the boss, I don't know. After I cut out the arrow shelf with the saw I then took the disc sander(angle grinder) and made the handle octagonal, and smoothed out the arrow shelf.

Then I put in contours, and made it more comfotable to grip. Then I finally shaped the nocks. So here are the finish pictures. I put a coat of BLO on to bring out the grain colors, and then I will put a coat of varnish on because it seals better. Final draw weight: 60# @28"




I liked the last one because it looks like the shed roof is an arrow. The makers mark is a adaptation of the mark my great granddad used to brand his cattle with. Glad you all could come along. This gives me an idea for another thread, but I will wait a bit on that. Any questions?

Also I forgot to mention, I need some ideas for the back of the bow, right now it is an ugly yellow color. The other one I had painted camo, but I wonder if there is a different option that might be just as cool. If anyone has any ideas that would be great. I may also try a birch bark backing, that might look cool.

That is some impressive stuff right there billy!!! I would never have thought to try and make my own bow. Man that is sweet!! You smoked anything with them yet?

Thank you Possum! It is fun stuff, and when you get into the world of making bows you realize there are so many thing that you can do. For example I made a quiver. I have also made footed arrows, and a few other things, like a bow fishing reel.

No I haven't killed anything with one of those bows yet, I do hope to get a bear off the bait stand this year though. I have already gotten a bear with my compound bow.

The funny thing about making your own bows is that because you can make a bow so cheaply(generally for less than $40, less if you source everything) arrows are really hard to justify buying, carbon arrows are $60 for half a dozen. I know how to make everything for my arrows, but I don't go geese hunting, and we don't have turkey up here. So I have to buy fletchings, which only bring down about half the cost, which isn't worth it to me because it is several days work for what I could pay $30 to buy already. So I buy arrows that cost me more than my bow. that is one of the reasons I havn't killed anything with them, lack of arrows.

Bears won't be out for another few weeks, and then I can start hunting, and I will be hunting hard.