DIY-HIGHER PERFORMING Longbow...no seriously..."Red Oak Bow Build"

I've basically got a mum-fied piece of wood here that we're gonna make a higher performing longbow or attempt to. So it did not start here. The goal is to give you different options of different ways you can make different bows because it's really fun not to make the same thing over and over but experiment with different ways to make bows. In the description of the video I've got a PDF of these bow plans, how to lay out the bow and I'm also gonna put the finished dimensions in there so that if you're making a red oak bow it's gonna be pretty similar to those dimensions. It may not be the exact same which is okay because it's your own. I'm also putting it in the imperial and the metric system so that no matter where you live these measurements will apply to you. Yes, this video is a spin-off of the will it bow dog bone video and so the first thing we really need to do with this dog bone is go ahead and soak it in some water so that we can see if this dog bone will bow. Let's go! It worked well enough that I figured hey, let's make a video showing people how to make a bow with these materials because this can make a pretty sweet bow. In the will it bow dog bone video the bow I ended up with was a little lighter than I wished so I'm gonna try to make a more powerful bow using the same materials today from a $5 dog bone off of Amazon and an $8 piece of wood from Lowe's. It started with me going to the hardware store to pick up a red oak piece of wood. The goal with this is to find a piece of wood that has grain that runs all the way down the piece of wood. You do not want grain to run off any side of the piece of wood. If grain runs off the wood this could lead to a broken bow. Wood grain is very important and is often overlooked. Then I grabbed a dog bone and threw it in a bucket of water so that it could soak and loosen up so we could use this hide in order to back this bow. Not everybody's arms are the same length so some people will need a shorter bow while others will need a longer bow. How you find that out is by taking your draw length, multiplying that by 2 and then adding the handle section which is 8 inches long. If you don't know how to find your draw length you can watch the video I made on that. I'll put a card up here for you. Technically my draw length is 29 inches so I'm gonna have that multiplied by 2 which gives me 58 inches. Then I add my 8 inch handle section which will give me a 66 inch long bow. So I made this bow right here, the one that's mummified, 66 inches. If all of that seems confusing but you do know your draw length I'm gonna put this entire list right here in the PDF so you can see exactly what length of bow you need. I will say this is a general rule, this is not a hard rule. You can deviate upon this especially when you're using different materials. But for these common board bow materials this is a good rule to stick to so that you're not drawing your bow back too far. I used a 1 by 2. These aren't exact dimensions but this is what it's called and then you can choose the length of the board. I chose an 8 foot board so this is actually my leftovers because I only needed 66 inches from tip to tip. Then I cut an 8 inch section that went right here on the handle. Here's a clip from a previous video to show you how to know where to put your 8 inch handle section. We first found the center of the bow and then from there we went up an inch and a quarter. That's where our arrow rest will be and then we came down from that point 4 inches which is going to be our whole handle section. So it's an inch and a quarter up or if you're going to measure from the center line it's going to be 2 and 3 quarter down. Either way you've got a 4 inch section. From there we have the fade outs. 2 inch fade out and another 2 inch fade out. Then go down the limb, halfway down the limb you're going to make a mark and then from there you're going to fade all the way down to 3 quarters of an inch. It's going to be the same thing on this other side. All the way down halfway on the limb, fade out to 3 quarters of an inch. To glue the handle on, any wood glue will work just fine. Put wood glue on both pieces of wood and then clamp it down. If you don't have clamps you can just throw a brick on it as your pressure. Just do what you gotta do. Once the dog bone was softened I flattened it out and cut it down into two 1.5 inch strips of hide to back the bow with. From that point I used wood glue to apply the hide and I wrapped it with an ace bandage. These ace wraps allow air to breathe through which is really good because wood glue dries by contact with the air. So you do not want to wrap it with anything that's going to cut off the circulation of air or else it will not dry. So an ace bandage works really well when you're backing a bow using wood glue. There's two days for you and five minutes. So here the mummified bow is. It's time to bring it back to life to take off some wood to get the shape to the point we want. I'm going to use power tools to do this. You do not need power tools to do this. I just would like to save a little bit of time. Let's get right into it. This is the part that's really exciting because we start to move from a piece of wood into a bow. I'm going to try to give you as many tillering tips and as many finishing tips as I can that I haven't given you guys before. So you have some options depending on what resources you have at hand. With that being said we've got this bow roughly shaped out. Now it's extra thick but our width is going to stay the same from here on out. We're just going to remove wood on the belly of the bow. And as a reminder the belly of the bow is the side facing us. The back of the bow is going to be the side facing the target. With this bow layout we have there is going to be an upper and a lower limb. Because the limbs are not going to be the same in dimension. The upper limb is going to be the limb that is longer for you. So I'll go ahead and mark what is the upper and what is the lower limb. And then the entire time I tiller I like to keep the upper limb on the right side. And that makes it easier to remember as you tiller which limb was bending more. The bowstring will go like this. So we need to cut the knot grooves in. So in order to cut the knot grooves in I come and I grab a little chainsaw file. But they're really cheap and they're really good to put the knot grooves in. If you don't have a chainsaw file you can use a hacksaw blade. And what I would do is I would do two cuts right next to each other. And then get some sandpaper to round over those corners in order to equal what might be the size of a chainsaw file. With these knots we're not going to cut into the back of the bow. I never recommend cutting it into the back of the bow unless you have tip overlays on it. Now this sort of bow you can put tip overlays on it if you would like to. With this specific bow though I'm just going to put string grooves on either side of the bow. Not put a string groove in the back of the bow. And that is enough to hold the bowstring in place. How you know it's deep enough is by if your string just lays in there and you can rub your finger over. You don't necessarily want your string sticking out too far. You want it to lay in there nice and flush. Now that we know it is deep enough I'm going to go ahead and smooth over these corners so that the wood does not cut the bowstring. The way I do that is I'll just grab sandpaper, wrap it around my chainsaw file. And this sandpaper is a lot higher grit than the chainsaw file and will really smooth this down. It doesn't only make it look good it also protects your bowstring. At this point you can square across the bow to the other side. You want both string grooves to line up correctly. If they're not lined up correctly this may result in limb twists. We've got these string grooves as even as we can get them. So that when we string the bow up it's going to pull evenly on both sides of your bow limb. Then just repeat the exact same thing on the other side. The nocks are set and they are ready. I've got this tillering tree over here on the wall. But today we're going to use a tillering board because when starting out in bow making it's a lot easier to start with a tillering board. It's super fast to make but there's a couple techniques that you do on a tillering board differently than a tillering tree. So I'm going to share those with you. I'll go ahead and grab my tillering string here and tie a timber hitch. This allows me to move the knot wherever I need to move it and untie it really easily. So this tillering string doesn't have a loop on this side but it does have a loop on this side. That way it's adjustable to whatever length of bow I need. As we start off the bowstring on here is loose. It's not bending the bow at all. We'll draw this down a little bit to see how it's bending. And when I say a little bit I just mean a little bit in the beginning. I personally like to wait to shape the handle until after the bow is completely tillered. That way the handle sits in here nice and snug or on this one will sit in here nice and snug because it's square. It's much easier to have a square handle fit for a while and then round it up after the bow is tillered. But if you go ahead and round the handle and shape it, it's going to end up looking something like this. And that's really hard to get into a tillering stick back there without it wobbling around. You definitely want to have in your mind what you want the finished draw weight to be. So that as you're tillering you never go beyond that finished draw weight. That's really important to keep the limbs from having too much stress on it. And that's what most people teach. So I'm going to finish with a 40 pound bow as my goal. I'm not going to draw it over 30 pounds until I have it to brace height. The reason is when you're first starting to bend the bow it's not going to be very even on either side. And if it's not even on either side and I draw it to that 40 pounds it gives it an opportunity to break in a specific spot. But if I hold off on drawing that much poundage and start tillering immediately and then I can draw it to my 40 pound draw weight as I get the bend evenly. This happens to so many people. They'll draw it down too much too soon. They'll create a hinge and a lot of bad things happen. So if you wait to draw it with that poundage until your bend looks really good it'll save you a lot of frustration. If you're just starting out you can get a scale like this. It's like $8 or $10. Maybe you have a fishing scale or even a kitchen scale. All these different types of scales. You can hook onto the string to see how far down you can draw it to stay in the safe zone. So I'm going to stop right there about the 12. And you can see the limbs are hardly bending at all. And that's okay. That just means I have a lot of wood to remove. So your top limb is going to be the longer one. I went ahead and marked the top limb with a T. Now you can mark where your arrow rest is going to be. Now if you remember we have an 8 inch handle section. So there's the center of the handle section. It's going to be an inch and a quarter above the very center is going to be where your arrow rest is. So I've got that being my arrow rest. I can measure down about 4 inches from there. And that's going to be where my hand holds on to the bow. This is important because this line right here you want to line up with your tillering stick. By lining the arrow rest line up with this right side of the tillering stick it simulates your hand when you're shooting the bow. And that's going to make it as realistic as possible. When you don't overdraw the bow this allows you the ability to step back and take a look at the bow without there being too much stress on the bow. I like to grab a sharpie just to mark where it looks like the bow is not bending so I know where to take wood off. There's plenty of options for wood removal. The main thing you want to keep in mind is control. How much control do you want over the wood removal? You could use something like a spokeshave or you could use a little block plane. A hand file or a hand rasp. A cabinet scraper. Or you could use power tools. Any type of sanders work fine. Just remember the more aggressive of a tool you use on the bow the better the chance you'll accidentally ruin it. This is from experience with me trying to go really fast so patience is key. A method that I've started doing that I haven't heard much about is an orbital sander with 60 grit sandpaper. It's rough enough it doesn't take forever but it's also controllable enough because I'll mark down with the sharpie and then I'll just sand off the sharpie lines. The sharpie lines will sink into the wood a little bit so that I'm actually taking wood off and then when the sharpie lines are gone I'll stop. And I'll do that in the beginning and then later on in the process I might use a pencil line so it doesn't sink into the wood when I'm just doing small adjustments to the tiller. But it doesn't matter what tools you use just use what you've got and have some fun with it. Sanding with 80, 120 and 180 grit So how do you know where to take wood off? Well there's two main methods I use. The first is to grab a scraper or a straight edge like this and then rub it on the belly of the bow. Where the gap gets larger is where the bow bends more. So where there is no gap I'll just stop and I'll write with the sharpie and I'll know to remove wood right there. Now as you can see this scraper really isn't long enough right now because the bow is not bending far enough. So just get anything else that's straight. So this will show you that gap. As you rub it you'll see where the gap gets bigger and smaller where the gap is smaller to remove wood. The other method is to use a tillering gizmo. This basically accomplishes the same thing as the scraper except the way this is built is there's a pencil protruding through. And so that as I rub this here it will automatically mark exactly where I need to remove wood off. This method is the fastest. If you want to know how to build these check out the card above because I made a video on that. So as fast as this is looking in the video it's not this fast in real life. I'm skipping a lot of the work because it's just back and forth between the tillering board and removing wood. I still don't have any strain on the bowstring right now and we're starting to get a decent bend. I'll grab the scale. So now I know at my 18 inch mark I can pull that far and stay within my poundage. At this part you'll want to start exercising the limbs. That's just moving the limbs back and forth so that the wood can create a new memory. If you don't exercise the wood at all it has semi-short term memory and so that when you remove wood sometimes it doesn't correct until you exercise the limbs. So it's always safe to just exercise the limbs. That just means pulling it down to that 30 pounds about 20 to 30 times. Okay, when you push it in the tillering stick like that you shouldn't leave it stressed for more than 10 or 15 seconds. This is how I find out if we'll be at brace height or not. You can go ahead and put it in at 30 pounds. I'll grab another string and you can stretch that between the two limbs. And that's where it would be at. So yes, it looks like we would be at brace height. Knowing this, I can go ahead and shorten my tillering string so that I can string the bow up. Alright, so this is the first time trying to string the bow. This may not be full brace height but we're going to be close. Okay, this is where I see a lot of people make a mistake. They got a string on it so they start to pull it back. Just by pulling this back at all could create a huge problem in the bow because the chances are your bend's not equal on either limb yet. So before adding any more strain to this I'm going to put a tape measure up against the top limb and find the deepest mark, 6 to the 8th inch. Go to the bottom limb, 5 and 3 quarters. So before I even draw this back at all I know the bottom limb has a lot more wood to remove because it's bending so much less than the top limb. So I'll go ahead and just take the string off and remove wood off the bottom limb. Now we do have a bend here so you can go ahead with this bend rub your tillering gizmo or your straight edge against it and that'll show you where you need to remove wood. Before you draw this back you really want to get both limbs bending evenly so that you won't create a hinge. So I'll grab my scale and just put it on the string and just pull it back until I hit that 30 pound mark. And now I know not to draw past that mark which really isn't very far back. That's just like 10, 12 inches back. But you'll still want to exercise it a little bit so you can get the wood to forget its old memory and take the new shape of the new wood you removed. So the first goal is to get both limbs bending equally. You want even amounts of stress on the entire limb. Just think about it. What if you put all the stress on one little small part of the limb? It's not going to be able to handle it. But if you evenly distribute the stress throughout the whole limbs that's where the bow can work flawlessly. So that's what we're going to do next. Once we get both limbs bending evenly then we just continue to remove wood until we find our desired draw weight. Let's get right into it. We have now got a bow. Yet we're not done yet. It's time to shape the handle. This is how I like to do it. The shape of the handle doesn't matter so much as the arrow rest. Now you can shoot without an arrow rest. You can shoot right off your hand and that's completely fine. Personally, I like to put arrow rests in my bow. So we still have our mark where our arrow rest goes right here. I like to round my arrow rest just a little bit so that the arrow is only in contact with the top middle section. Also, I'll flip this bow over so you can see that the most important thing with the arrow rest is how deep you cut it in. Now, we want to cut it in about the width of an arrow but never, never, never go past half and I would probably recommend not to go past one third the width of the bow. So I'm going to come in just beyond an arrow and then bring it up and over. And so we'll cut out this section here. If you bring it too far over, that could cause the bow to break. If you have a handle that bends without an extra block here, you will not want to cut an arrow rest at all because that will create a really, really weak point. And that section is what we're removing. And for the rest of the handle, I would say just make it comfortable. This is one I made and it just feels really good in my hand. And that's the shape I came up with. The shape doesn't matter so much as long as it's comfortable for your hand. So as I build, I'll grab it, I'll put the string back on and feel it. Like, okay, how does this feel? And I can draw the bow back since we're done tailoring and I can keep making small adjustments until the bow feels right to me. The finish I'm going to use for this bow is true oil. You can check out this video up here if you want to know more about how to finish out a bow. With all that being said, this is the most exciting part of the bow building process because we're about to the point where we get to go test this bow and see how fast it shoots, how comfortable it shoots, how good we can group with it. I'm really excited about this, so let's get right into it. Here it is. Now, none of this matters unless this bow shoots, right? Unless it shoots good even. So that's what we're going to test out now. I haven't shot this, not even once. So let's see how this first shot turns out. Feels pretty good. This bow ended with lighter poundage than I wanted. I've got it at about 33 to 35 pounds. And for an arrow at 10 grains per pound, 141 feet per second for a 35 pound bow. Not too bad, especially for a bow that cost me like $13. Incredible. But does it shoot well from a distance? Let's go outside and see how well we can group with a few practice shots from a distance. You can see the target right down there. First shot, 15 yards with this bow. Let's see how it goes. Going for the center. Ooh. Used to shooting a little faster bows. Aim higher. Group one. Missed a little on the first one, and then missed on the left on the rest. Let's see if we can bring them in. You hear how quiet this bow is? 20 shots in. I think I'm figuring out the specific bow. So check it out. Check out this group. I hope I'm not predicting something bad here. I've never claimed to be a good shot at archery necessarily. I'm still not claiming to be a good shot. But with a homemade bow, getting within probably, what, a few inches of the bullseye on most of the shots at 15 yards, and only taking about 20 shots through this bow, I gotta say, I think it's worth it to make your own bow. So if you've never given making your own bow a shot, and you do so, let me know. Send me a picture. I'd like to congratulate you. With that being said, be positive. Stay Shatterproof. And I'll see you on the next video. Peace.