The first step is the selection of a piece of wood that is suitable. Remember that when you carve a bow from a tree you are working to create a surface that follows a single growth ring. Unfortunately, when they cut planks at the saw mill, they don’t care too much about growth rings. When you look at a board, you will see that the rings run all over, and especially off the side. Once you start bending the wood, the spots where the rings run off the back of the bow (the surface facing away from you when you hold it out in front of you) will be the weak spots. The belly of the bow (the surface facing you) is not critical as there is much less stress on the wood on that side. Ideally you will find a plank from which you can cut out the profile of the bow without any rings running off the side. Good luck finding one.
I found a maple plank that came close without the cigar. So in order to minimize the risk of the bow breaking, I decided to “back” the bow. Basically this entail gluing a material on the back of the bow that will largely prevent it breaking when bent. You can use all sorts of materials for that. Snake skin is popular, animal sinew if you want be go ‘traditional’, but also paper or cloth will work. I went with what I knew, and used some hardware store fiberglass cloth. Not a pretty choice, but it will do the job. In order to build up the handle (riser) I choose a piece of birch, just to get some contrast. This piece has no function other than to provide some bulk in the grip area.
Next was the drawing of the profile of the bow onto the plank. Tip: make sure you clearly mark the center line of the bow, as this becomes important when you start shaping the limbs. I decided to cut out a shelf (place to rest the arrow when drawing and shooting), and shaped the riser by copying what I saw on bowyers’ websites. At this point it was still mostly hand tools. Cutting along the grain with a hand saw is a lot of work, if you have a bandsaw or a table saw, this can go a lot quicker.
I then rough-shaped the birch piece to match the maple and epoxied the two together. It is more efficient if you change the order, and first glue the pieces and then do the shaping, especially if you will be using power tools. By the way, I used EA-40, a two-part epoxy that has good strength under physical stress, such as bending. (https://www.smooth-on.com/products/ea-40/)
At this point I also glued on small pieces of birch on what would become the limb tips, for reinforcement. Tip overlays these are called, by
those who know what they are doing. I used a light with a non-energy efficient incandescent bulb to provides heat, which helps the setting of the epoxy.
After this I spent some time on the least critical part of the bow, the riser, and shaped it with files and course sand paper to fit my hand. The edges of the limbs were also cleaned up, rendering a piece of wood that began to resemble the outline of a bow, with the rigidity of a walking stick.
This was as far as hand tools brought me. I borrowed an oscillating drum sander, and from here on in, a lot less elbow grease for going to be used. Shaping the tips and cutting the slots for the string were the final steps in this stage.
The bow-to-be was now ready for backing, before starting to trim down the limbs so they could be bent, in a process called tillering.