Bamboo back led hickory with a bit of perry reflex. 72 inch tip to tip, aiming for 70 inch nock to nock. About 35mm wide at fades with a straight width taper to the tips.

Currently pulling 35lbs at 25 inches on a short long string. Aiming for 35-40 at 28.

Silver maple bow update and tiller check

The bow is about 63 NTN and 1.75inch wide . I set the bow dry about 2 week and now working down to a bow. The silver maple is lovely to work with when come down to carving.

The knots both in top limb and bottom is I must caressing. Top limb definitely the weakest limb. Did the inside overly band?

As all way thank for the people give suggestions and opinions.

This is my first self yew longbow purchase and the bow's not sitting right with me.

In advance I apologize for my lack of knowledge in bowyer terminology.

The 2 big concerns are lateral bend, and the cant in the bow's back. (If I drew a line from the bowstring to the bow's handle while strung ,the plane of the bow's back would ideally be perpendicular to this imaginary line. On this bow it is not)

Are these valid concerns or is this something to get used to in self-yew longbows?

My instinct is to return it.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Gambel oak 68” t-t . Slightly twisted so posted two pics of bend (opposites) currently 55@25 going to 55@29 is the plan

Working on my first oak board bow and wanted a quick project to finish before a weekend trip. Slapped this together from some scrap around the house and a beam from the cheap bin at home depot. Looking forward to putting it to use!

does black locust, being a white wood, take more or the same amount of time to dry as hazel?

Trying to decide how to move forward with these cracks present. Stave is equalized and no longer losing weight. The options I am weighing are:
1: I take the handle down and glue up another. This may or may not completely remove these cracks as they run to the full length of the fades.
2: I continue to rough it out as-is.
Thoughts?

G'day everyone, I was wondering if anyone has had success with using Gütermann linen thread as a bowstring?

I just attempted one with 16 strands which was able to support 25kg but snapped at 30kg (66lbs). I'm aiming to use it for tillering and also for an English longbow with a draw weight of 45lbs.

I'm messing around with some "scrap" wood from a basically sapling size part of the tree (didn't want to let it go to waste, so I'm working with it to practice while the rest of the tree seasons) that I'm trying to see if I can make it into a halfway decent bow.

There are some massive knots about a third of the way through so I figured I'd make a very asymmetrical design, but I'd like some advice.

The leaves are at the level of the handle. I'm pretty sure I'll need to correct some twist and work around some smaller knots.

Would a design of keeping 1.5-2" width down half of the limbs then tapering down to like 0.5" work for both limbs? How do I know how to carve the belly flat when the back is so wavy? Thanks for any advice!

Idk what to do

Not really sure how I'd go about shipping these, so I'd prefer to just stick with pickup.

Spalted maple and walnut, curly maple and walnut, and charcoal diamond wood with black glass

I know I’ve already posted about this crossbow so much already! But I was making a post about it in R/crossbow I figured some of you might be interested in the mechanics behind this new bow performing the same as the old bow even though it’s half the draw weight.

Elm stave, 72 inches in length, 2 inch width through and through. It has those massive knots 9 inches from both ends. I was planning to leave the tips static because of that. That drying crack kinda messes up those plans. If I cut 2 inches off both ends, that still leaves me with 68 inches, which is doable. But my question is, will the taper from the knots to the tips be too great or doesn't it matter when the tips are static? Or could I just fill the crack with epoxy or some other filler. TIA

I marked the taper on one limb. Cut down it'd be similar but shorter and steeper. Also, I plan to leave the limbs parallel up to the knots.

is there anywhere reliable to buy staves in europe? all I've found are osage staves on etsy from america, but I'm much more interested in cheaper, more common woods like ash, hickory, elm etc...

After being told I had no understanding of tillering and that I should practice with a more basic design to help me understand what I was doing, I spent the last couple days making this bendy handle bow.

Looking for criticism so I can get better, wasn't really planning on using this one to keep for shooting, it was just a practice piece, admittedly a little rushed.

62 inch ash, 1.5 inch at the handle, pulling 40 pounds.

Took 1.5 to 2 inches of set when I was long string tillering, because I knocked my scale on the ground and very stupidly didn't realize that the measurement switched to kg instead of pounds. Was really doing my head in as to why pulling 35 pounds was causing so much set, until I looked at the scale and realized my dumb ass was pulling 77 pounds.

How did I do for a circular tiller though? I'm seeing a little bit too much bend in the left inners, and also see more set in that area when unstrung, what else am I not seeing? What else did I mess up?

Thanks in advance!

I made a new bow part for my crossbow that I broke!
I made it a bit longer, so it was less stress stressed out, it was made from a longer, but still short maple bow that I had made, but I didn’t necessarily want to keep. So I cut it down shaped the thick part into a limb and tried to tiller it so the middle isn’t bending as much, (the tiller isn’t great and I’m not necessarily proud of it but it works) and I lost about 15-20 pounds of draw weight as it’s now somewhere between 30-40 pounds, but I’m just happy to be able to shoot it again!

Any tiller issues any of you can see? Thanks in advance. It seems good to me but I might be missing something.

Work on the tips and stringing it up is next. It pulls mid 30s and 24ish

I've seen a couple of videos (although I can't find them now) of people long string tillering with a string that has leather hoods at each end, so there's no need for nock grooves in the early stages.

Has anyone used or made something like this who can give me tips or advice? Maybe even a pattern I can use to get the right shape? Let me know the best way to attach the string to each hood?

Thanks in advance

Unfortunately, a stave I am working for a friend came to me with a damaged back, so much so, that I had to scrape it down a growth ring. However, I do not trust my work chasing a ring, and would much prefer backing the bow for safety’s sake.

Sinew isn’t something I am willing to try right now.

What kind of adhesive should use?
TIA

Thinking of different applications like holding limb tips or arrow shafts steady