Bow Building

[Carl Brickey]

#4383

So I hope I won’t be throwing away money by doing this, but I’ve contemplated building glass bows for quite sometime.(10 years or so) I’m finally going to take the plunge and start my first one.

I want to make a slightly reflexed longbow for numero uno around 45#, out of very simple, inexpensive wood (cherry or ash from Binghams @ $16 a lam) my question is, how many lams would I need to get here? The resource from 3 rivers is saying 4 sets of 2, so 8 lams of wood. That seems like quite a bit to me. I may be wrong though, I guess I could count the lams on one of my bows and reverse engineer it.

I just don’t want to buy too much wood to start out, even though I’m sure I’ll be hooked once I try building.

[Bernie Clancey]

#30119

I made bows for a few years back in the 90’s before going primitive. The design of a limb can vary greatly depending on the amount of reflex or deflect you put into your design. I found a lot of the bow draw weight came from the glass that was used to build it with. For example, I can’t remember but I think if you go from .040 to 050 glas you gain about ten pounds of draw weight with the same wood lams in the limbs. I would think you would need two wood lams in the lower limb and two for the upper limb with .040 glas to come out between 40 and 50 lb draw weight. But that is a guess. Bingham can probably help you out and get you close.

I used to measure the thickness of the limbs (total all glas and wood lams) just above the riser and use this as a guide to increasing or decreasing weight in the next bow I built.

Using this thickness you can plot a graph of draw weight versus limb thickness and extrapolate to design a precise draw weight. It is a pretty linear design, that is to say the graph is a straight line. But you need two bows of different thicknesses to make the graph and they have to come off the same form.

Not sure if this helps or not but it is what I recall.

[grumpy]

#30297

I did a thread called BUILDING THE BOW, some time ago. You can do a search for it. I’ve been told it is a good read. btw Don’t keep track of how much you spend.

[grumpy]

#30299

Don’t keep track of how many you break either.

[Cameron Unruh]

#30485

cpbiv…i started building bows about 7 or 8 years ago. I started by purchasing the full bow set up from Bingham. For a small investment you can get all the plans,hardware for the form and plans for the hotbox, glue, string, nock overlays material etc. you will also get a very well done video that walks through the hole process of building the laminated bow. The full instruction guide follows the video very closely.

I use 3 core lams, 2 veneers and 2 pieces of clear glass. Bingham’s kit will provide 4 lams and 2 pieces of glass. Along with a riser block.

Building bows is very rewarding…enjoy

[Carl Brickey]

#30524

Thanks everyone, it’s all very helpful. I’ll search for that thread as soon as I get done typing here. I don’t think I’ll keep track of my expenditures at first, unless I get good enough to sell em’! I’ve looked at the Bingham’s kit, and I really like the hybrid longbow they have. I’d really like to use heat strips instead of a hotbox though.

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