How I Build a Bow
Creating "Arrow'l Flynn"
This will be an extensive buildalong, a step by step description of the process, from raw wood plank to finished laminated longbow. Because of the length and detail, it is divided into five pages. At the end of each page, there will be a link to the next page. In order to make it more convenient for you to jump from page to page, here is a complete set of the links:
This is Page 1
The subject of hunting came up recently amongst the Hill Longbowmen, and it caused me to do some thinking. While I build light bows and enjoy that, part of the challenge of archery is hunting, and I wanted to see if I could build a suitable hunting bow. I had the idea of making a bow that would come out between 45 and 50 pounds, as close to 50 as I can, and then sending it off to folks who are good hunters to see if they can take a pig or a deer with it and provide me with photos of game taken with one of my creations. Nothing new here... the old "circulating bow" concept. The Longbowmen were enthusiastic, and this project moved to the top of my list.
The bow will be a Hill style yew with a lamboo core. I will not put a shelf on it, but build it to be shot off of the top of the hand, like many older longbows were. This will make it usable by both right and left handed shooters. I started work on it today. It will be named "Arrowl Flynn" in honor of the star of "The Adventures of Robin Hood". I'm documenting the building so that everyone who gets a chance to use it will have the full background of the bow. This documentation will also provide a record of just how an Old Phartt's bow is built.
A Note About Tools Because some folks have expressed an interest, I intend to devote a little coverage to the tools I use, as I use them. I think I have an exceptionally well equipped shop for bowyering. It's wonderful to have all these tools, but I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that they are vital to making a good bow. Most home bowyers are not this well equipped. In fact, I know of extremely talented bowyers working at their kitchen table with hand tools! It happens that my interest in building bows came at a time when I was experiencing medical problems such that I could no longer draw bows of average weight, which included most of my fairly extensive bow collection. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go and work with a professional bowyer in a well equipped professional shop. I'm an avid tool junkie in any event, and I came home from that experience and sold about half of my bow collection to finance my tool purchases. So, what tools do I really think you should have? While the job can be done with less, I would recommend what I call "the basic serious home shop". That is, a decent table saw with a good fence system, a good 14" bandsaw with a good fence system, a floor standing drill press or at least a medium sized bench drill press, and a 6x48 belt sander. All of these are common in the used tool market and in most places could be rounded up in a weekend off of Craig's list or local advertising papers. In good quality and good condition, figure the whole lot will cost you about the price of a fair new bow, but you will build many bows with them. Many guys will have one or more of these tools in their shop already.
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First Session - Boards to Billets
My bows begin as boards and move through several stages. The
first stage is cutting the boards into "lam billets", the chunks
of wood from which slabs are resawed to be ground into laminations. Today
I yarded out boards for two bows... yew for Arrowl Flynn and cedar for an
upcoming flatbow to be called "Walkin Closet", plus some lamboo
for cores for both of them. I set up the table saw for converting them into
billets... 2" x 36" x however thick the piece was. I ended up with
three 2" thick billets of yew (enough for 6 bows), two 3/4" thick
billets of gorgeous cedar (these with a couple of already cut lams will make
two bows) and four thinner billets of lamboo (enough for both bows I want
to work on). So, I have enough on hand now to make both Arrowl Flynn and Walkin
Closet. I also ordered some .045 glass for Arrowl.
Cedar board, two slats of lamboo flooring (I later added two more) and a really big plank of yew.
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Working out how to cut the yew. I sawed off the thin left edge freehand, but it was hard to manage that heavy plank and the edge came out too rough to suit me, so... |
The jointer came into play to smooth and true the edge. I then ran it though the table saw using the fence to produce 2" x 2" x 36" billets.
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The results of a morning's work... four billets of lamboo (two light and two dark), two billets of cedar and three billets of yew. |
The next step is to resaw the billets into lam slabs, ready to grind.
Tool Notes: My table saw is a 10" DeWalt Contractor Saw. It's portable on a stand. It's a pretty commonly available unit, smaller than most cabinet shop quality table saws, but a very good saw. I've used it for ten years and been very pleased.
Though not visible in the photos, all of my sawdust making equipment is backed up with a Grizzly G 0827 mobile sawdust collector. The 4" dust collector hose is too stiff to manage in a mobilized shop like mine, so I reduced it to 2 1/2" hose and each machine has an attachment point for the 2 1/2" hose. Filtering of ambient air is provided by Grizzly G5595 Heavy Duty Air Filter that's mounted underneath one of the workbenches.
( My Shop: Here is a link to a complete tour of my shop: Shop )
Second Session - Billets to Slabs
The next stage of the operation is to resaw these billets into what I call slabs... slices roughly .200 thick. Allowing for saw curf, I can get three slabs from a standard 3/4" board. Maybe if I get better with the bandsaw, I can reach a point where I could get four, which would be nice, but for now I'm comfortable working with slabs this size. This session consists of using the bandsaw to resaw the slabs from the billets.
Things went rather slowly this morning. I had to change the bandsaw blade to a wide 5/8" resaw blade. This requires re-setting all of the blade control adjustments for that size blade and takes awhile to get right. I recently got a second bandsaw so I can keep one set up for resawing and one for pattern cutting with a narrower blade. I took a lot of time to set this one up really carefully, and did some experimental cutting to see if I could get four slices from a 3/4" board. I can, but I'm not happy with it. They come out about .120 and I often use lams that thick or thicker. By the time the saw marks are ground out, there'd be instances where I couldn't get what I wanted. So, I settled for three and set the saw up that way.
I cut out four lamboo slabs. The lamboo flooring is only 5/8" thick and I only get two slabs from each piece of that. Then I cut up one of my yew billets. I can get eight slabs out of those, plus I got two extras from the "waste" side piece I cut off yesterday to square the plank.
Resawing the yew... the secret here is to keep the work tight up against the fence... and your fingers away from the blade! I use a pusher stick at the end.
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Here's a fresh cut yew slab. Below it are the lamboo slabs.
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The morning's work... four lamboos and a bunch of yews. The lamboos will make two core lams and I'll select four of the yews for the outer lams.
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Normally, this is the point at which I'd cut out the riser, thus finishing all the bandsaw work till the bow comes out of the oven. However, the used bandsaw I boughtt turned out to have a burned out motor. The seller is refunding my money (thank goodness for honorable folks) and Grizzly shipped me a new motor yesterday, so I'll wait till that gets here and finish rebuilding the new saw and cut the riser then, so that I don't have to reset the resaw saw.
The next step, which I'll probably start this afternoon, is to grind these slabs to the lam dimensions I want. That's a bit of a finicky job, but one of my favorite parts of bow building. I probably won't finish that till tomorrow afternoon.
Tool Notes: My bandsaws are Grizzly Model G0555's. Excellent saws for the money. I would love to have two of the G0555X, a heavier saw with iron rather than aluminum wheels, but they have a larger footprint and cost a good bit more. Shortage of space in the shope and money in the pocket dictated that the 555 should be adequate and I was happy enough with the one I got new that I grabbed a used one when I found it.
The jointer is a Grizzly Model G 0612 6" jointer. It's the smallest they offer but does the occasional job I need it for, usually riser work. Though not used in this project, the jointer is backed up as needed with a Grizzly planer which hasn't been used for the purpose yet, but should be handy for preparing real rough board to be cut into billets.
Third Session - Grinding Lams
This is where I start to really have fun. I love grinding lams! I started doing the boo lams this afternoon. It went well, though I'm not done yet. I hope to finish the boos and and yews tomorrow.
As I go along, I'm debating exactly how I want to lay up the bow. Because of the heavier weight I'm trying for I'd like to try using two tapers. I haven't done that before. If I go for four lams, my original plan, they obviously get thinner than if I use three. As the lams get thinner, the tips on the tapers start getting real thin, and that makes me nervous. Too soft a tip equals a potential for stacking. You can counter that with tip wedges, but then you're adding weight to the tip and countering the gain of the tapering. Questions, questions, questions...
My favorite taper thickness is a butt of .110. I'm shooting for a total wood stack of .320. A .110 lamboo taper and a .110 yew taper with a .100 yew parallel is looking real good to me right now. That would make the bow kind of a Tembo three lam but with the wood combination of a Halfbreed. We'll see how I feel once I have all the lams ground. I go through this with every bow... questioning my plan and sometimes adapting as I go.
Anyway, here are some pix of the grinding process...
This is my Grizzly drum sander, which I love. The wood colors don't contrast well here, but you're looking at a boo slab still with saw marks on it sitting on a mahogany sled and heading through the sander. I exercise patience (hard for me) and make many passes to get where I want.
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Here I've made a couple of passes and only the worst saw marks are left... You can differentiate the lam from the sled much better here. |
A couple of passes later...
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and a couple more and the saw marks are gone. I kept this up, flipping the pieces until I ended up with four nice lams that are presently at a butt thickness of .130. I'll finish them up and decide on tapers tomorrow.
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I have hit one minor snag. I planned on working with 2" glass on my 2" form surface, my favorite. However, the exact glass I wanted wasn't in stock. I wanted .045 x 2". Best we could do for immediate shipment was .043 x 1 3/4". This width is fully adequate for a Hill style bow, but the different thickness affects my decisions about the wood stack. The very rough rule of thumb is that each .001 of glass equals 1# of draw. Same very rough rule is that .003 of wood equals 1# of draw. So I had to thicken my planned wood stack by .012 to allow for .004 reduction in the glass thickness.
Note: Little helpful hint here. When calculating a layup recipe, remember that there are two thicknesses of glass and calculate accordingly. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Okay, I'm increasing my glass thickness by .005 when you go from .040 to .045 and forget that with two thicknesses, you're really increasing by .010.
Also, I cut my slabs to 2" as I usually do, but now for the layup I need them to be 1 3/4", since that's the size glass I'm getting. I could do that with a fine tooth blade on the table saw, but I worry about potential edge chipping, so I returned to my trusty drum sander and ran the slabs through as a bundle on edge and ground them down to 1 3/4". Now I have beautiful lams that will be absolutely square and true to the edges of my 1 3/4" form surface when I lay up.
Here's the bundled four boo lams going through on edge.
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Note: For those unfamiliar with a drum sander, there is a large sandpaper covered drum above and a feed belt below. The feed belt table (or on some models the drum itself) are adjustable for height. You start the wood through and the feed belt feeds it through. Both the feed belt rate and the depth of the sanding cut are adjustable. I take a gentle bite at a slow rate of feed speed and just keep at it till I get what I want. Thin work pieces, like lams, go through on a sled. Two sleds are used, one is flat for making parallel lams and one is tapered to produce tapered lams. The combination of these variables lets you, with patience, produce exactly the thickness and taper you want for each lamination. I also use the drum sander to true up the edges of a new out of the form bow before I establish a center line for patterning the bow. I do love my drum sander!
Tool Note: My drum sander is the Grizzly Baby Drum Sander.
Grinding Continued
OK, this morning saw the continuation and completion of the lam grinding. I discussed my thoughts on the layup up above. I did a lot of thinking about it and reviewing of my bow making logbook, which contains the layups of all of the bows that come out of my shop. Most of my own Hill style bows have been in the range of .350 to .380 total stack. Since I want more weight from this bow, I decided to shoot for .408. With glass of .086 (two .043's) that meant a wood stack of .322. I decided to go with a three lam layup, using two medium tapers and a thin parallel. I had left the bamboos at .130 and decided decided to go with that, so I tapered two of them. I like a mild taper so I tapered them a total of .040.
Then I started on the rough yew lams, selecting four that I liked the looks of. I started grinding all four, shooting to first get all of them down to .130. I ran into a problem, though. I got greedy and tried to take too deep a bite and the drum sander hit a knot and tripped the circuit breaker. I know better, but it happens. It's bad, bad news because when it stops, the drum grinds an extra deep half moon depression at that spot. I was about half done and that depression meant I wouldn't be able to get .130 out of that lam. I set it aside, hoping that I would be able to get one of the thin lams out of it.
Once I got two of the yews down to .130, I tapered them the same amount as the bamboos. This meant I would have two complete lams with butt thickness of .130, or .260 total. That meant that I would need to make the thin lam .062.
Then I took the remaining two lams, including the one with the depression in it and started grinding them down, shooting for the .062 parallel lam. I was able to grind through the depression at the point where I had lams of .060 and called that good.
A few words about my sleds and grinding practice are in order here. There are basically two sleds... parallel and tapered. The parallel sled is supposed to be, well, parallel, i.e. really straight and the same dimension end to end and side to side. I made my sleds with my first drum sander, which was a model that had a movable drum rather than a movable feed surface. I hated that machine and could never get it set perfectly. Hence, my parallel sled actually has a very slight taper to it... about .010 thousandths in 36". I could fix it, but I've gotten used to using it and find it an advantage at times, like when I want to add just a tiny bit of taper more than my taper sled makes. If I want a true parallel, I just reverse the lam and send it through twice for each the last couple of passes. Since my plan is to use two full tapers on this bow, I wanted the thin lam to be a true parallel and that 's what I did for it.
The taper sled is, of course, tapered, i.e. thinner on one end than on the other. To get a taper, you set a uniform lam on it and adjust the drum sander's feed table such that the the drum only touches the lam at the end nearest you, i.e. the first end to enter the drum is at the thin end of the sled and the drum doesn't touch it. The sanding doesn't start on the first pass until the lam is almost through the machine. You proceed in this manner, feeding the lam through and adjusting the feed table for each pass until the drum begins to touch on the shallow, or entry end.
Now, there's a variation or option here that I honestly don't know if anyone else uses or not, but I do. For all I know it may be common; I've never asked. I mark the lam to be tapered at 8" on the end that is at the thin end of the sled, and I taper until I get to that mark, then I stop. I don't taper the full length of the lam. My reasoning is that I like the area of the lams under the riser to be flat... makes for easier gluing, and I'm all about easy. You won't see any of those beautiful contoured risers with arched laminations and stuff coming from me.
Note: There are also short, severe sleds for making tip wedges and power lams used on most RD and recurve bows, but I haven't messed with that at this point.
Here are some pix showing the operation and how the taper sled works.
This is one of the bamboo lams just after the first pass on the taper sled. I scribble a pencil line on it so I can keep track of where the sanding is ending. Here you can see that the sander took a fine slice off of the very end of the lam.
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Several passes later, the sanders work is progressing to just past the middle of the lam. You can see that I have the sander set fine enough that it isn't even removing the whole thickness of the pencil line at the beginning of the cut. It just makes it fainter. |
I made a couple more passes but stopped with 8" or so of the original pencil line still showing. |
And here's the morning's work... The color difference in the two middle lams, the bamboo, bugs me. They were both the same on the outside finish, but bamboo does vary in color. These will only show edgewise, so it's not really a big deal.
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Here's the depression caused when the sander stopped. It's kind of hard to see, but it's about 3 inches in, just past the brighter area at the end, where the grind had started. As I said, I was able to grind deep enought to get past it and thus salvaged this piece for the thin parallel I needed.
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Here's a side view of the lams... Two .130 at butt tapered yews Two .130 at butt tapered bamboos Two .060 yew parallels |
Now a word about my choices at this point. I make bows with two styles of risers. I very much like the style of my Howard Hill original bow. Howard did not run any lams up the fades. The riser is simply laminated on top of the bundle of limb lams. He felt they worked together better that way. I also make some bows the more usual way, with a belly lamination running up the fade. It kind of depends on how I feel about the lam thicknesses and/or about the beauty of the woods involved. If I want to show off the limb woods, I go up the fades. If I want to show off the riser wood, I don't. I decided on two relatively thick butted tapers for this bow (the .130's) and that left relatively little wood thickness left in my desired stack for another lamination, only .62 (which as you now know ended up being .060). If I'm going to take wood up the fade, I like it to be thin, so it will bend easily and smoothly to the curve of the fade. Faced with the need for a thin lam anyway and the beauty of the yew, the decision to use the thin lam for the belly and go up the fade was easy. Had I decided the other way, I'd have put the thin lam between the two .130's and put the riser behind the whole lam stack.
This presentation does go on and on. I hope some readers are getting some benefit from it. I'm trying to show as thoroughly as I can how I go about building a bow... and why I enjoy it so much. Even with the simple style bows I build, it's never cut and dried. Each bow, and each batch of wood, forces you into decisions of planning. Then, the working process may force you into changing some of those decisions.
This page is getting very long, and we haven't even started on the riser or layup yet. I'm going to be making this Page 1 and then moving to a new link to a Page 2 and maybe even a Page 3, to make it all easier for loading.