DIY BOW BUILD - Lower Poundage = Faster Bow 😮

You see, I've got this itch and today we're gonna scratch it. In the past year, we started selling our first bow, the bones. My wild idea is that I want to teach you how to build the bones. But not only that, I wanna build it with you. And I've been working on this for a while. And I've been telling the guys to work on this for quite a while now. And I'm still sewing gloves. But before we release this, there's a few more things I want to test. And so today, we need to accomplish three things specifically. Number one, how does the bow react to a different width? We're gonna test poundage and smoothness of shooting. Number two, I'm gonna standardize the tillering measurements. And number three, we're gonna auction this bow. We're gonna start that sucker at boom. So before we test out the limb widths and how smooth it is and how much that changes the poundage, we need to shape the handle so that we can shoot it. All right, now that we got our big profile done, now we just need to knock this all down on the belt sander. Take your time on the faster tools, and it'll do you good. I mean, do you realize that this could be your bow? Absolutely, I mean, right now. We've moved over to the other shop now because Zach's gone today. And this whole area is completely set up to build the bones as the only, like that's what we're maximized for. So I'll be able to go a lot quicker. But I want to give you a little bit of the inside scoop. So when you sell a product, especially a bow, something moving like this, you want to know every single failure point. That's why we've stress test these to 35 inches and beyond. We try to put it through the ringer, and that's why I treat bows bad sometimes is because I want to treat it as bad as possible. I've left one of these bows strong for a year and a half. Why? So that I can screw it up so that you never will. But when I'm thinking about doing a kit bow, doing a bow that you guys could build along with me, I want to know other things. So we normally make the limbs three quarters of an inch down to an inch and a half. But what happens when it's an inch wide? I don't know. How does it shoot? I haven't made one at an inch wide. I want to know how that shoots. And I also want to know how much poundage we lose if we go from an inch down to three quarters of an inch. So that's the first thing we're going to test right now. ♪ Take the sun out with me ♪ ♪ Don't stop, make it happen when you feel it in the night ♪ There it is. Ah! Hey! You know what it's like? It's like I'm the tip overlay dentist. ♪ Don't stop, make it happen when you feel it in the night ♪ It takes no skill really. It's basically impossible to mess up. ♪ Don't stop, make it happen when you feel it in the night ♪ Now, this is the first tip overlay I've ever done in my life. Today. Hi guys. I hope your day's going good. Mine's getting spunky. You got any pliers? Alright. Let's see how you did. Alright, guess that, huh? Close. Got the tip overlays in a spot to where we can draw it on a tillering tree and we can actually shoot it. But before we do that, we're about a sixteenth inch off on the tiller, so I'm going to fix that. Take off some of this glue, scuff it up a little bit, and then we'll be able to test the actual smoothness. Because if the tiller's a little bit off and it's wider, it's the tiller, possibly not the width. But if the tiller's correct, then it could be the width. So we'll find out for sure in three minutes. I find this extremely fascinating. So this is one inches at the end here. This is three quarters inches. We normally finish at a three quarter inch limb width. So this one's much wider. And my question is, what is that going to change? Because in my mind, I think I know. It's going to make it a heavier draw weight, right? Well, I'm pretty sure about that. But the big question for me is, will it actually make it faster? Because you can think about it this way. What if it's a wider limb width, but it's not actually faster even though it's heavier poundage? Because maybe when I go real thin on the limbs, it increases the speed because you've got less bow going through the air. Maybe that's the case. So we're going to figure that out. But I also want to test out the poundage here real quick. So let's see what we're looking at. I fixed that tiller we were talking about a second ago. We're right at 45 pounds. So I'm going to shoot this. Let's see how it feels. We reduce that width. We're going to test out through a chronograph the speed now and the speed when it's thinner. Which one's faster? Which one's smoother? And which one has... What's the difference? What's the difference in the poundage? I haven't counted, but with our actual finished bones, I've shot a lot of them. So I have a good idea of what it's supposed to feel like. So let's see how this one feels. Let's shoot it. Actually, it does feel worse. A lot more vibration, I think. Yeah, definitely a lot more vibration than our normal bow. We're ready for the speed test. This is the 1-inch whip bow. We've got a 45-pound bow currently with a 450-grain arrow. So 10 grains per pound of draw weight. Chronograph is set up. Let's see what our readings are. 168 feet per second on the first one. We'll do two more and see what they are. 171 feet per second. So 68 to 71, that's going to be like 169.5 feet per second average. If the finished bones is 100% smooth, we're going to do that as a baseline. This is 75% of the way there. So it doesn't shoot terribly, but it doesn't shoot great. And I think I can get this one exactly... Well, I know I can get this one to 100%. How we're going to do that is extend the limb tips to the optimal range for this bow, which is 3 quarters of an inch. And then we're going to test out the poundage, the speed, and the smoothness again. Kaz is taking a couple shots to see his verdict. I'm speaking for Kaz here because I don't want to give him a mic. So basically what he's saying is he tested the real bones to the one that's not the right width yet. And he thinks that this one is a 67% if that one's 100%. And with that being said, it's lunchtime. Seriously, it's lunchtime. For every single bow shape, there's an optimal taper. So for a recurve bow, it's generally a little wider and then cuts in steep at the end. Where maybe a reflex-deflex bow, a continuous taper all the way down might be smoothest. But the width of the limb and the taper of the limb needs to match how the bow is shaped. And there's some point in there that's about as optimal as we can get it for it to shoot smooth and fast. And so this is not optimal having it an inch wide. So we're going to take this down to 3 quarters of an inch. What we have already tested, what we already know shoots fantastic. But we're going to leave the base here at the fade out the same and make that a continuous taper. Then our bow's going to shoot. Yeah, you and I both longing for expression for the things we like, but we stay quiet. Jessica. We're holding back each other in the things we do. It's all so blue. Yeah, what if we could grow just like the flowers through the concrete. Just you and me. Hold me now, hold me now. Tell me things, tell me all about how you feel. Because I talk when my thoughts are appropriate to talk. Say it loud, say it loud. Break the world on the other side. Break it here. I think I just got lucky. Here's my eyeballed handle that's almost done. Pretty close. It's not too far off. Which does make sense because we did design both handle off. True, that's true. We did make changes though. Oh yeah. I made the fade out a little more similar to the way you've been doing it. I like that actually. Let's test it. It was 45 at 1 inch. We went down to 3 quarters. What did you guess? I'm thinking it dropped to 42. 40. Did I say 42.5? No, you didn't. You said 42. No, I got the footage. 42. If you both say something, there's a 99% chance that's right. We're back at the chronograph with the thinner limbs. We did drop 2.5 pounds in draw weight. So what's your guess? Is the speed going to drop? Or because it's thinner limbs, is the speed going to be similar? Well, let's find out. 168. Shot 2. 172. 170. Even though we dropped 2.5 pounds of draw weight, we gained efficiency for this style of bow. And ended up having this bow average 0.7 feet per second faster than the heavier poundage bow. That's pretty sweet. On top of that, this thing's really smooth now. So you got a faster bow and a smoother bow just by changing how the bow is designed. That's why a well-designed bow matters. I have now put on six coats of finish. I'm going to let that sit and cure. But real quick, on the kit bow that I just basically built out, I wanted to test that to see how it would go with having the blocked handle and building everything from scratch by hand. And that's why you saw me on multiple different tools because I was testing out what it would take to make that bow. Now, if you'd be interested in something like this to build for yourself, let me know. We may be able to offer it through Shatterproof Archery. In the comments, you can leave any ideas you have along these lines because we want to add as much value as possible and offer everything you need in it and nothing you don't. I named this bow Spunky. It's effectively the bones but made by hand instead of with templates. I know I can be silly and goof off in a lot of these videos, but setting the fun aside for a minute, we have put extreme thought and testing into this bow. Here's a few things we've implemented. In the throat of the handle, we slightly angle it away from the arrow rest. This provides a really secure feeling handle in the hand that doesn't slip. This is the concept Tom Clumb talks about. We've tested it and believe it's true. We've laminated three pieces of walnut together so that we'll have extra strength in the handle. We also have shaped the limbs as a reflex-deflex bow to optimize for the smoothest shooting bow possible. The arrow rest is cut to center and the sight window is vertical with a naturally canted bow. This provides a great sight picture for the archer. We convex the arrow rest so there would be little friction between the arrow and the bow. The bow I built today is a 58-inch AMO with a 41-pound draw at 28 inches. The bow is firing at 171 feet per second with a heavy arrow and up to 200 feet per second with a light arrow. The bone is optimized for quietness and smoothness. And there tends to be a correlation that the quieter a bow is, it's smoother because there's less vibration in the hand. And this one right here does not disappoint. Now I'm going to put the microphone as close to the bow as I can, zoomed all the way out. You may not be able to see well, but this is as close as we can get to the bow and the real sound of it. That is 11 inches from the camera. Okay, now you're 10 yards away at the target. This is what it sounds like from the target's perspective. It's always a good sign when you finish making a bow and you want to keep it for yourself. But I'm not going to. One of you guys needs this. So I'm going to auction this off starting at $10. It's going to be a two-day auction ending Sunday night. And if you have missed the auction deadline, stay tuned because more auctions will be coming soon at shatterproofarchery.com. And if you want videos to keep coming, there's two ways that you could support. Number one, it would be great if you would subscribe. We've got probably the worst subscribe rate on YouTube. And that's probably because I never mentioned it. Number two would be that you could tell your friend about Shatterproof Archery. Both of those are absolutely free and it would mean the world to me. You have a fantastic day. Stay shatterproof and I'll see you on the next video. We've got a one-inch... Dang it, Kramer. You're better than that. Let's go.