27
Building a Bow for Under 20 Bucks
27,007 viewsThis is a typical Dejapong project: Build it, see if it works, move on. Since writing this tutorial several years ago, I have found some things out to be true. First off, plain old carpenters glue works best. Secondly, the wood used in this article are not very optimum bow woods. Thirdly, I was an annoying freshmen when I wrote this.. apologies for my attempts at humor. Lastly,this tutorial will work fine for a cheap and easy bow, but if you are looking here is a more serious bow, check out this website: http://www.geocities.com/salampsio/index.html
Hardwood for a bow can be expensive and hard to find. If you cut a piece yourself, you have to let it dry for more than a year before you can use it in a bow! Way to long to be practical. That is why I decided to see how cheaply and easily I could make a bow. Since Im in college and living in an apartment…
Introduction:
Hardwood for a bow can be expensive and hard to find. If you cut a piece yourself, you have to let it dry for more than a year before you can use it in a bow! Way to long to be practical. That is why I decided to see how cheaply and easily I could make a bow. Since Im in college and living in an apartment, I dont have much money, time or space to put into something like this. I dont even have a car right now so I have to carry everything on my motorcycle. Despite this, the design is so simple, I got a pretty servicible bow in under 3 hours of work for less than 20 bucks with all materials from Lowes. It also doesnt take any workshop space- I built this under a bridge in Branson like the bum I am.
Im not a bow maker so Im sure Ive done a lot of things wrong here, and Im not responsible for anything that happens from any attempts to follow my tutorial. There, Ive said everything, now just read it already.
Step 1: I went to Lowes and got these thing.
- 48″X1/2″ Oak trim piece
- 24″X1/2″ Poplar trim piece
- bottle of gorrila glue
- Stanley hand planer
- bundle of jute rope (In the future, hemp would probably be better)
The hand planer from lowes turned out to be just the ticket for shaving down the bow arms to what I needed. Its only 6 bucks and its about 3″X1″ big. Any bigger would probably turn out to be too unweildy. Any sort of wood glue would work really.. as a matter of fact, gorrila glue is probably not the best one to use. The wood was just some project wood or you could use trim wood too, I guess.
Step 2: Find a place to do this thing.
I drove all this stuff to a shady little bridge over turkey creek in Branson, MO. It was a perfect place to spend an afternoon and it was nice and cool.
Here is a picture of me shaping the bow. This is a very technical process and your body style and form must be absolutely perfect. In this picture I am demonstrating the very difficut, yet effective, green lotus style of bow carving past down to me from my master. Incidently, this bridge was the launching place for our christmas camping adventure.
Step 3: Glue and Clamp
This is pretty self-explanatory, just make sure you get the glue more evenly spread than it is in this picture. Use sticks and rope as a clamp and the piece until its cured enough to release. This should actually take a few hours but since Im really impatient, I waited for half an hour and then started carving. Dont do that, it just messes things up in further steps. Whatever you do, dont try bending the bow until the glue is dry either. This just makes them pop apart.
Step 4: Start planing
This is not really a hard step, but its pretty critical. Try to keep both sides the same and shoot for a shape like one in the diagram. I think the pictures can do a better job of explaining this than I can. So just ask me if you have any questions.
Step 5: Cut the end things.
You need a place for the string to rest, so in two steps, cut notches at the ends like they are in the pictures. In the first step, cut the profile of the notches, and then smooth them out in the next step.
Step 6: Make a handle.
Remember how I just jumped into it without waiting for the glue to dry? Well, turns out the glue wasnt strong enough to keep the wood together in the middle perfectly. So I reinforced the center with a jute handle. It might look a little complicated but actually is just a rope wound around the handle in a spiral fashion. I soaked the rope with glue too so it would stay there. This does a good job as a handle and a reinforcer for the two pieces of wood.
Step 7: Add a string, tiller it a bit and your ready to go.
Once its really dry, try adding a bow string and test draw it to see if one side is more stiff than the other. If it is, try to take off a little bit of wood on that side. Also, when you pull the bow back, the bow should bend evenly throughout the whole thing. In other words, when you pull on the string it should not be the case that just the tips bend back.
Thats pretty much it.
This bow making attempt reminds me of a time when I spent hours cleverly carving a bow from handpicked wood when it was clumsely broken by my Thai friend
That story never happened. You are full of unrememberances.
Didn’t you give that bow to a girl afterwords, what a waste. I bet she couldn’t kill nearly as many things as you could with it.
how wide was you trim peices
When you said you used a 48″X1/2″ Oak trim piece and a 24″X1/2″ Poplar trim piece from Lowes, would you mind linking to their pages please?
Also, is that good wood to use for a good, strong, long lasting bow?
Thanks.
what was the draw weight on the on the bow?
About 40-50 lbs I think, I never got to measure it.
What knot are you using? I use the Uni knot. How do you know when you have the correct tension?
Very interesting tutorial !
I tried to build a bow (before seeing this) but the maximum i could reach was 25m (80 feet). I think I will try to build one your way (mine was just a stick of raw wood with a string lol). Can you tell me what’s it range ? I guess you can reach at least 150 feet with it ain’t I right ?
Zeke thats mean you shouldn,t kill stuff with this
did u thin the 1/2 inch part at all
did u thin down the 1/2 inch ata all
did you thin the 1/2 part at all
did you thin it down
Best wood, easiest…hickory axe handle from hardware store. Split in half (Saw)where the cut is already made for the shim that holds the axe head on. Gives you wood for 2 bows. Excellent wood for a bow!
Wadoo
I got to admire your skill; where did you learn how to do this. And my other question is: Can you please give the exact dimensions - so far as thickness of the bow goes. e.g. - how thick is the bow at the end where the noch, how thick is the bow at the top and bottom of the handle section
I used a old automatic saw instead of planing and then smoothed it all out with a sander
Just wondering how far your bow shoots and can you hit a hay bail with it from 50 yrds and is your bow still in one piece?
Hey how long have you had that bow and is it still in one peice also ive never made a bow in my life im actually starting with your design cause it seems pretty simple and cheap also what glue would you suggest i use?
Hey also what is the best string do you know? if not can you tell me where i could find out?
This idea has reached a amazing new level courtesy of on-line blog services that you can take on the road. Since most students spend more time online, blogs like help them kick their research into overdrive, Edelmira Awtrey
Would you post a picture of the planer you used?
so just to make sure, when shooting the bow, is the poplar on the side facing the shooter or on the side facing the direction of the target, in otherwords is the poplar the backing or the front?
whats the width of the wood 3″ or 4″
He use 2″ wide 1/2″ thick wood
the lengths were 48 for the oak and 24 for the poplar.
I first bought 1″ thick. I ended up running is through a planar to get it back down to a size I could work with.
Dan poplar is the backing.
Where are the pictures? Text refers to pictures but all I see are boxes with red X in them.
I think I have it figured out but text says “pictures explain it better.”
My computer or did something get pulled?