DIY High-Performance Board Longbow Build

Hey guys, thanks for joining me today. Today I'm gonna show you how to make a high performance long bow. If you've never made a bow before, this is the place that I would recommend that you start. And if you have made self bows before and you wanna get into laminated bows, this is the place I would recommend you to start as well. And the really cool thing about this kind of bow is you only need three materials. The first thing is a good piece of wood. Secondly, you'll need drywall tape. And the third thing you really need to get is some wood glue. I prefer this Titebond III wood glue because it's waterproof. And this is all of the materials we're gonna need to make an awesome, really fast bow. And as far as tools go, you can go really minimal or use power tools. It doesn't really matter because we're not removing a ton of wood. I will say, if you use power tools, it's a lot easier to mess up the bow. So just be careful and take it as slow as possible. These three materials are really cheap and accessible. I think I got it all for under $15. But I did find out that the wood glue and the drywall tape is a lot cheaper on Amazon. So I'm gonna leave some links below so that it'll be convenient for you to find them. Let's talk about the kind of wood that you're gonna wanna get to make a good, solid bow. The first thing you need to know is that you don't need to source it from any special place. You could just go to the hardware store and pick up a piece of wood. And there are many different kinds of wood that will make a bow. Some will make better bows, some will make worse bows. The first thing you wanna look at is the hardness of the wood. If the wood is so soft that you can put your fingernail into the wood, it's too soft to make a bow. You're gonna want a harder kind of wood than that. The second most important thing is the way the grain runs. You want the grain to run the entire length of the bow stave or the piece of wood you're picking out. You don't want the grain to be running off the side of the wood anywhere. If it runs off the side of the wood, that can create a weak spot where the bow can break. But you want it to go directly straight down on the top of the board and then also on the side of the board. There are many woods you can use from a hardware store. Red oak can work good, maple can work good. I'm gonna try poplar today. It's a hardwood, it's really cheap wood, and I think it's gonna make us a really good bow. Most boards at a lumber store are kiln dried. And what this means is that the drying process is sped up by basically putting it in an oven or a dehumidifier. And what this does is it sucks the moisture out of the wood really fast. This process is a great production way to dry wood so that you can have lumber to build a house or do construction because you don't want that wood shrinking after you put your flooring down. But the problem with this with bows is that it dries the wood so fast it can make the wood brittle because with a bow we need a good under compression and tension because we're bending the bow. It's not gonna be a static piece. When we're bending this bow, the back of the bow is under tension and the belly's under compression. So that brittleness can be really bad and that's exactly why we're gonna add a bow backing to the back of this bow. Now there are multiple, multiple bow backings you can use and I have a video on 10 bow backings that actually work. But today we're gonna use my favorite bow backing which is this fiberglass drywall tape. It's really easy to use, it's extremely cheap, and it's so, so durable. You really just cannot beat it. Before we go ahead and put the bow backing on the bow, what we need to do is to lay the bow out and get it to the rough shape we want. And if you wanna follow along with this, I've got a free PDF download for you guys that shows you all the dimensions and it's something that you might wanna print out or save onto your phone so that when you are building the bow you can reference it to know where to lay out the handle and remember all the little things that is easy to forget when making your first bow. Let's get right into the layout of this bow. As you start to lay out your bow on the piece of wood, you wanna look for defects to try to avoid those. And one end of the piece of wood I have has a split in it and so that's the side I'm gonna cut off. I want a 64 inch bow. This whole bow is six feet long, so 72 inches. So I'm gonna cut off the side that has the split in it so we can avoid that and we'll use that extra side we cut off to beef up the handle section. The first thing you wanna do is find the very center of the bow, which in my case is gonna be 32 inches for a 64 inch bow. Now that we found the center, we can lay out the handle section and where we want the center of the bow is where the most pressure is on your grip. So on a finished bow like this, right here where the most pressure is is where the center of the bow needs to be and that's gonna lay an inch and a quarter below the arrow rest. So we already found the center of the bow which is right here so we need to measure up an inch and a quarter to mark the arrow rest. So now we marked out the center of the bow and then we went an inch and a quarter to the arrow rest. Now we're gonna mark down two and three quarters inches and that'll give us a four inch handle section. Now we've got our four inch handle section. From there we need to create our fade outs. So we're gonna do two inch fade outs on either side. This should create a total of an eight inch handle which is exactly the same size of our scrap piece so we can glue that on to make a thicker handle section. Okay, so we've got our two inch fade outs, center of the bow and a four inch handle. As far as the limbs go, we're gonna keep it a very simple design. Our limbs come out to 27 inches so we're gonna find the half point of 27 which should be what, 13 and a half. So that's gonna be the mid point of our limb. So we're gonna keep that one and a half inch wide limb but when we get to the half point we're gonna make this skinnier and taper it down to three quarter inch limb. That's gonna make the limb tips a lot thinner which will make our bow a lot faster. So we're gonna find the center of here which should be three quarters and then half of three quarters is three eighths. So take it three eighths on either side of the center. From here I'm gonna use a straight edge to mark my lines. If you did this bow layout correctly your top limb will be longer than your bottom limb. The reason that is is because we have all this extra handle section on the bottom because your arrow rest is just gonna be right up here so your top limb's gonna be an inch and a half longer and that's completely okay. We'll need the top end to bend a little more than the bottom end in the end to get a smooth shot. I need to interrupt real quick to let you guys know that we now have a website. And on that website we're not selling t-shirts but we're selling bow strings. Something that can benefit me and that can benefit you at the same time. So if you wanna support this channel head over to krameramonds.com or click the link below to go pick up your bow string. They are Flemish twist bow strings. I make them out of Dacron, Dacron, Dacron, Dacron, Dacron. String and I also have a hybrid bow string if you want something with a little more speed and a little more mm. I've got three bow strings up for sale. I'll custom make the link and the whole website is 40% off. So if you need a bow string or a tillering string head over to krameramonds.com. Pick up yourself a bow string. I would appreciate it and I know you guys would like it too. Oh, and if you already have a bow string that's completely okay. Go ahead, go over to krameramonds.com, buy a bow string, that way the one you have now can become your backup and you can have a new main string. Come on. All right, now back to the bow build. Layout sometimes can be difficult to understand so I'm gonna walk you through it one more time. 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 four inches which is going to be our whole handle section. So it's an inch and a quarter up or if you're gonna measure from the center line that's gonna be two and three quarter down. Either way you've got a four inch section. From there we have the fade outs. Two inch fade out and another two inch fade out. Then go down the limb, halfway down the limb, you're gonna make a mark and then from there you're gonna fade all the way down to three quarters of an inch. It's gonna be the same thing on this other side. All the way down halfway on the limb, fade out to three quarters of an inch. If you want all of these measurements, again they'll be in the free PDF download for you guys. At this point we're gonna glue up this scrap piece of wood to the back of the bow. This will give us a much thicker handle section to work with and keep the handle from bending. These two pieces of wood are extremely flat and so I don't need to sand them down or smooth them out anymore. But what I will do is I'm gonna grab a hacksaw blade and rough up these two surfaces so that I can have more gluing surface. I wanna give myself every opportunity that these two pieces of wood don't separate. Oh man. When you have really dry wood like this, a sizing coat is important. All a sizing coat is is just putting some glue down and letting it soak into the dry wood. If all you do is put a quick layer of glue down and clamp it down, a lot of that wood's gonna soak into the wood. So go ahead and put a sizing coat down, let it sit there for five minutes, and that'll become tacky. Once that glue becomes tacky, then go ahead and put one more layer of glue on both sides of the wood and then clamp it down. I found that this helps, especially when you're using dry wood to keep the laminations held together over a long period of time. All right, it's tacky so we're gonna go ahead and give it another coat of glue and then clamp this together. A cool thing about this Titebond glue is that it sets up in 30 minutes. I think I'm gonna leave it a little longer, but I'll leave it for about an hour with the clamps on it and then I can go ahead and put the bow backing on in the same day. Then all I have to do is wait 24 hours to finish out the bow. You don't have to do it in different steps like glue up the handle, wait a couple days, and then glue up the back of the bow. It says to not stress it for 24 hours, which we won't do. They'll have a tight enough adhesion that we can take the clamps off so we can put the bow backing on. With a glue up like this, your clamps don't have to be extremely tight. If you don't have clamps, you could wrap it in duct tape real tight or you could just set a brick on it or something like that and that should work out fine. These factory cut boards are actually really straight and so all you need is a little bit of clamping pressure and it should hold for you. Also, if you clean up the glue while it's wet, it'll make it a lot easier. We're gonna go ahead and let this dry and then we'll get onto the bow backing. Okay, I've got everything ready to glue up and I put some wax paper down and then I laid out the fiberglass strips. These are really easy to lay out. You just wanna unravel this, make it the length of your bow. You want six strips and then you wanna make three bundles of two. So you end up with three bundles but there's two in each bundle. It goes a lot faster that way instead of applying six individual strips. I'm gonna go ahead and do another sizing coat like we did before on the handle. I decided not to shave down the bow profile. Since it's such a flat board, we'll be able to put the fiberglass tape on without clamping it, just laying it completely flat which is a thumbs up. To not have to do like an ace wrap around it or something like that because then it gets just so much more messy. But if I can keep it flat like this without rounding the corners, I can just lay out the fiberglass tape and it'll make it a lot cleaner and a lot easier to do and we'll just trim down the profile of the bow later. So I'm gonna go ahead and do a sizing coat like I did on the handle. Just a real thin layer of glue, let that get tacky and then we'll apply the fiberglass. All right, time for the first coat. We're real good and sticky. It soaked up a lot of the glue. I'd rather go over with the glue than under. From there, get your first bundle of the fiberglass tape. Extremely easy, just lay it on. You wanna make sure there's no wrinkles in it or anything like that. As you're rubbing the fiberglass tape in, the goal is to get all the little divots out. So if you see little holes inside of the fiberglass tape where there's no glue, put more glue on it, rub it in with your finger and then at that point when every single divot is filled, add the next layer of tape. All right, it looks like down here we're in really good shape. The fiberglass tape went on nice and smooth. That wood is so flat, it just laid flat on there. Looked really good and I was able to get every single crevice out of that fiberglass tape by putting more glue in there and smoothing it all out. Got all the wrinkles out and I think this is gonna make a really good bow and I'm so excited for it but we have to wait until it dries 24 hours before we can stress it. So I'll see you guys tomorrow. Welcome back to a new day. We gave this bow plenty of time to dry. There's a couple dark spots on it and that's just because I put too much glue in that area and that's completely fine. What we need to do next is to get this bow to its rough shape. So let's get right to it. We started taking the limb tips down and took off the excess fiberglass. So now that the profile is more or less close to what we're gonna have when we're finished, it's gonna be a little skinnier because we're gonna clean it up. But on the belly of the bow, we wanna take off enough wood to where we can bend it with our hands on the ground. This is a process called floor tillering and it's not bending it very much but you just wanna make sure your bend is even on both limbs then we can move on to the tillering process. So right now it's just hogging away a lot of excess wood on the belly, a little bit on the handle and then after that, we'll really be able to get into the fun stuff. Common easy mistake to make is to take one side down further than the other. So the solution to that is to draw an even line down the whole length of the limb on both sides. Then when you're taking your wood down, you just take it down to the line and you know you'll be equal on each sides. But you wanna check both sides very often because it's not good to take one side down really far, leave the other side high. Even though poplar is a hardwood, the wood is very soft. I'd say it's just a little bit harder than pine is. So what that means is that this wood is super easy to work with but it's not gonna produce the fastest shooting bow that you can make. We've got the bow shaped out and we've got it floor tillered. The handle section actually turned out really good as well. You can hardly even see the transition in between our glue ups. So everything's looking really good. So now it's time to start thinking about putting the string on it. And in order to put a string on the bow, we need to get the nocks cut. So we're gonna jump in and cut the nocks right now. Everybody probably has their own way of cutting nocks but this is how I like to do it. I'll come down about three quarters of an inch and I'll make a mark. Now we've got the back of the bow here, the belly of the bow on this side. So the handle's gonna be on this side. You always want it angling toward the handle. I've made a bow going the wrong way when I was first starting out. So always start on the back of your bow and angle towards the handle. Some people eyeball this, some people prefer to use a square. What we want is a 45 degree angle from the back of the bow to the belly of the bow. And then from there, I'll just come forward just a little bit, give myself another line. So right in between those two lines is where I'm gonna cut the groove. I'll match this on the opposite side. What I use to cut is a chainsaw file. I find these to be really easy. They can get clogged but it's the perfect thickness of a bowstring. Start off slow to get it going. You wanna cut the nock to the width of a bowstring. So there's a little bump there on the bowstring so that's not deep enough yet. That looks perfect. Now it's just a matter of repeating this nock on the other side. The most important thing when you're cutting your nocks in is that you need them to be even with each other. Because if one, let's say I did my other nock loop way down there for an example. I've got one nock loop here, one nock loop way down there. What's gonna happen is it's not gonna pull evenly the limb and it'll cause this limb to twist kind of this way. And so you don't want that limb twist in your bow. So it's not necessarily important how far up your nocking point is but it's very vital that your nocking points are lined up together. This fiberglass tape has a grid pattern so you can just fold that over instead of squaring. Before you cut the second nock in, make sure you look across to see if they're lined up. We're looking good. Okay, so we're at my favorite part of the bow making process we've got technically a board right now or a stave. And since we're starting to get a string on it, this is the process of turning it into an actual bow. This process is called tillering. And all tillering is, is taking off wood on the belly of the bow to make the limbs bend evenly. So we're turning a board into a bow right now. That's why I like this so much because it gets so exciting and nerve wracking as you start to bend the bow. There's a couple tips or techniques that'll help you if this is your first time tillering. First thing you need to know is that you don't necessarily need any special tools to tiller. You can do most of it by floor tillering. And then once you get a string on it, draw the bow back in a mirror and you can look to see if the limbs are bending evenly. It does help though to have some tools like a tillering tree. It just has a notch in the top of the board and a notch just throughout so you can draw your bow down and you can step back and look at the bend. The only negative to this is that you don't wanna leave the bow bending a heavy distance down for a long period of time. That's just gonna give the bow undue stress. And if you want what I think is the best way, you can use a tillering board. And I'm gonna make one of those here soon. But basically it's the same thing as a tillering tree except you have some pulleys and a longer rope attached to it so you can stand back and pull the bow down and just watch it as it bends. It's much better for exercising the limbs and it gives you a better perspective to see how the limbs are bending. But for today we're gonna use the tillering tree. And my favorite method to see where we need to take off wood is to just grab any straight edge. It could be even a small block of wood. But I like to rub it on the belly of the bow and you want your gap on the straight edge to be even all the way down the limb. This makes it easy to see where you need to take off wood. And wherever the gap is not even, I'll just take a pencil, mark it right there, and then I know I need to take off wood right where my pencil lines are. This is a sure way to make sure your limbs are bending evenly. So that's what I'm gonna do right now. I'm gonna use a scraper and a pencil, mark it, and then just take a little bit of wood off and continue doing that until we can put an actual string on it. The string we have on it right now is called a tillering string. If you want a proper tillering string, I've got these up for sale on the website. It's looped on one end and there's just a knot on the other end. It allows you to tie a bowiers knot on this side at whatever distance you need so that you can use the same tillering string for every single bow you make. We're only gonna have the tillering string on it until we get the limbs bending about six inches only. Once it's bending about six inches, then we wanna put a real string on it as soon as possible. The limbs will bend a little differently once we move from a tillering string to a real string, so we wanna get to that real string as soon as possible. ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ The storm is coming but I'm prepared ♪ ♪ I'll be gone for a while but don't be scared ♪ ♪ Right now I don't know if I'll ever arrive ♪ Where the grass is green, we're still alive I hope I see you on the other side I know that I'll be paying for the ride Into the black hole Sing from my soul Through the black hole To make myself whole Again The truth you're having doubts If I tell you now the sun dies out Cause I can only give you my heart When the darkest clouds begin to part I hope I see you on the other side I know that I'll be paying for the ride Into the black hole Sing from my soul Through the black hole To make myself whole Again I'm a pretty down to earth person But I start to get giddy when I make bows We're gonna string this up for the first time Full brace height And this is always nerve wracking Yes! We've got a bow Once you get a string on it, you've got a bow officially That's gonna be about full brace height right there Now I can run It's probably like 50 pounds at a 15 inch straw length But once you get it to brace height It moves so fast So slow down with taking off the wood Just slow way down This is the time If there's any time in this process To take your time Most people when they make a bow for the first time End up with a way lower draw weight Than they actually want it to end up with To check if the limbs are even to each other You can grab a tape measure And measure from the inside of the belly To the deepest point You've got 7 1⁄4 inches on that side This one, 7 3⁄8 So we can tell this limb Which is the bottom limb Is bending more You're gonna want to get both limbs bending the same Before you continue taking wood off on both limbs Whenever I'm at this point in a bow build I always move down just to a scraper I have a little cabinet scraper here And besides that I'm going to just use sandpaper Removing a little bit of wood will change the bend a lot But something you need to watch out for After you remove wood Wood has a memory And this can be problematic for us bowiers Because once we remove wood It doesn't realize necessarily That that wood's removed immediately So as bowiers we do something that we call Exercising the bow limbs And you can do that by just drawing the bow And moving the limbs And this is something you want to do In between every single time You remove some wood Because you may remove wood in one spot Put it on your tilling tree Draw it down And it doesn't show any correction So you do it again Draw it down No correction And then all of a sudden You have a big hinge right there Because the wood finally caught up Then you have to try to catch it back up everywhere else And you're just like balancing back and forth But if you exercise the limbs You'll avoid that problem It's a time consuming process But if you don't take the time to do it You will regret it You also want to keep in mind The positioning of your handle Because if I put the handle right in the middle That's not like we're going to draw it So I'm going to put the tillering tree Right where my hand would go And then draw from there And that's going to make the tiller As realistic as possible If we position the handle in the center Where my hand's actually not going to be The limbs will bend a little differently And we want it to bend the exact same way As it's going to be when we're shooting the bow So we can have Boom Really good high performance When you're exercising the limbs There's a point where you can feel it Just like kind of hits a wall Do not draw past that wall Because that's where it wants to break 20 to 30 draws is normally sufficient To get the wood to forget the old memory And remember now the new memory Which is the most recent wood you took off the limb Let's keep on tillering The last little while of tillering will take a while So I'll show you about 2 hours of work In about 20 seconds I've got the tiller to where I like it I think it's looking really good Our next step is to shape the handle And our knocking points Both of these are pretty much 100% personal preference One thing to watch out for is If you decide to actually cut an arrow rest in Don't cut it in very far And never cut it in past center When you're using a wood bow One option is to just shoot it right off your hand I like an arrow rest if I can put it in there If I feel like I have enough wood Since we added another piece of wood to make it thicker And this handle's not bending We should be good to go ahead and cut a small arrow rest in And then the knocking points I tend to like to round my bottom knock over On the top I like to make it pointy That just makes it really quick and easy To identify what's the top of the bow And what's the bottom of the bow So I'm getting so excited Because we're so close to shooting this bow The last thing after that I'm going to do Is I'm going to paint it and stain it Again, personal preference For all of that from here on out But it is definitely time to finish this up I can't wait to see how it shoots and how fast it goes So without further ado Let's do this Now that kind of even impressed me If you saw any of my hunting videos earlier this year All of that was with a 150 feet per second bow 8 feet per second faster Off the shelf board bow That's pretty crazy I'm telling you This fiberglass tape backing Is like the biggest secret in bow making And if you guys need a bow string Head over to the website Pick one up That's a good way to support me And this YouTube channel As well as supporting you Giving you guys a very high quality bow string Go out, make a bow, have some fun Stay positive See you guys on the next one Thanks for watching