Best Wood For Making Bows???

I think we're live. What's up guys? Welcome back to the cave. This evening we're gonna hang out, we're gonna talk about bow making, bow woods, and anything you have. It looks like we've got a few people already on. If you guys are on you can go ahead and ask questions, but first I wanted to just start off talking about some bow woods because I get a ton of questions about bow woods. Now the main question I get is can I use a specific type of bow for a bow wood like spruce or pine or oak or maple or red cedar or you know on and on and on and on. There's a lot of people overseas who ask me questions about bow woods and they'll ask questions and I have no clue even what the wood is. So I'm going to give some basic general rules that help you maybe discern or determine yourself what a good bow wood would be. Now my opinion if you've seen any of the Wheel Up Bow series is that you can make a bow out of anything. You know we've made a bow out of a wood, we've made a bow out of what was the other one? Oh it is duct tape. We use duct tape to make a bow and I've got some coming up on that but you can make a bow out of anything but the harder the wood you have, the longer the bow will last and let me show you that poplar bow I made. I've had a lot of people say like that's a terrible choice of wood and the truth is it's not the best choice of wood but it's a really cheap choice and I can make a bow out of it and this is the difference. So this is the poplar bow. You can see how it how it comes up like this. It used to be flat but since it's a really light soft wood it has string fall is what it's called or it has a little set in it and so the limbs don't hold its original form which loses some poundage over time. If you have a bow more like the Ipe bamboo back bow it's going to hold its form pretty much forever. Every bow will lose a little bit but that's the biggest difference and lighter woods to are not lighter softer woods to harder woods. So if you can just choose a harder wood and then put some kind of bow backing on it that's going to work out well for you. Let's see who's on. Steve used pine on your first one. Me too. It's not you can still make a decent bow out of it. Pine spruce will they bow? Yes they will bow. I don't never use spruce. I'm pretty sure it's pretty soft wood but it's going to be the same as pine. What I would do the best is get the biggest backing you can get even if it's like the fiberglass tape or whatever you end up using. Use the thickest bow backing possible and that'll help you out a little bit but there is limits to that soft kind of wood. Hey Clayton. Maple hickory and Osage. Yes great recommendations all of those fantastic fantastic bow woods. There's so many really good woods out there and uh if you're doing that you're gonna you're gonna succeed for sure. How long does a poplar bow last? Great question. I've got it right here. I don't I made this two months ago I think and uh we're still holding up so I mean it's not very heavy poundage but it still holds up it still works. Um I think the biggest thing with how long a bow is gonna last is gonna be your tiller depending on how good you can tiller. Like that is more important than anything and I didn't realize this when I started making bows. I just would get impatient in the tillering process and just take the bow down and go shoot it but tillering is the most important thing. Every bow that's broken for me is basically because the tiller's bad and what I mean by bad is both limbs are bending equally or evenly. If you can get both limbs to bend equally and evenly you're gonna be golden but it's worth taking time taking hours whatever you need to take in order to get the tiller right because if you don't get the tiller right the bow's gonna break. So I would rather have a pine bow with a really good tiller than an Osage bow with a crappy tiller I think. I might rather have the Osage bow with a crappy tiller and then retiller it that's what I'd prefer. Uh Daniel your email about the cracked handle I haven't seen it. I have somebody I have somebody who helps me respond to emails because I get so many of them so I'm gonna try to answer your questions here instead of on email if it's about bow making. Compressing the fiberglass tape an ace bandage will work really well actually on that. What you can do is you can wrap your fiberglass tape in some like saran wrap, wax paper, something like that so that your ace bandage doesn't get um actually not saran wrap that won't work. The if it depends what kind of glue you're using if you're using wood glue you need air to to make it dry and so you can use like an ace bandage wrap it if you're using some kind of epoxy then it's okay to wrap it in saran wrap and then wrap it with anything after that. But yes you can definitely wrap it on you can definitely wrap the fiberglass tape on and that's a good idea especially if you have wood that has a crown on it that's not completely flat. Had any luck with ash from the dude what's up man um I've never used ash I've heard fantastic things about it I plan to use ash in the future I've heard it's a good bow wood but I've never personally have used it. Johnny says tillering is very important I couldn't agree more. Oh can you steam the softer wood and change the shape? Yes you can and this is something that's super fun and this is something you can explore like you can get a pvc pipe and then get some tin foil and put it over top of a pot and put part of the bow in it or the full bow in it and steam it or another good option if you're just gonna do a limb tips a limb tip lots of woods you can actually get away with just boiling it put it actually in the water boil it for a couple minutes and then you can shape the wood like actually pretty crazy. Sinew and horn I like those for bows I think it'd be a dream for me to make a horn bow I never have and I know it I know just materials alone can cost tons and tons of money I've talked to a guy another youtuber about it who makes them and it's insane about how he said like expect to spend three to four thousand dollars or something for like four bows and I was like oh my goodness and then it takes like a two to three year process of actually making it because of drying and curing time it's insane. Wood pigeon outdoors I do plan on doing the the hockey stick idea I love that he said he's a hockey stick for the willow bow series I think that's fantastic and I think it would work really well um a bow out of layers of thin wood glued together I've never done that make it more durable I would imagine it makes it more durable like here do you mind my wife's helping me back here do you mind grabbing a piece of bamboo and a piece of ipe um what happens when you glue up bamboo and ipe is it really really hardens it up a lot and so I wonder if that would make it harder because I have this um it feels like this this this not glued together would be extremely difficult here's a piece of bamboo so a thick piece of bamboo and you pick like this piece of bamboo is still really thick and it just like bends extremely easily and then if you take just a normal piece of ipe you can bend it pretty easily as well but if these were glued together I couldn't move it at all so I know it really makes it a lot more rigid I wonder if that would work if you laminated like I don't know six pieces of thank you if you laminated like six pieces of pine together or something I wonder I don't know it might be worth a shot oh what's up Brad thank you oak for a bow yes oak's a great option um for so oak is in hardware stores a lot for people normally they have like pine spruce and oak or something sometimes there's maple but if you're doing a hardware store bow build I would go for red oak cedar you can get away with cedar pretty good red cedar and then also maple those are the three top choices for a hardware store board bow Aaron can I make a crossbow Aaron Aaron Mullins I believe Aaron has videos on YouTube and he made a bow I'm pretty sure that's you man uh good video also um can I make a crossbow very possibly I've I have more ideas and you guys have some of the best ideas more than I can man than I can do right now but I like to use the word yet more than I can do yet so maybe in the future for sure Julian have I ever made a bow from a single piece of wood yes I have actually I'm gonna grab yes no can you can you go in that door and open the door and it's pretty right out of osage is what I normally make a bow out of a single piece of wood I have a piece of osage here and I'll show you um that's how I actually started in bow making is making self bows all you guys are a lot of you guys I'm sure know Clay Hayes I was like a baby when he started posting videos and I learned most of my stuff from him and I started reading some archery books but what I ended up doing we're back so this is what I start making uh self bows out of and I uh I went and cut one of these down when I was young honeysuckle locust or black locust I believe that would work really good um I've never done it though I don't have experiential knowledge on that hockey stick are those good for bows we're gonna find out palette would take work uh to take a to make a takedown bow from Jeffrey Jeffrey I think it would um I would look for an oak palette they're rare but you can find them um you could do one out of pine the nice thing about it is like you just can have fun in the shop with it and then if you mess it up it's like no big deal why am I holding this it's like uh no big it's like no big deal at all and it's and it's fun I would get a two by four or something if you're like scared to break uh good material and just start working it and learn how to build on something really cheap and then um and then after you learn something really cheap it's much easier to make something with a nicer bow wood the best thing I've ever done to improve my bow making is break bows on purpose I literally like like with that duct tape bow you saw that I pulled that down one of my ife maple bows I pulled it and I uh not ife maple ife bamboo bows I pulled it back to 40 inches as well and it didn't break and it slowly slowly started to crack but that shows you the limits of the wood and then you kind of get a feel for it and that helps so much would leather work as a bow backing yes it would very similar basically the same as rawhide rawhide is a very popular bow backing and people swear that it's the best bow backing there is can I can I make a repeating bow like I I can't I don't know how he says it um I'm not German but no I don't know if I can he just came out with his uh um I think they manufactured that that's pretty crazy um for the Jeffrey for the pallet wood bow would you need a backing for it I'd go ahead and put one on the real answer is no you shouldn't if you can chase a growth ring but honestly I'd put it on just for safety it makes it it just makes me feel a lot better to know that it's not gonna blow up in my face I would put one on as my answer um heat treating whitewood to make it stronger I don't know I've I've never done it I have no clue if it would make it stronger I have wondered like if you've seen people like vacuum in a vacuum uh not a vacuum but they pull a vacuum in a tube uh in order to stabilize wood people do this for wood pens and stuff um big dip bow companies he does this for his risers I wondered if you did that for an entire bow or something like with whitewood how much stronger that would make it but uh Jordan uh make a bow like backyard bowyer um out of PVC I've considered that and I've like he did PVC bow so well I never got into him which kind of doesn't make sense but like he's taught him so well that it's like I could just go learn about it but I have had such a desire to just like try things that I haven't seen people do much so that's why I haven't gotten to PVC bows yet but I've heard some great things about them can you reinforce uh your bow with drywall tape yes you can I I've done that I had a bow that had a crack in the back of it because I didn't chase the growth ring right or whatever it was and so I went ahead and put fiberglass tape on the back of it and I fixed it or you could just use duct tape people hate me for that it worked though what length was your bow string for poplar wood bow this is a great question I have no clue what length it is but um I will tell you for a long bow get a bow string that is three inches less than the length of the longbow and when you're measuring the longbow go from the back of the knock to the back of the knock that's how I measure long bows and then three inches less for a long bow and then if you have a recurve bow it's four inches less it's a question I get a lot and that'll be uh pretty much dead on and then if you're getting a string from me or anybody else what will happen is if it's slightly off you can just twist it up a little bit and that'll make the string a little shorter or you can untwist the string a little bit that will make it a little longer and that'll help you uh help you know what length of a bow out of cedar yes you can um clay haze did a red cedar bow build not too long ago um I think that's a pretty good one if you're looking to make one out of cedar the steps are going to be pretty similar to any other bow though what wood would I use for a first time self bow I would use what you have access to if you have access to like if you're in the midwest and you have access to an Osage orange tree there's just rows of Osage orange and people will just like give you the wood if you ask them go get that that's going to be phenomenal that's what I started with it's a fantastic bow wood if you have just access to a hardware store I would start off with oak maple or any other hardwood hardwood you can find um if you can't even find that I would just use any wood pine or anything because it's just so fun and you can pretty much use any type of wood I haven't found one wood one type of wood yet that I haven't been able to make some kind of bow out hmm Gabriel Gabriel a pvc uh flatten so I cut it in half heat it up flatten it out if that would work as a bow backing I imagine it would um I feel like I would want to thin it down I feel like it'd be too thick but I might have to try that if I do that as a bow backing what should I put on the belly hey thank you if I if I helped you make your first bow that's absolutely awesome that's the goal I get so pumped about bow making which kind of I don't know it kind of can feel silly but man shooting an arrow like you're shooting a weapon or a projectile through the air like I guess it might be a guy thing or something but it's just so fun like especially when you make it yourself hey Daniel um we can we can talk about that if you want to email me at contact at Kramer Ammons um I can give you all the details for that and we can get that worked out thanks so much Brad Harding um the your answer the answer to your question um what was your question must have beginner tools to start making bows let me show you something I can make a bow with these two tools yeah I can actually and I have um I made I started making bows in well I started when I was like 14 in my parents house but I only made like one a year and then when I got married five years ago moved into an apartment and I was sitting on the floor of the apartment with these two things on uh rasping away at some uh Osage Orange that I had cut down and like it's not fun like on I mean it was actually super fun for me but like if you enjoy rasping for 20 hours you you can do that just make sure your wife's not home and make sure you have a good vacuum to clean it up Steve that'd be awesome if you can do that bushcraft camps so fun what size of stave would be good this is a question I get all the time um what's your draw length uh your draw length times two plus the handle section so for example I use it I use an eight inch handle section and so if my drawing is 30 inches long I'm going to time that by two so 60 inches and then plus the eight inch handle section that's 68 inches so for me a 68 inch bow is pretty ideal and that's the type of bow that's going to shoot really smooth for you now if I want a faster bow I can knock that down depending on the type of bow wood so I can get down to probably a 64 inch bow and get away with it the thing is the shorter the bow you get the less smooth of a shot you'll probably get and what that means is it becomes harder to even aim when you're shooting and so um you can get away with shorter bows I mean even if depends on the material like look at hornbows you've got like a two-foot bow it basically seems like that they're shooting but it gets harder to aim accurately with that um reddick about ash uh any ideas on how to do ash if you've had struggle with flap flat bows I would just change the design like I don't um I would just change it up maybe do a long bow pyramid style bow something like that I would just start experimenting with different designs and see what ended up working I personally haven't used ash so I can't really speak into that from experiential knowledge though Cody let's go you're doing the same thing in your garage with a filing set yes that's where it starts that's so fun Gary what's the best type of string to use that's a great question honestly my favorite is b55 if I'm using a bow I made myself the reason is it's such a smooth string to shoot it's so fun and pleasurable and here's the thing though like if you use a fast flight string that's completely fine and some people prefer that but the b55 string is so much more forgiving you'll lose five to ten pounds uh maybe up to 15 pounds of speed but I don't care for that 15 feet per second of speed when it comes to comfortability of shooting now if you have a bow that's like perfectly tillered or if you have a bow that's um a bow you did a fantastic job you may not feel a difference the other pro and con to a like a fast light string fast light strings are going to be louder because they don't stretch as much so it's going to make more noise in general when you shoot it than a b55 string now you have a dyneema 97 d97 now that is um a very good string as well that I'm actually doing some testing with right now and should have on the website as well but personally I like b55 that's my favorite what kind of adhesive would you use for a pvc backing anything that works with pvc what I guess well with maybe an epoxy I don't think like wood glue would work very good or anything like that I might try an epoxy I honestly would do ea40 myself um for that why one side longer than the other one are you talking about the bow I talked about because if I said one's longer than the other I misspoke so I'm not sure what you're saying there um have I ever made my own arrows Gary I haven't uh well I take that back I have but they were very survival-like I made them in the woods with kind of a survival bow and I you know just carved them with a pocket knife or whatever but I haven't made arrows to the extent of trying to make them extremely good I guess I also have done uh some dowel rods just from a hardware store grab some dowel rods and make some arrows out of that but I haven't really gotten into it very much ed uh plenty of fiberglass what does that seem to be woven fiberglass um ed yes woven fiberglass tape will look really good um I personally use it I've seen a lot of people use it I've used it on probably five or six bows and um as long as the fiberglass tape is thick enough you have enough layers on there I've never seen it fail literally never seen that part fail um you would pigeon outdoors you you tried to find the type on three wood glue um whatever they have in Canada whatever kind of wood glue I would just use that and then generally if you can just read on there and figure out which one's waterproof I prefer that because I like to use the bow outside and I just think um I like the extra strength of a waterproof but at the same time if you're gonna put a finish on it you may not need waterproof depending on what kind of finish you choose thanks Daniel that means a lot yes wood finishes that's a question I get all the time what kind of wood finish should you use or what kind of bow finish should you use uh I have a couple actually my favorite natural wood finish is true oil this stuff is gunstock oil this works extremely good um if you want a natural finish and then also polyurethane what you can do though here's the trick because I don't like a glossy finished bow um you can use use gloss no no no use flat polyurethane for the first four coats and then on your fifth coat um use gloss and it'll look really good and it won't be too too shiny if you need if you guys want to see any of this um in the link in the description of every single video I have like an amazon store and so I put all my woodworking tools all my bow finishes everything whatever it is I put it on that store so if I talk about something it's probably up there reddick thank you so much it means a lot um uh glue for fiberglass tape I just use uh wood glue I've heard some people using some kind of epoxy uh any kind of wood glue works really good uh that's all I have knowledge with thank you so much Olympus Julian avocado wood I've never heard of that that's fast well I've never heard of it being used as bow wood quick kind of rabbit trail real quick just for the fun of it one time I was doing some mission work in the jungle the amazon jungle in Peru and there what we were doing is we're carrying out some logs out of the jungle for the native people there so that they could build houses and these logs were out of almond wood and they were the densest heaviest thing I'm not kidding you like it'd be a four by four by eight foot like 400 pounds okay let's be realistic um 200 pounds maybe and it was so heavy that I I mean I couldn't carry myself we had two people to carry it we had to hike it a mile out of the jungle anyway my point is I've searched everywhere for for um almond wood and I can't find it and that's what they call it I don't know if it's the exact same if anybody knows of any almond wood I would love to get a hold of it to make a bow out of it Aaron should you make a video on your uh draw knife the answer is yes if you have a video idea go do it before you can think about it too much hey Richard uh do I have a bamboo uh uh Ipe bamboo back bow video I have two videos of making uh fast shooting Ipe bamboo back bows but today I started the filming process of making a how-to video on it and I'm gonna put that out hopefully on Thursday so Friday look for it because it normally takes a little longer than I want it to Mr. Taurus thank you so much that means a lot that I'm able to help you get into bows and bow making and anything like that that that just that makes me happy man can you push the button on there I think that shut off for a second but but guys we're gonna have to wrap it up at this point thank you so much for joining me it's been 30 minutes I think I'm gonna probably do these regularly and I'll probably move them to Sunday nights if that's okay with everybody um that'd be a great night for me great time to hang out bring your bow making questions we can hang out talk have a good time I really do appreciate all of you guys being here I'll see all of you guys on the next video