Bows and Arrows

Well, I have been making my own bows and arrows for many years now. I am not the best at it, but my bows work well enough. What I thought I would do here is show you my latest projects. I will update this page as I try new stuff. So Please check back occasionally (not too often, I have been lazy lately so I have not been making many bows).

Well for now I will tell you about an experiment I tried last week. I wanted to see how cheaply I could make a bow that was strong enough for hunting. I decided to try to make the bow for less than ten dollars. I already had material for the string so I did not count it in the final cost. As it turned out, it did not matter. Because the only thing I used to make the bow was one piece of red oak that was six feet long, one and half inches wide and three quarters of an inch thick. It cost less than five dollars. It was an experiment in other ways as well. I was worried I could not make a bow with a narrowed handle form the piece of wood I had, but wanted to try anyway. Well here is a series of photos I took as I worked on it.

This is a photo of the piece of wood with the shape of the bow drawn onto it. This is what I started with. With such a small piece of wood, there was very little that needed to be cut away (but honestly it needed to be wider).

This is a photo of the same piece of wood with the excess wood cut away. Starting to become a bow instead of a stick. All that was left at this point was to thin out the belly to make it bend evenly and to get the draw weight I wanted. This is a process refereed to as tillering by bowyers.

This is a photo of the finished project. I was surprised at how light the bow felt in my hand. The handle did not bend as I had feared but I also make the draw weight a little lighter than I intended, so who knows how a heavier bow would have handled. Even though I made it too light (I guess around 40 pounds), it still shot an arrow a bit further than some of my heavier bows. I blame this on the fact that I made some really narrow and light limb tips (almost too small, I barely had room to cut the nocks). But the lighter limb mass made this bow perform so well I think. It was surprisingly confortable to shoot, maybe even the most comfortable I have ever had. I am looking forward to making a slightly stronger one to use as my main bow. I will let you know how that one turns out.

I learned to do this by reading some books and trying what I read about. If you want to try to make your own bows and arrows, I would suggest picking up either a copy of Jim Hamm's "Bows and Arrows or the Native Americans" or a copy of "The Traditional Bowyers Bible". Or you could do like me and get them all. They all have great information in them. There are several volumes of the last book.

Well, I also did another small project recently. While visiting the Native American settlement at Jamestown Virginia, I decided to try to make a quiver like the ones the Powatan people there had. It was a simple design. All I had to do was take some small pieces of river cane (a kind of American bamboo) and bind them together to make a tube. I like this a lot after doing it. Here are a couple of photos so you can see what I mean.