DIY | MONSTER BAMBOO/IPE 100LB BOW BUILD! "A complete beast" (pt. 3)

Hey, really quick announcement before the video starts. Leather goods like this Arm Guard are gonna be off the website on October 27th, and then we're gonna do quarterly launches from there on. So November 27th, Black Friday, is when they come up on the website again. So with saying that, go get a leather product now, or get ready for the Black Friday sale when they go up on the website. This is so that we can serve you guys best. You guys have been devouring these, so we wanna be able to keep up with the demand, and the best way to do that is going to be doing quarterly launches. So, thanks so much for all the support. I hope you enjoy the video. It has been a tough season for the high poundage bow build. The challenge of making a bow out of natural material that crests the hundred pound raw weight has haunted me for decades. Okay, years, or months, fine. And to the person who says, glue's not natural material and bamboo's just grass, and thousands and thousands of people have built 200 pound bows, so you're really weak and you can't build a bow. You're completely right. This build has pushed my skills, ignited my passion, and inevitably, devastated me. See that guy down there? This is his third try at making a 100 pound bow. On this third bow alone, he has more than 36 hours into working on it. Now come around front, take a little closer look, pause, pause it right there, now zoom in. Yes, that is me, and it's true, I like to wear beanies. In just a moment, something monumental is going to happen. I want to tell you more, but for now, in this situation, it would be best to just show you, because a picture is worth more than a thousand words. So let's rewind, take a look at how we got to this moment. So I'm trying to decide what's more important, the extra length, or that the nodes are in equal places on each limb. In general, you want the nodes of the bamboo to be equal on either limb, so that in case it's a little stiffer there, that the limbs will bend more evenly. It's easier to tiller that way, right? But if I do that, then I don't get the full length. I think I'm gonna go for the full length, actually. Tillering will be a little harder, but I think that's my best chance of hitting a 100 pound bow, is by going that extra length. So we are gonna do a 72 inch bow. What that means is I'm gonna have to cut this board into two pieces, join it at the handle. Also gonna need to cut a power lamb, at least two pieces for the handle, one piece of bamboo, two limbs joined together at the middle, and two tip overlays. So let's start cutting down this wood. Normally, I would want this node, so this distance right here, like 3 1⁄2 inches, to be the same as the distance here, so it'd be 3 1⁄2 inches. So in general, I would cut my limb here, so that it'd be equal on either side. But today, we're gonna leave it full length. Now I don't have a piece of Ipe, that is full length, so I'm going to split the Ipe in the middle of the handle section, and with a good power lamb and a thick handle section, that should work okay. I make my power lambs 12 inches long, so I'm gonna make my power lamb out of this board here. Over here, I've also got some maple pieces that I may add in for the handle section as well. ♪ Can we be friends again ♪ ♪ I give up, I know how this ends ♪ ♪ Might sound strange, but I'd give my life for you ♪ ♪ Nothing's changed, I just ran away from the truth ♪ ♪ One of us makes a mistake ♪ ♪ We work our way through the heartache ♪ ♪ And then we're back where we started ♪ ♪ We've gone full circle again ♪ ♪ But that's what we do ♪ ♪ That's just what we do ♪ ♪ Last weekend, that was the day ♪ ♪ It's your turn, I guess, let's pretend ♪ ♪ That we are making progress ♪ ♪ It's a mistake, way through the heartache ♪ ♪ And then we're back where we started ♪ ♪ We've gone full circle again ♪ ♪ But that's what we do ♪ ♪ That's just what we do ♪ ♪ It's like a game that you cannot win ♪ ♪ Somehow I don't wanna change a thing ♪ ♪ I tell myself what a fool I've been ♪ ♪ Gone full circle again ♪ ♪ Like we always do, always do ♪ Here it is, guys. I let this stay up in the heat box for about four to five hours, and then I just turned it off and let it cool overnight. It is the next day. It's time to remove the clamps. You can see how I reflexed the limbs a little bit, and they go up, down to the handle, and back up. It's a slight reflex-deflex. There's not much deflex in it. That should help, though. So today, I have another glue-up to do. We need to glue on the handle section and the tip overlays. So first, I've gotta unwrap this, make sure everything looks really good, and then we can do the next glue-up. And then after that, it's full-on bow building. ♪♪ The bow building I do, the bow is either made or broken in the tillering process. And I got some good news. I haven't broken the bow yet, but I also got some bad news. Here, this bow is, and it's not gonna be strong enough. I just started floor tillering it and realized, oh my goodness, I cut these limbs too thin. I can make a 50 or 60-pound bow, but not a 100-pound bow. But the good news for you is that with the power of video, I'm a little bit ahead of the game today, and I've already got a second one completely glued up that's going to be thick enough. This thing is a brick right now. So I'm switching over to this bow, but I did the exact same process on this second bow as I did this first one, and this first one is actually probably gonna do it live and tiller it just for the fun of it, to make a fun bow. So, well, you actually might have already seen that because that should have been last Sunday. Tillering truly does make or break the bow. So let's jump into tillering this bow. I'm gonna take my time. I've got like six hours today I can work on this. I think we've got a shot at this. I've got faith in it. I've made this thick enough. I have a ton of material to remove, which gives me more control to make sure I'm not trying to crack something. So the biggest mistake I can make is to move too fast. So let's take our time, let's be smart with this, and let's make a 100-pound bow. All right, I've been doing a little work here. Look how close we are. Okay, this black line is 100, okay? 75, 85, that's pushing 95 right there. Oh, that was, we hit 100. We hit 100, baby. Okay, okay, so now we just gotta tiller this. We just gotta, I can't even speak, I'm so excited. Okay, we've gotta tiller this and make sure the bend's evenly because what you wanna do is disperse the weight throughout the entire limb. So this limb I left thicker. I left thicker bamboo, I left it wider, and it's a longer bow. So that weight distributed among the whole bow should hopefully allow it to draw 100 pounds. The last one I did was much shorter, much skinnier, and less material. We've got a shot at this. I just gotta take my time. Let's do this. I have experienced many challenges with the stringing of this bow. figure out if I should use the leg, if I should try to use a bow stringer. What's the best way to give myself an advantage when stringing the bow? And that's where I came up with this method to drill in a piece of wood into my tabletop and in the vice put the handle and this will allow me to bend the bow down in order to get it strung. My only problem was I used a 2x4 and this allowed the wood to split out. After that minor mistake in re-inspecting the bow, we're good to go. And so I drilled in some plywood into the tabletop. This is one of my biggest problems when working on the first version of this bow. But now that I got a really good method to string it, it's time to finish tillering. Okay, we're going to put this on the tillering tree and we're going to 100 pounds. We're going to send it all the way and see if we can get 100 pounds out of this beast of a bow. We are back to where we started. Remember that guy down there? After all the mistakes and failures, it is time for the moment of truth. Okay, so we're going to go all the way up to 100 pounds now. We're going to send it all the way. So I'm going to have the camera up really close so you can see if we pass 100 pounds or not. That's 82. I'm going to go a little further. Yeah. 89. 92. 99. 99. Okay. 100 pounds. Let's get it. There you go. That was right at 28 inches. That's perfect. Come on, baby. I'm going to go work out and we'll be back with you. Okay, let me show you how easy this is to string real quick. I put a D97 string on it just to find the happy medium between B55 and fast fly. Now, this isn't actually in the vice. It's just resting in there. At one point, I had some dowels in the bench where I could put them in like this and I could bend it this way, but that's a lot harder to pull towards you. With a heavy poundage bow, it's much easier to push down. And that's it right there. That's how you can string a 100 pound bow. Now, the last thing we need to do with this bow is let's make it look good. We need to finish out this handle right here. Also, finish out the tip overlays to make them look good and I'm going to put a finish on it and then we'll be able to shoot this bow and we'll be able to see how far I can end up pulling this back. I haven't sent it full strength yet. I've never had a goal to shoot a 100 pound bow. I've only had a goal to make a 100 pound bow and so this isn't something that I'm going to shoot regularly. I just wanted to see if I can make it and I could just reduce this down to maybe a heavy 60 pound bow later on, but for now, I wanted to see if I can make a 100 pound bow. I do want to see how powerful it is, but first we need to finish this out. The bow is center shot and so when looking down the string, the string lies right in the middle. That's really good. It's going to be good for shooting it, so I don't really have much else to say, but let's crush the last bit of this bow and let's see how powerful this thing is. Here, the bow is finished. It's completely finished. 100 pounds at 28 inch draw. I'm going to show you that here in just a second and then I'm going to take a shot. Yesterday though, I did take this out and I did shoot it. I only drew it back a little bit, but it was super powerful, so today we're going to see if we can send it all the way and pull it all the way back. Now, here up on the tillering tree, I'm going to show you again 100 pounds at 28 inches and then I'm going to take a shot in the same take. If I draw this down, you'll see this purple line down here. When the hook's at that purple line, it's at 28 inches. We'll keep coming down. There's 28 inches and 100 pounds right there if you can see that. Here's the thing. My draw weight or my draw length is 29 inches, so I'm not a super strong person. I'm hoping to get this close to that 28 inch mark, but I'm not used to drawing high poundage bows, so we'll just do our best. All right, let's give this a go. Goodness, these bows are so heavy. There you have it. You can judge for yourself how powerful that bow is. If you want to see me shoot this over and over again and see how fast it is through the chronograph, subscribe to the YouTube channel and you'll be able to see that in one of the upcoming videos. I'll do a whole basically review on my own bow build. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me today. Stay shatterproof, be positive. I'm for you. See you on the next video. So less than a year ago, we had under 1,000 subscribers and cresting 120,000 subscribers, I can't thank you guys enough. Thank you so much. You're awesome. If you haven't been told that recently, just know that you're awesome.