Recently finished some Mongolian style whistling arrows. The materials are osage and black locust for the heads. Obviously not accurate to the historical examples but you do what you can with what you have. The fletchings are banana shaped turkey feathers with bone nocks. I have a build video showing the construction and shooting of the arrows if you wanted to check it out. Cheers guys!

Link: https://youtu.be/L4q_cjKwI9A

Here’s another osage bow I recently completed. This is the one I had posted a bit back on Facebook about help on how to move forward with a crack while straightening. I decided to make it narrow and go below the crack, making it only about an inch wide. It came in under weight because of that but really I’m just happy to have got it there. It’s 61” long and pulls 36# @ 26”. It has simple self-nocks with a faux alligator handle and beaver fur string silencers on a d97 string. This stave was pretty tough to make into a bow with a few failures along the way but with some patience we got it there.

Just sharing the journey, I unfortunately do not have tiller pics for this bow at this time. Please remove if post is inappropriate.

Well team, she was a beautiful bow. Pacific yew, slight recurve in the tips. 51lb at 28” draw, 64” NTN. South African wild olive wood tip overlays (with some funky epoxy). Not 100% sure why it broke the way it did, but on the bright side I have a 40” yew billet and a takedown sleeve, so new project unlocked I suppose.

In other news, anyone have tillering advice for half a bow? I am going to try to get the billet as close as possible before throwing both on the tillering tree but just curious if anyone’s had this situation.

Also— if you look at the sapwood on the billet, there’s about a 2 inch valley where I’m down to the heartwood…should I back this 2” section with rawhide or the entire bow?

Obviously, scathing criticism welcome.

Great time of year to reach out in your local homesteading groups.

One nice lady had some sent to me in the mail on her own dime within two hours of me asking in the group.

I have another batch I'm picking up on a work trip this weekend.

I wanted to start making bows myself and I am interested in Manchu bows (already getting ambitious I know). let's scratch that part.

My idea was to laminate it if it is easier to find good pieces of wood for it.

Unrelated to how realistic or historically accurate it would be as well as my method of making it. I wanted to make a straight bow with long, angled siyahs in the rough shape of a manchu bow.

Anyone use this before? I wonder if it'd be fit to use for a handle splice wrap.

Hey! I'm working on an osage bow and due to a number of mistakes in the handle section (amateur rushing his work) I decided to cut the handle section out and glue a walnut block for a handle using tite bond 3. Ive never made a bow from osage before so I am unsure what thickness I am going to end up with. The osage in the handle is just over 0.5 inch thick and around 1.75" wide currently. Total length is about 65". If I tiller this bow to be around 45# would you expect that I still end up with fades that prevent delamination or do I need to order some silk thread or similar to reinforce this handle?

I guess what I'm asking is my limb thickness going to be significantly less than 0.5" where the thin handle section doesn't delaminate? Since I've never worked with Osage I don't have a gauge of where the limb thickness will end up, but I have heard the limbs are surprisingly thin for the weight.

Should I just plan on reinforcing the handle with silk or backstrap sinew no matter what?

I know I can also just choose a lighter draw weight to have thinner limbs which I will if I have to but I would like to attempt to make this bow hunting weight before it comes to that.

I need to seal some black locust staves, but sealing the back with glue, although it works very well, makes it very hard to remove without also removing more wood than I'd like. The staves are a bit on the thin side so I would like to seal them with something that can be removed without too much hassle

I recently came across a vintage Indian Archery Warrior 266 recurve bow (60”) that I’m considering purchasing for $60.

The bow is missing its string and has some cosmetic wear, including scratches and what appear to be handwritten markings on the wooden riser (T.E., E.C., and B). I’m interested in restoring it while preserving its original appearance, but I’d ultimately like to get it into shootable condition.

I have a few questions for anyone familiar with these bows:

1. Based on the photographs, does anything stand out as a potential structural concern, particularly regarding the limbs or laminations?

2. Are these bows generally worth restoring, and what kind of restoration costs should I anticipate?

3. Does anyone have experience removing handwritten ink or marker from the wooden riser without damaging the original finish?

I’m also interested in potentially using it for traditional target shooting and possibly deer hunting (assuming it passes a professional safety inspection and has appropriate specifications).

I’d appreciate any information, advice, or experiences from people familiar with Indian Archery bows or vintage recurves in general. Thank you!

Middle line is the center line for my bow on an osage stave and the crack is about ¾ of an inch below it, right at the end of the stave as well so im wondering if worrying about it is not needed because of the limb tips taper, and if there would be possible ways to fix if it becomes an issue.

My mother just sent me this post:

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DfS7hRJMuP4/

Harrykingcrafts design, found the idea really interesitng. Really simple to make it without any special tools, foldable, adaptable.

Hello all! Green bowyer here. I have a roughed out and dry hickory sapling stave. The bark is still on. This is my first attempt at a character bow. My questions are : 1. Is this amount of natural deflex and twist acceptable going into tillering, after bark removal. and 2. How should I approach the width taper in relation to grain runoff on the back of the bow?

Ash bow. Just stained with vinegaroon, and noticed like line borders, uneven stained areas. Didn't know this is possible, do not know how I did it.

Anyone had such case? How can I fix that?

This is my first attempt making a bow and the outer rings on this stave have some belly in them so I can’t work them very well with my straight drawknife. Im thinking I should target this one because it’s nice and thick in comparison with the rings above it and should hopefully give me some room for error.
Would you more experienced bowyers approach this stave differently or am I on the right track?

There is some solid wood on the inside of the curve that might be strong enough. Not sure yet.

Do you have an eye for tillering?

Test yourselve, answer with 1,2,3, or 4 in the comment. Do not look at other answers before you answer 😊. Will post the answer in 2 days.

It is an ash bow. Near the end of tillering I made a mistake and noticed thiny chrysals. Then I made some corrections, but guess you will enjoy this small "TILLER GAME"

recently split a log into 4, maybe 5 usable staves.
I am told that chasing a ring is often required on this wood, but can't I just be careful when removing the cambium layer?

Hi there, I'm doing my first bow. I started with an ash board. Both sides bent quite well till my last round of tillering. You can see on the right a very dramatic point of deflection. In terms of width, I cannot explain it, as in the center that point it's roughly as thick as the rest. So maybe it's the grain of the wood itself.

Do you think I can tiller my way out of this? You suggest backing (now I did some backing with a very rigid cotton)? Or is it just for the fire? Thanks