bamboozle

Awhile back there was a discussion on the Howard Hill Longbowmen about Hill bows we'd had with bamboo under clear glass. A number of us were sorry we'd let them get away, and I commented that maybe I'd make one. Somehow, that thought grew just a bit and I envisioned an all bamboo bow, i.e. the riser as well as all laminations and any wedges would be bamboo. I felt that for such a bow, the back and belly should be natural bamboo, rather than the vertically laminated actionboo that I normally use for my cores. I ordered two sets of natural bamboo limbs from Craig at Howard Hill Archery... the first lams that I didn't make myself that I've ever used!

This was not a smooth build. I decided to rebuild an old form I had been given that had two surfaces, one for a deflexed or string follow Hill and one for a reflexed Hill. I opted to try a string follow bow. In the interest of truth in advertising, I was shooting for a 68" string follow bow of 45@28. I knew that the string follow would reduce the poundage slightly and tried to allow for that. However, the original form was taken off of an old lemonwood longbow and I failed to realize that this bow had actually taken a considerable degree of set over its 50 year life, so the form ended up with a great deal more string follow than I allowed for. This resulted in a bow that came in 10 pounds light at its first rough draw. It would be lighter still after finishing. I had someone in mind for it who had expressed an interest in a 45@28 bow. Obviously, that wasn't in the cards. Another problem was that the form turned out to not have a perfectly curved surface. This wasn't apparent on the form, but was when the bow was taken off. The shiny glass was much more revealing of imperfections than the form was.

At this point I was pretty discouraged. However, since I can only shoot very light bows, I decided to continue the project, but significantly reduce the poundage with the goal of arriving at a bow for myself, looking for a finish of 25@28. I reduced the length to 66" and ground the bow considerably narrower. I had used tip wedges and a power lam. The length reduction took out slightly more than half of the tip wedges, which reduced their effect, but I left the tip ends of the limbs a bit wider to compensate for that.

I was also somewhat disappointed in the riser. The laminated light colored bamboo was rather blah looking. However, as the final shaping and sanding continued, the overall appearance started to look good. It ended up a very slim, graceful looking bow. Given the light colored wood's resemblance to my old lemonwood bow, I decided to do a shelfless, ambidextrous "shoot off the hand" design. I hadn't done one in awhile. As I put finish on, the riser's appearance improved, and when I added a darker leather wrap, it really dressed things up and became quite a pretty bow. I hit the final weight right on the money and ended up quite surprised at how much I like this bow. It didn't hurt that it shoots very nicely and even turned in very respectable speed figures for a bow this light at my draw, averaging 140 fps on hand release. String follow longbows are generally a bit slower than straight or reflexed bows, but this is right up with my more recent bows. It has a lovely, smooth draw.

Unstrung, showing string follow, about 1 1/4"	Strung
Full draw	Riser made up of laminated pieces of vertically laminated bamboo
The wrap came out very nicely. A double layer of leather provides the arrow reference and the lacing pulled it tight into the dished grip	66" 31@28 (25#25)
The nodes show on the natural bamboo	This is a slim Hill style bow with a nice riser for a small hand. Here it is shown next to a Hill Robin Hood
Comparison of grip width. Two things become apparent: The difference in the actual width and that even with slimmer overall limb width, Bamboozle is still further from center cut than the Robin Hood and will take an arrow with a lighter spine.	The grip really feels nice in my hand.

There you have "Bamboozle", an experiment that didn't come out as planned, but still became a very nice, sweet bow. I think it's going to see a lot of 3D shooting this summer.

Dick