If you remember my last post on this, I had a pic of my nearly-finished first attempt. About an hour after I took that pic, the thing broke while applying a full load to it.
Bad choice of wood; poplar is not well suited...
So, I went out and bought a nice red-oak board, and started over. Red oak is an excellent wood, especially if it has perfect grain. This board (best I could find locally) didn't, so I had to back it.
Took a couple of weeks to finish, kind of limited to working outside on my deck.
When the tillering was about right, I applied the cheap-and-dirty backing, fiberglass drywall tape. 3 layers of this stuff layered with Titebond glue produces a tough but rather ugly backing.
I finished it up over the end of the week, doing the final sanding and smoothing, staining, painting the backing, and applying finish.
I also made the bowstring, stringer, the bowstring jig, and even a shooting tab.
Still havn't made any arrows, so I bought some rather cheap aluminum jobs from Walmart and headed to my local field range.
It shoots! No blowup, no cracks. Nice smooth action, little "handshock". The arrows were rather badly spined for this bow, and shot to the left, but that's OK. I'll make proper arrows later. At least they shot into a reasonable group, which isn't bad for someone who hasn't seriously shot a bow in 30 years.
I have pics up on my blog:
http://bikewer.blogspot.com/
Bad choice of wood; poplar is not well suited...
So, I went out and bought a nice red-oak board, and started over. Red oak is an excellent wood, especially if it has perfect grain. This board (best I could find locally) didn't, so I had to back it.
Took a couple of weeks to finish, kind of limited to working outside on my deck.
When the tillering was about right, I applied the cheap-and-dirty backing, fiberglass drywall tape. 3 layers of this stuff layered with Titebond glue produces a tough but rather ugly backing.
I finished it up over the end of the week, doing the final sanding and smoothing, staining, painting the backing, and applying finish.
I also made the bowstring, stringer, the bowstring jig, and even a shooting tab.
Still havn't made any arrows, so I bought some rather cheap aluminum jobs from Walmart and headed to my local field range.
It shoots! No blowup, no cracks. Nice smooth action, little "handshock". The arrows were rather badly spined for this bow, and shot to the left, but that's OK. I'll make proper arrows later. At least they shot into a reasonable group, which isn't bad for someone who hasn't seriously shot a bow in 30 years.
I have pics up on my blog:
http://bikewer.blogspot.com/