The Bow I Wish I Found Years Ago

in the last video we finished this natural recurve Osage bamboo bow in today's video we're going to take my personal mountain bow and convert it into something even better this bow isn't without flaws so what we're doing today is making this as good as we possibly can then as some of you know I switched to shooting left-handed so right-handed bows aren't much use to me anymore so I'll sell this one on my website if any of you guys are interested welcome to the finale episode 6 of Bows Reimagined [Music] [Music] i'd like to thank Element for sponsoring today's video the best electrolyte drink that you could possibly have it's not only delicious it replenishes you as you get dehydrated or even better than that before you get dehydrated proactively take this and you will have so much more steady energy throughout the day you see when you rehydrate you don't only need water you need to replenish your salt your magnesium and your potassium and their perfect blend has 1,000 mg of sodium 200 mg of potassium and 60 mg of magnesium but in my words you feel good longer when you have Element i have these every single day i've been a customer for 4 years they've been a sponsor of this channel for over a year now and I stand by their product i have it every day at the workshop when I come in to work I have my coffee and then I have Element this helps me replenish from the dehydration that comes from coffee sometimes so whether you're at the gym lifting weights whether you're going on a run going on a hike or just going to work trying to get more energy and stay hydrated Element will help you out so go to drinkelement.com/cramer to get their sampler pack with any purchase that allows you to try out your next flavor with zero commitment and if you're already a customer feel free to use my link then you just get those extra eight to use yourself or give to a salty friend with that said you've got to go try Element thanks Element for sponsoring today's video don't get me wrong this bow is awesome as it is but there's a few visual things I can fix on it the first thing is that I tried out a brand new finish but it's rubbing off it didn't work out as good as I thought it would so we need to strip it secondly the original limbs I made for this riser ended up being a lower draw weight than I wanted for hunting season so I added different limbs to achieve a heavier draw weight but I wanted to practice and shoot it as quick as possible so I didn't match up the limbs to the riser as good as it could be so performance-wise nothing wrong aesthetically if I match that up it'll look much better and just drop the draw weight two or three lbs additionally the tip overlays could just use a tiny bit of work to make them look better and besides that it is pretty solid and ready to go so we'll build that quickly let's do a shooting session with it because it's so fun i'll test the speed for you as well this bow design is special to me and I think you're going to like it too so first things first we need to match the limbs to the riser we'll do that by taking the bow string off of it and then matching it up on the belt sander [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey hey hey [Music] beautiful [Music] [Applause] [Music] got an arrow speed test with a 373 grain arrow our bow is 37 lb so that's 10 grains per pound of draw weight i do have beaver string silencers on the bow so that's going to reduce the speed by 4 to 6 feet per second based on my previous test and it's a D97 string not a fast light string we could increase the speed by about 10 to 12 ft per second if we were trying to max out there this is why this bow design is so cool because of the smooth and the speed we hit between 175 and 178 ft per second with a 10 grains per pound arrow now that's D97 and beaver so you go a fast flight string without the beaver you're talking about 190 ft per second at a 35lb bow i bet with this design a 40lb bow would be really close to that 200 f feet per second with 10 grains per pound of arrow that's cool not only that it feels pretty accurate to shoot with before we go to the property here's a couple features about this bow that are interesting i used Wenge wood which is a pretty pricey exotic wood but I love the dark contrast it brings additionally the wood is really dense and really heavy adding more weight to the handle absorbing more vibration making it feel smoother when you shoot it on this one I did vertical laminations and a horizontal lamination the horizontal laminations bamboo the vertical lamination is split half and half but it's maple and phenolic what I mean by split half and half is on one side of the bamboo it's on one side of the bow on the other side of the bamboo it's on the other side so on the forward side of the bamboo it's on the arrow shelf side and on the other side of the bamboo it's on the opposite of the arrow shelf side adding a lot of character this type of riser i filmed it and made a whole video on it but it takes a bunch of different glue ups and a lot of precision to get that right but when you get it right it's a really cool look it just takes three times the amount of time as a normal riser on the limbs I used ka wood as the wedge and then two pieces of bamboo all the way down with 40 thou fiberglass the tip overlays are maple and fiberglass i am so pleased with this bow and part of that is because this one is different than the other ones the other ones were a bunch of prototypes that I've done in this series so far where this one was like the finale of all the prototypes this is the one I was using for myself it's one of the best designs out of the 70 80 combinations I tried let's go shoot it as mentioned this is episode 6 of Bows Reimagined where I'm taking a bow refinishing it or finishing it for the first time and selling it or giving it away and you may be wondering Kramer why are you getting rid of all your bows well there's two reasons I'm getting rid of my bows actually three reasons the first is recently I switched from shooting right-handed to left-handed due to eye dominance and I found that I'm much more accurate left-handed so I have a bunch of right-handed bows that I'm not going to shoot and through that process I had the realization I have so many bows here that are dying that are going to just sit here and gather dust now because I've been making bows for 15 years it's fun to keep different ones from the past and to look back on them and especially making videos when I do a call back to a past bow I can grab it off the wall and shoot it with a video to get B-roll but I had this realization that's not worth keeping all of this around if I can either sell it or give it away then somebody can actually use it who would be able to enjoy it and treasure it more than it collecting dust and the third reason is because I want to make a little extra money and so if I could sell some of these that'd be nice okay here's a couple more back up the hill it's better than I thought it'd be you get lucky sometimes i appreciate you watching thank you so much my name's Kramer Ammons it is an honor to make videos and I am pleased and blessed that you are here watching it if you need a bow let me know if you need archery gear check the description because I've got affiliate links to my favorite companies including the archery company I started and sold to my brother Shatterproof Archery all in the description i can help you out get targets help you out get arrows bows bow strings the best bow strings in the world check the description below for all of that stuff god bless you guys i will see you soon well there you have it one of my all-time favorite bow designs one of my all-time favorite bows i got nothing more to say today