Sometimes it takes misfortune to create the circumstances that allow the germination of something good. Like the cone of the jack pine will not release it seeds until a fire rages, it took a time-out in my working life to create the right circumstances for the next step into traditional archery. I mean, how many hours a day can you really be looking for a job. I was in dire need of a keep-sane project, and building a bow seemed like the right combination of manual labour and research into the how-to. Here is the story of the build.
The most “traditional” bow that you can build is the one you chisel out of the trunk of a tree. It takes the right tree, with the right characteristics, cut into the right pieces and then dried over time to make it suitable as bow starting material. In a nutshell, and without any deep knowledge on the matter, you need to shave down your piece of tree trunk following a single growth ring, across the length of your bow. A tree has growth rings that sit like cylinders in its trunk. If you have a pie-shaped 6-foot long piece, you can remove enough material from the outside and inside to create a stave. This can then be meticulously whittled down, making sure you do not cut through the chosen growth ring on the outside (the inside is less critical). The growth ring somehow provide the strength needed to withstand the bending that will be required to launch an arrow. If you cut through a growth ring, you create a weak spot in the limb. That is why some selfbows that are teased out of a tree have wonky shapes. A tree is a natural thing, and doesn’t always grow exactly as we would like. To be honest, this project looked like it required skill, and of course a well-dried piece of tree. I had neither, so that option was out. If you are interested though, here is the first of a series of four videos that takes you through the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_bJe4CYo-A
It is something that I still hope to do some day.
On the other end of the spectrum of traditional bow building lies the recurve (or longbow) built with a combination of mostly modern materials and wood. Basically you shape a riser (the handle part), and you laminate wood and fiberglass strips for the limbs and the riser all together by using epoxy, pressure and heat. Rather tool-intensive, requiring skill and knowledge, and unless you have some recipes about how thick wood or how many layers of glass to use, a bit of a gamble what the draw weight of the bow will be. Definitely an interesting process, but too big of a project for me.
I came across some out-of-the-ordinary options such as building a bow out of PVC piping. With full respect to the ingenuity behind the PVC bow, the end product is not too pretty. Not my thing.
Luckily there were plenty of Youtube videos about building a bow from lumber yard planks. A saw, some rasps, files and sand paper, epoxy, and lots of elbow grease. Low cost. That would be my project. The next two or three posts will take you through the process.