alanesq
New member
I have just finished making myself a laminate longbow and I have found a really easy way of doing it which I though may be of interest to anyone here who wants to have a first try at making their own bow:
I have added a section to my bow making guide so see this for more info (Its a bit rushed but I will add more detail later)
http://www.alanesq.com/The-Back-Street-Bowyer.pdf
Basically I glue up a laminate stave and cut out the rough shape of the bow with a bandsaw as normal but after this I use a power plane to get everything straight and flat (this works surprisingly well) and a router table with roundover bit to round over the edges on the belly
the big advantage of this is its very quick and easy and requires very little skill or experience with woodworking - the whole process takes minutes rather than hours
I would imagine you could cut the bow out with a jigsaw if you dont have a bandsaw (you dont have to be mega accurate as you can neaten everything up with the planer easy enough)
The power plane you can buy for under ?30.
The router table is a bit more specialised - I bought mine for around ?30 on eBay (you need a router as well). I dont think just using a handheld router is a very good idea as its so easy to make a mistake and trash the bow but it shouldn't be difficult to make some kind of router table rather than buy one
BTW - With both a router and power planer its vital you are always very careful to keep fingers well out the way - they dont take prisoners
I then find that because everything is so nicely straight and even it takes much less work tillering - in fact the bow I just made required almost no tillering at all
I leave the belly flat which I think is probably a good idea with the heavy bows I make but I suspect this could be improved a lot with a bigger router bit (or you could round it over more by hand afterwards if you wish)
Anyway; here is the bow I have just made in all its glory ;-)
Its Ipe, Purpleheart and Hickory
135lb at 32"
78" between nocks
28mm wide by 25.5mm at the handle / 16mm x 16mm tips
Sidenocks
I have added a section to my bow making guide so see this for more info (Its a bit rushed but I will add more detail later)
http://www.alanesq.com/The-Back-Street-Bowyer.pdf
Basically I glue up a laminate stave and cut out the rough shape of the bow with a bandsaw as normal but after this I use a power plane to get everything straight and flat (this works surprisingly well) and a router table with roundover bit to round over the edges on the belly
the big advantage of this is its very quick and easy and requires very little skill or experience with woodworking - the whole process takes minutes rather than hours
I would imagine you could cut the bow out with a jigsaw if you dont have a bandsaw (you dont have to be mega accurate as you can neaten everything up with the planer easy enough)
The power plane you can buy for under ?30.
The router table is a bit more specialised - I bought mine for around ?30 on eBay (you need a router as well). I dont think just using a handheld router is a very good idea as its so easy to make a mistake and trash the bow but it shouldn't be difficult to make some kind of router table rather than buy one
BTW - With both a router and power planer its vital you are always very careful to keep fingers well out the way - they dont take prisoners
I then find that because everything is so nicely straight and even it takes much less work tillering - in fact the bow I just made required almost no tillering at all
I leave the belly flat which I think is probably a good idea with the heavy bows I make but I suspect this could be improved a lot with a bigger router bit (or you could round it over more by hand afterwards if you wish)
Anyway; here is the bow I have just made in all its glory ;-)
Its Ipe, Purpleheart and Hickory
135lb at 32"
78" between nocks
28mm wide by 25.5mm at the handle / 16mm x 16mm tips
Sidenocks