Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting making your own bow Tradtional

its been a DREAM OF MINE TO ACCOMPLISH,, 3 serious attempts and still no success,, and the 2nd part of the goal is to harvest an ani mal with it,, I been watching youtube there is a guy who makes it look so easy,

have a young nephew, now in the marines that has been doing his own bows out Bois D Arc, and though no deer yet has shot plenty of small game with em.

Most important thing with them IMHO is a sharp cut on contact smaller head, not a huge one, as most home made bows don't have huge draw weights.

I shot a deer iwth a kit bow a couple of times, 40ish pound draw, laminated and such you just had to do all the cuts on the riser and limb ends and finish it out. Bingham used to sell those years ago.

Oh yeah, large enough feathers to stabilize the never perfectly straight arrows.

Stone heads is on my list... a good 4H shooter of mine is making them now... only takes time to get it all done.

I've made several. Shoot me a PM and I'll help in any way I can.
Here is a BBO I made a couple years ago.





Sorry about the blurry photos. This was before I got my new camera. Don't hesitate to PM but the "Traditional Bowyers Bible volume one" and "The Bent Stick" are good source books. Also www.traditionalarcher.com

I assume we are talking natural material bows. If you mean laminated FRP bows, I can still be of some help.

One of the guys I shoot with on Tuesday nights is in the process of making a longbow. He started with a stave from 3-Rivers, very nice piece of wood to start with.

Let's try www.primitivearcher.com That's the one. The other is messed up. Just go to the message boards and the build alongs.

I've been tempted for a few years and just might get started on one this summer.

I really don't want to get into itchy, fiberglass, glue and lots of clamps, but may be able to make a simple selfbow without all that. I've got flintlock building tools for shaping gun stocks, etc,.

One reason I've held off on a selfbow is I just got back into recurves a few yrs back and know if I made a decent selfbow I probably wouldn't want to shoot and hunt with my recurves anymore.

R H CLARK,, that self made bow is super nice,, whats the draw weight on it? (have to know,,lol),
I will check out the web site submitted,, thanks alot

Very nice!

It's 60 lbs. at 29" and 66 inches long. It was made from spliced billets and is, as you can see backed with bamboo.

Sir, do I know you from the Howard Hill or Twin Oaks 3-D ? your name sounds very familiar.

I would love to make my own bow one day! If only I had the time to do it right now...

Might I make a suggestion; Go on Tradgang and read all of "The Bowyers Bench" threads-its free. Those guys all make their own bows.

if you get itchy from the bit of glass/glue used on a bow, that means you fell into it and rolled around....

Time and patience is your friend. I have neither at this point in the game or at least not enough. I have a good friend who is a bowyer and to watch him work is a privilege. Sounds like you have some good help on here though, take advantage of it.

I may be able to help with questions on laminated bows, but I've been out of the loop with self bows for so long now that I wouldn't know where to start.

I got the itch to build my own bows back in the late 1980's and started carving self bows of Yew and Osage. I had more failures than successes but did have a few that turned out and shot them exclusively for a few years. In the mid-1990's, I met a fellow that built longbows for Howard Hill Archery in the 1960's/1970's who encouraged me to start building laminated longbows. I resisted for a while but eventually (with his coaching), started building a Hill style laminated longbow. After a few years of building those, I started building a mild reflex/deflex longbow but eventually got out of bow building entirely for a number of years.

A few years ago the itch came back and I decided to start up again and designed a hybrid longbow that I've been very pleased with. Several pards of mine are now shooting and hunting with bows I built for them that are very similar to the one below:

That looks great! Is that stained Zebrawood?

I wish I could do that.

Thanks - it is stained Zebrawood. The Zebrawood limb veneers I had were from a different source than the riser so I blended in some walnut stain to attempt a closer match.

For lack of a better phrase I'll just call that a work of art. Can I be one of your "pards"?

Thanks. I'd love to shoot one of your bows. Love that Zebra.

Surf up a gentleman named John Strunk (Tillamook, Oregon). He conducts reasonable $$ classes and one will leave with an excellent long bow at the end of the second day. I did a vine maple bow beneath his watchful eye.