I need some reading material

Karl Brogger

Member
Messages
519
Location
Dennison, MN
For quite a while now I've been interested in building a bow. Of the arrow slinging variety. Anyone have any pointers as to what to read up on for construction and methedology?
 
In my youth I build quite a few bows, most of the English Long Bow variety, amazing what you can do with a bit of wood!

We started with Bamboo and Maple, but ended up with mainly Maple one piece bows, they worked well.
Dunno about a book, but on the web there are a lot of good pages, just looking around I found this one >> Here << that is great, I love the info about the "Horn Hook" we never went that far, we just notched the ends of the bow.

Cheers!
 
Karl, if you can find some Osage Orange wood that would be great. That wood makes a fine bow. There are a couple of photo's of self bows on my friend Mike's website. www.artofishi.com/ If you contact Mike I bet he would know where to find some information on long bow/self bow making.
 
Karl the art/craft of bow making is having a resurgence. A lot of information can be found with simple Google searches. Several people in Kansas sell billets of Osage Orange specially cut for bowyers. Not cheap. :eek: But, OO is considered the best wood for long bows. Hickory is very popular also and works very well. It (hickory) must be cut, or split, along the grain with no run out or it will break in use. However, it definitely is cheaper to experiment with for a first bow than OO.
BTW, other names for OO are: Bois d'arc which literally meant 'bow of the arc' or if speakin' country it is simply bo'darc.
I have a stash of OO but when I cut it I foolishly did not keep any long pieces. :(
 
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