u/zaronha

I’ve had so much fun making and shooting this bow.
The prod itself is maple, and the stock is Elm, the nut is made out of horn and the trigger is made out of antler. I broke the original prod on it(picture in the 3 picture). That one was drawing about 50 pounds at 7 inches., unfortunately when I made this prod that’s on it now I lost about half the draw weight. It’s only pulling 25 pounds at the same draw length now.

Interestingly, I haven’t noticed a huge difference in performance from the bow even with this crazy drop in draw weight, it is definitely less powerful, but it’s sending bolts about the same speed. I believe this could be a combination of a number of reasons.

#1 The bow is much more efficient with the energy it’s getting because it’s slightly longer than the original prod. This one is not intuitive to me at all, but reading a little bit from the Bower‘s Bible and their tests with different sizes of bows with the same poundage, and it shows that a shorter bow stacks more, and stores less energy, even though a longer bow has more limb mass, it still shoots an arrow faster.

#2 the string is rubbing less on the stock because the bow is longer and has more space for the angle in the socket to clear the stock, basically the string moves in a much straighter line rather than getting caught on the stock

#3 maybe with the original bow the limiting factor was not the poundage of the bow, but the speed of the Maplewood I was using, so basically with my original bow if I increase the bolt weight really high it would’ve delivered much more energy, but with a lightweight bolt, both bows are performing about the same because the speed of the bow is about the same, even though the poundage is different.

I always find this so interesting thinking about how the energy works with these bows, I know this is a post more suited to R/Bowyer, but I figured some people here might be interested in the mechanics of crossbows as well.

I had fun experimenting with the different fletchings and whippings, but they all should fly the same! Hopefully at least. After I get back from the Renaissance fair, I hope to turn them into target arrows for my English longbow!

Making some English inspired arrows as props for the ren faire, that I hope to be able to turn into target arrows once I get home.

The glue is a pine rosin, bees wax, and rust powder mix, I’m not sure if the iron oxide or rust is historically accurate, but many fletchers use it and it also dyes the glue a red or brown which is accurate, and then of course goose feathers!

Made out of jute, later added some dyneema for whip protection

A few bamboo skewers, fletched with tape or feathers, and nail ones as well.

Made of Siberian elm, not the best stave, but making it work none the less. Has been a really interesting experiment. I’ve never messed with asymmetrical bows or recurving before, so this is a new one all around.

I just recurved the tips slightly with a heat gun and vice jig thing, wood cracked pretty bad so I will be using steam from now on, but some superglue and Hope later it hasn’t broken at the tips yet.

The top limb has an interesting shape unstrung making it pretty difficult to tiller it looks like the bottom limb is bending more than it should but looking at it unstrung and seeing how it’s slightly de-flexed and seeing how thick it is compared to the top limb i’m not exactly sure.

Just a quick project, tiller could be better. 30 pounds at 15”

It has a neat character knot through the limb

A really fun project! And my first horn overlays and arrow pass! Russian olive definitely surpassed my expectations Even with a knotty stave, and rounded belly, and no heat treat, it still shoots well although it has more set than I would like, but that’s my fault, putting stress on it while it was still semi green.

The string is artificial sinew(I know it’s not the best but it’s easy and fast and much better than Paracord) and the horn is buffalo from a dog toy.

So I have never made a wooden war bow before, what is there to look out for when making one? This is a stave of honey locust, which I know is not a typical Warbow wood, but I would love to try, there is no knots on the back and I think there is enough thickness to it, should I give it a shot?

Probably one of the bows I’m most proud of, I would love to get into wooden war bow making but as of right now this is the heaviest bow I’ve made or have.

Yes, it is a little bit too heavy for me but I would love to get heavier bows and work my way up into higher territory after more training of course

It was made with 1 inch PVC and it’s sitting at just over 97 pounds at 30 inches

also, thank you to AEarrows for inviting me to post! I’m having a lot of fun listening to the bows and hose podcast!

If anyone sees any problems I would love to hear them, overall I’m pretty happy making this bow, it’s not going to be the heaviest, probably around 55-60# and there is a lot of set, maybe I can heat treat it out, but I’m not too worried about it, I mostly just wanted to see if Russian olive can make this bow, and it can!

If anyone sees any stiff spots or anything I would love to have some more insight!