Let's make a DIY LONGBOW with two STICKS in my Backyard!

Alright folks, so it's been a while since I've done a bow building video. So that's what we're gonna do today I've got a couple of Osage orange billets here and There was probably a date on these at one time, but that's not there anymore I think I took the sapwood off, but these were probably cut in the early to mid 90s if I had to guess probably I don't know 95 maybe But it's a really good wood One of the things you look for an Osage is just it just feels like a brick when you pick it up It's just solid dense wood sometimes you grab an Osage stave and it just doesn't feel like that, but these are nice dense hardwood and So we are going to make a two-piece takedown Self bow and I'm gonna make it in a design that I haven't really done a lot with It's a gonna be a deflex reflex type of a design so it's more of a modern design Any of them the laminated longbows that you see these days are probably going to be that design It's swept back in the in the handle and the limbs are long sweeping curves So first thing we need to do is get this thing to one growth ring there's still a little bit of sapwood on here, so we'll take all that off and And then we launch into an entirely different process of actually making the takedown Sleeve before we make the bow So let's get started. So these are pretty clean pieces of wood There's a few little pin knots in this which aren't going to cause a problem, but they are like laser straight For Osage, so this should be a pretty straightforward process Most of the work that I'm gonna do is is gonna be with a draw knife and this is it's not Like butter knife dull, but it's definitely not sharp I mean I can run my finger on that and there's no risk of cutting myself. The reason I like that That kind of level of dullness is because if it's too sharp, it's easy to cut down through your rings But if you leave it kind of semi dull You can actually use it more like a wedge and you're separating the rings in this Osage Osage is made up of Latewood and early wood and that early wood stuff is if you look at the end, they're light colored bands and that stuff is really Crunchy, whereas the late wood is hard and so if you use this as a kind of a wedge you can stick it between those two hard late wood rings and kind Of wedge one off the top of the other. I Had a guy I was talking about having a dull draw knife one time on a forum years ago And I had a guy say well, it's a tools are supposed to be sharp Right, well Butter knives the tool So as a hammer, so if you listen you can hear that crunch that's that that's that early woods Layer between these two hardwood rings and if you look right here You can actually see it that kind of like a like a just a crunchy layer in there But you can see remnants of it right there And it's definitely you can hear it. So there's still a few bug holes Right here, we have to go down another ring to get down below those. Hopefully they don't go too awful for Alright, so this one is done. It's to one ring just needs to be back cleaned up just a little bit I had to go down a few more rings than I wanted to just to get below those bug holes But we got rid of most of them. There are still a few right down at this end, but we can lay the bow out And kind of taper that so we get rid of all of those things. So Osage is one of two Woods in North America that are considered to be the best bow woods And people get caught up on that a lot I get a lot of questions about you know from new bow years about where to where they need to get an Osage stave from and I Actually recommend that people don't start with Osage because it's the staves are expensive if you're buying them I mean you might You're not probably these days you're probably not going to spend less than 150 bucks on a stave plus shipping and so I Recommend that people start with whatever they can find locally and there's a lot of good woods in North America There's a lot of woods. That'll make really good bows hickory ash Elm all those things will make good bows out west you've got things like vine maple and service berry if you can find them Hawthorne makes a good bow Apple So a lot of options and then of course you got boards from Home Depot or wherever So this knot right here is right on the edge of the bow So I'm gonna take my draw knife and hook under some green right here I'm gonna come down and just pop that knot right out And hopefully we have enough width left So that's an inch and a quarter wide It's a little bit narrower than I would have wanted but we make that work So what we're gonna do here is make a we're gonna make a tenon and socket for this bow handle to Pop in and out of it's got it. It's a very precise Procedure because if it's not just right if the tenons not just right it won't come out And all that stuff that'll that'll all make sense when we put this thing together So we can adjust this angle here to either give the bow back set or or deflex Which we'll end up doing here in just a minute Kick it back a little more than that This tenon is the critical part It's got to have some taper But if you have too much taper the bottom limb will just fall out of the bow if it's not strong If you don't have any taper or it actually gets bigger from here to here Once you once the handle cures you just it won't be a two-piece. You just make a one piece out of it again and so being very meticulous with the measurements on this is Important it's also important. There's not any little dips or anything like that in there That'll also catch and won't let allow it to come out Key West systems, what's up with my pump here? My pumps not working So we're just gonna have to I think it's a one to five she had to drizzle some in here to Till it looks like it's about 1 5th Maybe it'll work So there's a couple of things. I'm I'm doing with this one. I'm gonna coat this whole Tenon because one of the problems with these bows with this type of a system is that if you're traveling from? in different areas and you go from low humidity to high humidity the wood will react with the With the environmental moisture of the humidity and wood swells So sometimes if you go to a high humidity area, you can't get your bow apart Or can't get it back together. So this is gonna help to seal it up And then also we're gonna put a cap on this piece right here Just to protect it if you ever Drop this and it hits right here. It'll split off. But if you put a cap on there to protect it Then it won't do that No so we'll just let that dry and then Come back and finish it off All right, so I'll just let this cure overnight And we're gonna go ahead and just kind of zip the back of this off and then fit this face piece To our tenon there and then we'll make sure everything's smooth And then we get to do the fun stuff Check check check and check again If this is not done if this piece right here isn't right all this work is down the drain So this is going to sit inside of a Fiberglass sleeve and if there's just a little tiny little dip Like this or this that that glass is so rigid that it just will not pop out It'll it'll just you'll glue the bow back together permanently I'm just trying to get this. I just put a little super glue in that There's just a tiny little void right there. I was trying to fill in I'm just trying to get this super glue to kick off So I can keep going Well, I'll put a couple coats of this stuff on there and then we'll Start trying to put this thing together So this is my Customized jig for putting the handle or for putting these bows together I Think Walmart might carry these actually in their outdoor department You have to go up the front desk and ask them This is a very refined piece of equipment right here So this is the part of this whole process. It is the most time consuming Pain in the butt you're dealing with pieces of wood that are not square and they're they want to roll on you And you got to get everything just right And once you get it just right you can't move it. So the easiest way to do these handles is with this They call it fiberglass tape It's just one inch wide strips of glass We'll coat this in that epoxy resin and use this to wrap our handle so we need to spray this with some of this mold release this is like a Don't know what it is Teflon or something maybe silicone probably silicone Spray this on this so we can slide it out of our tenon once it cures This stuff actually works pretty good, too If you're shooting 3d targets you spray this stuff on your arrow things slide right out of there So I used to make these handles with polyester resin like the the stuff that you can pick up it I think you can get it ace hardware and different places probably get it at Napa The polyester resin doesn't bond to the wood very good It's just not very easy to work with and then I used a thicker epoxy EA40 which is a pretty popular bow building epoxy if you use if you make like Laminated bows EA40 is used a lot, but this West system I've never used it for this before but I've used it on boats and it flows and Wets out the fiberglass much easier than than that EA40 does and it sticks To the wood way better than the polyester resin does just a better all-around product so this This West system is epoxy comes with you can either get a fast hardener or a slow hardener depending on the temperature and I ordered this stuff in the winter time So I got the fast hardener So hopefully it doesn't kick off too fast. I think we'll have plenty of time once you start this Start laying glass on here It's very important to not move these things because they're lined up right now If you get halfway through with this or you get all your glass wrapped and then you bump this thing You're going to create an air pocket in there and your fits not going to be very good So what we're doing here is we're just going to let keep laying glass on this. We're going to keep wrapping this thing Until we build up it's got to be a big ball of glass and epoxy wrapped around there and From that ball will shape our handle out of that Trying to get a little bit of a hurry here because I can feel that epoxy getting hot. It'll It'll heat up when it's Starting to kick off and start to start to gel a little bit Once that happens once it starts to gel Might as well just toss that batch and mix up a new one and that's one of the reasons You want to mix it in small batches. You don't want to mix this stuff In a big batch because that actually makes it heat up faster you have less working time So if you work in small batches, you got a little more time Alright so that That's cured out so now we can just grind this down and grind that into shape and Then once we get it ground down, we'll go ahead and pop this bottom limb right out of this thing and hopefully it comes out without any issue Sometimes they can be a real pain though So this part can kind of freak people out a little bit because it will crack like loudly when you pop it loose There you have it two-piece It's another highly specialized piece of bow building equipment right there Starting to look like a bow One note on this glass. I should be wearing a respirator I know I'll get comments about that and if I was doing this all the time, I would be wearing a respirator so Don't be like me wear a respirator So the tips on this bow the the stave is pretty straight So I'm just gonna I'll use a straight edge to draw the limb tips on here If they're if you've got some character in your stave and it kind of does some whoop-dee-doos There's a different way and I've shown that in other videos how to kind of follow those curves I'm just taking this sharp edge off where the back meets the side here So I'm gonna go ahead while I've got this on this back set for me to go ahead and heat treat the belly Just heat it for about 20 minutes and that's going to help harden the belly side make it more resilient or Spring back to its original shape a little quicker. Alright, so this thing is coming together nicely Got the sweeps for the limbs, they're both matched really nice. Everything's lined up I'm gonna go ahead and just put this back on a different form here and just put just some slight Recurve not full recurves just kind of reflects the tips just a little bit Before we start tiller in this thing If I'm putting tight recurves in a in the in a bows tips like this I try to avoid heating the belly side because that's under tension You put a bunch of heat on this this belly side when it's under tension like this. You can cause it to open up cracks and You can still crack it like this, which is fine It's not a big deal. You usually sand those cracks out, but if you heat it from the sides It helps to avoid that Getting there All right, so we're moving right along with this bow I went ahead and just took a little bit more wood off the belly side of this thing and Shorten the string just a tiny little bit. So we're gonna go ahead and see if we can get it strung up and then See what it looks like Not bad. So the bottom limb if you look down that it's The top limbs got a lot more curve to it And if you look at the where the curve is a lot of it's right in here so what we'll end up doing is taking a little more wood off this bottom limb and Then off the outside of this top limb here and the other thing you can look at is the Measurement from right outside your fade from the belly to the string. So if I put my fist in there You can see the difference, you know, we're probably quarter three-eighths difference Most bows you want a little bit. It's called positive tiller You want a little bit more gap here than here, but not that much. That's that's a lot. So the Process we're about to launch into is called tillering and this is where the real This is where the experience and bow building comes into play because you got to be able to look at this find those subtle differences Ideally what we're shooting for is that the stress to be distributed over the whole limb? And so you if you have one area that's doing more work or bending more Every time you shoot that area has to work a little harder than the rest of the bow and eventually The rest of the bow will overpower it and that that is called a hinge That'll just get worse and worse over time and eventually just make the bow unshootable. And so we want a nice Smooth curve all the way up and down this limb. You wouldn't think that that would do much these little paper-thin shavings, but They do Especially as you get towards your final draw weight Just taking off as little as three or four little scrapes like that can change The way the bow bends and so this is the top limb and I've got this marked where it was bending a little too much or where it was bending the most which is right in here So we're just going to come take wood on that off the outer part Stuff makes good fire starter So the knock on this strings just a little big for this Knock on this bow. So I'm gonna close it up a little bit just wrapping some serving around it the bottom See how that these tips need to be aligned a little bit You see the strings kind of off to that side just a little bit So what we can do is heat this part of the limb just twist this thing and it'll line those tips up This one's off a little bit, too Just hold it for a few minutes till it kind of doesn't have to be completely cool, but Cooler than you need to be able to put your hand on it comfortably How this looks Depends a lot on the angle that you're looking at it and so it might be a little bit difficult to see on the camera, but if you get right at my My perspective look at it straight on When I bend this you can see that there's a lot of bend Kind of inside and that makes it that's where that's where most of the stress is These are your levers right your limbs act as levers And so the farther you get away from that fulcrum, I guess the more pressure is going to be applied And so to relieve some of the pressure here, we need to take more wood off the outside Get that bend and get that rolling over a little bit better You can see the outsides like the outer two-thirds of those limbs are not bending at all. They're just like they're pretty stiff so what I'm looking at is There's a lot of bend right there a Lot of bend right there everything aside from those areas needs wood taken off You can tiller the bow with it strong like this, but if you're gonna do this, you need to be very careful with your scraper Because it's back here at the tips. It's real easy to nick your string if you knit if you cut your string It's gonna jab jab you in the gut and feel not good This one limbs got a little bit of deflex that was just in the stave to start with and that's making it look like it's Bending more than it actually is and so we're just going to fix that with a little bit of heat that's 28 inches at 65 pounds and That's as far as my tiller and rack goes and so Typically these bows will gain two and a half to three pounds per inch of draw length at that Portion of the draw curve if you want to get super nerdy about it. So this thing should be drawing 68 at 29, which is what my draw length is and it'll drop a few. I want to leave it a little heavy because Just through the the next few months of shooting this bow. It'll probably drop I'm guessing maybe four pounds or so, which will bring it more In line with what I really want That's a moose killing machine right there This freaks people out Always I don't cut the shelf all the way in to start with I just Cut it a little ways in to see how it's lining up. You see it's a little deeper in the back than the front So this is just Beeswax that you would put on your string, but rub a little bit of that on this tenon and it'll take care of all that noise So I'll just stick a temporary strike plate and Piece of shelf material on here. Just a piece of Velcro All right. So this thing is done. It's shooting. I like the way it shoots now there's just a lot of sanding to get this thing finished off and just working your way down through different grits of sandpaper and then Seal it off and should be ready to go. So I'll bring y'all back when this is all Finished off and sealed and then we'll go shoot a little bit So we're gonna stain this bow with something called aqua Fortis and this is something that Dan Santana had actually recommended I've never tried it before so we're just gonna see what it looks like the the tenon Fits really nice No, no wobble at all. So I colored this bow or stain this bow with something called aqua Fortis and it's something that we actually had a little bit left over from a muzzleloader that I helped my son build and It's nitric acid. I think or nitrogen nitric acid and iron maybe But you put it on there and it looks kind of just gray and green. It doesn't look very good But once you let it dry and put a little heat on it The color changes and you end up with something like this at least for Osage the color would vary with different types of wood But I like it it looks really good it makes it look like a this Osage has got some age on it even though it's a newly constructed bow and then put a little beaver tail Handle wrap on here. If you look up Big Jim's bow company on YouTube. He's got a really good video on how to do this you basically wet it and use contact cement to kind of form it to the Form it to the bow handle and then do a baseball stitch on the back there. And the last thing is I put a little little tack right there in the handle and That works as Kind of a mental trigger and I've done if you look at my shooting and tuning playlist There's some stuff on there about that I just went ahead and put a little velcro shelf on there and then a velcro strike plate and That's what I usually do on on most of the bows that I make so this bow is drawing a Little over 60 pounds at 29 inches and the bow that I've been shooting is Mmm, a little over 50 at 29 Come here So this one's shooting what I just shot probably at this distance with my other bow I would have hit, you know, maybe four inches above the bottom of the chest and With this bow, I was probably 10 inches Not too bad What do you think Cedar? You like it? Yeah, Cedar approves