Books by Arturo Longoria

Monday, November 4, 2013

The Classic Board Bow....

Checking out the tiller on a D-bow. This bow is being held upside down.

I made my first bow from a lumberyard board back around
1980. Made of ash and if memory serves
about 64 inches long; a simple bend-through-the-handle design or D-bow that
worked for about 100 shots before cracking and splitting. At the time I knew nothing about selecting
the proper grain structure with boards and despite admonitions from various
bowyers about never using kilned wood, I decided to literally give it a
shot. I didn’t try another board bow for
over a couple of decades or at least until I read Tim Baker’s treatise on
selecting boards for bows. Another ash
bow that worked okay but was a bit sluggish so from there it has been primarily
red oak though I found a nice piece of hickory once and made a decent bow with
that wood. Red oak, however, is easily
found at hardware stores and though it has problems with “follow” and can be slightly
sluggish it nonetheless makes an adequate bow that is easy to construct and fun
to shoot. Of course, it helps if certain
design elements are incorporated into the bow like keeping the near-handle
section a bit stiffer and the tips quite stiff in order to alleviate follow
where the bow remains slightly arched after shooting.

More testing. This bow has a handle.

I have built many modified D-bows with stiffer handle
sections but lately I’ve built more bows with glued on handles or “risers”
since that design helps to eliminate follow and makes for a very smooth
shooting bow. Mind you that the people
who kiln boards for carpentry and cabinetry are not concerned with all of us
amateur bowyers who want to tiller their boards and make shooting
implements. They are in the business of
business which said another way—or at least in the modern capitalistic sense—means:
Reduce costs and maximize profit. So I
suspect that the quality of kilned boards has diminished overtime. This applies primarily to the big companies
that produce millions of boards for mass consumption. I’ve been told that the kilning process
includes the use of chemicals that hasten the reactions but greatly destabilizes
the wood. I’ve seen boards that when
sawed or whittled are powdery and despite proper grain structure are not
suitable for any bow. It’s best to
obtain your boards from a mill that produces boards on site and does not use
any sort of chemical additive or gas to hasten the kilning process.

The results of an over-kilned bow that despite excellent
grain structure did not hold up to shooting because the fibrous inner-wood had
been pulverized.

In my view the major mistake made by newcomers in making
selfbows is impatience. Unfortunately,
this is somewhat promoted by the literature that often says: “You can make a
board bow in a few hours and be shooting it in no time.” I think that’s poor advice. Newcomers need to go slowly and thus avoid
critical mistakes. The two worst
mistakes are going too fast and thus creating “hinges” that effectively destroy
the bow’s overall draw weight, and over-tillering that creates a bow of greatly
diminished draw weight. So my recommendation
(even to experienced bow-makers) is be patient.
Go slowly. Take your time. Enjoy the process of making the bow and be
observant. I guarantee you that caution
in the building stage will result in a much better shooting stick.

I’m testing out a new red oak board bow. Photos help you spot flaws.

I use a variety of tools but mostly I stick with rasps and crooked
knives. My favorite rasps are a farrier’s
rasp and the Nicholson #49 and #50 woodworking rasps. My favorite crooked knives are made by a guy
named Longoria….need I say more. I’ll also
use cabinet scrapers but I’ve made dozens of bows (particularly bows fashioned
from staves collected in the woods) using nothing more than a couple or three
crooked knives. Honestly folks, if you
don’t know how to use a crooked knife then you have not given yourself the opportunity
to explore woodcraft in a way that will give you great personal satisfaction.

Most selfbows these days will never taste blood. They will however encounter many bales of hay
and legions of Styrofoam targets. Some
people like golf and others go bowling.
Then there are all of us woods types who just want to build our own bows
and then go into the backyard or find a deserted field someplace and spend an
hour or two shooting. It’s absolutely
silent and the quiet enhances the experience.
Just you and your bow and a set of well-made arrows and a few bales of
hay or even a cardboard box and that’s all you really need. You built the bow using a board you purchased
for less than ten bucks at the local lumberyard or hardware store. You made your own arrows from river cane or
perhaps stems of hardwood growing along the edge of the woods. Your arrow-points are made of recycled steel
or bone or maybe you’ve learned to knap chert or flint. Maybe you’ll use B-50 string to make your
bowstring and you’ll wrap your points and feathers with artificial sinew; or
perhaps you braided a string with sinew or rawhide from last year’s buck or
used some sort of cordage made from plant material. Your feathers are from a turkey or even from an
old plastic folder you saved from the office.
But the bottom line is you did it all yourself. And if perchance you go into the woods come
hunting season and bring home the venison to feed the family then good for you. And again, you made everything yourself. So afterwards you mosey on down to the local
sporting goods store and after the clerk finishes his political rant (they all
seem to do that) he asks you if you bagged anything this year. Before you begin he interjects that he shot
this or that with his thousand dollar custom rifle or fiberglass contraption
with training wheels using a five-hundred dollar scope or red-dot apparatus and
then he says, “Well, what did you use?”
And you coyly shrug and say, “Well, I used a five-dollar red oak board
(or I cut a branch from the woods behind the house) and made a selfbow and then
I went down to the garden store and bought some bamboo stakes and made a set of
arrows and I made my arrow-points from some 16 gauge scrap steel I found and
used some fletching from domestic turkey feathers. And I figure the whole shebang cost me about
twenty bucks or maybe a little less….”
And now watch the look on that guy’s face as he realizes he’s talking to
one hell of a woodsman. Of course, he
won’t ever admit it.

2 comments:

I have made a couple of board bows. The first broke about the midpoint of one limb. The second did not break, but was very weak. I was more successful with another, but nothing to compare to the guys on Primitive Archer or Paleoplanet.

As I'm sure you know, grain structure is extremely important. Study the board from every different angle. How long were your bows? Were they bend through the handle or raised/fixed handle bows? I've had the best success with bows from 64 to 68 inches long. I've made both bend through the handle and fixed handle but lately I've made more fixed (non-bending) handles because I can bring the arrow closer to center.