Raven

A Reflexed "Old Style" Flatbow

One of the projects I have had in mind for awhile was to make one of the older style reflexed longbows. The Hill style flatbowsof the 70's and 80's differed from the straight bows I've been making in that they featured much more reflex than is commonly built into them these days. This was apparently done in search of speed, by pre-loading the limbs. Some feel that, particularly in the case of very heavy bows, these limbs may have contributed to the "hand shock" stories. It happens that I have a form for this style of bow. Actually, I helped two friends build bows on it, one of 45# an one of 62#. Both seemed to be good bows with no particular hand shock. Both of these were too heavy for me to shoot myself, and I wanted to try one that I could shoot. I finally got around to building such a bow... a light weight 66". Hitting weight was a bit touchy as the pre-load affects weight, so I had to adjust my wood stack. I wanted to be able to compare this bow to one I already had, so I was shooting for close to the weight of Sweet Georgia Brown, 27@28. Actually, I was hoping for maybe 3# more, but I ended up exactly at 27@28, so I should get a good comparison after I've shot them both together for awhile.

Here's the layup:

Glass: .040
Lamboo: .140 parallel
Lamboo: .130 taper .0015
Glass: .040

Wood Stack: .270
Total Stack: .350

Riser: laminated sapele/maple/sapele 16”

Width at Shoulder: 1.100
Width at Tips: .600

Final Stats: 66” 27@28 (23@25) (Note: Georgia Brown is 22@25)

1 1/2" of reflex on the form translated to 1" of reflex in the 66" bow.	strung	sapele riser, with center lamination of white maple
showing the belly side of the laminated riser
This shot shows just how much 1" of reflex is. It's a lot!		Tips are .6" just below the nocks. I'm getting them slimmer.
28" 1/8" positive tiller		This is a better shot of the multi-lam riser. I'm kind of tickled with this. It's the first one I've done. Now I'm stuck. I don't want to cover it with a wrap.

I shot it this afternoon and it did well, though the string is a bit short, resulting in too high a brace height. I had a string on hand that had come out a hair short for an earlier 66" bow. Oddly enough, it turned out to be short for this 66" bow as well. 8^) I'll make a new one tomorrow. It'll take a bit of shooting to match up some arrows well before I can do some real comparing to the other bow.

Dick