BUILDING A SMALL BUT FAST BOW!

I recently got a custom bow inquiry and they said that they cracked the code on speed. Of course, that piqued my interest. So, we're building that bow [Music] today. So, Jake's been working on this design for a while. I have all of his plans and all the information. We just need to build it now. After talking to him on the phone and getting all the details finalized, I've been working on it behind the scenes a little bit. And to build a fully fully custom bow like this, something where I got to build the forms and everything from the start. I have zero jigs, it takes a little bit of guesswork. So, what I plan into the process is to build a prototype bow first that I don't expect to be perfect and then I'll build the customer's bow second. And I've been working on the prototype and here it is. Now, this has taught me many things about this bow and a couple little tweaks I need to do, but during our conversation, I had to be clear about a couple things. The only adjustment I think I would do is change that riser angle slightly. Um, uh, just so that that wouldn't be a failure point. But besides that, this design looks fantastic. I'll write up a quote here for you. And the only thing I can't do is guarantee the exact performance just cuz I've never built this exact bow. But I'll make it as good as possible and I think you'll really like it. That that would be fantastic. I'm looking forward to it. And so with everybody on the same page, it's time to build the bow. Now the riser is going to be a mix of blue phenolic and curly maple. He wanted a light colored wood with laminations of blue. So that's going to look pretty cool. And I've already glued up some of the limbs. So, they're these super short curved limbs. You see the bow unstrung is right about at 45 in. Also, the draw length is 26 1/2 in and the draw weight is 40 lb. The goal of this bow is speed. So, our limbs are going to be fairly thin. We've got a couple problems that this presents. The first problem we have is limb stability. Thin limbs with a really far dramatic reflex can cause limb twist much easier. In other words, artillery needs to be dialed. One of the options was to add a stable core in here to help prevent that limb twist, but then that can reduce speed as well. So, I didn't want to do that. So, rather than the stable core, we're just going to nail the tillering, which is why I wanted to do this first bow to see if I think I could do that. Also, the angle off the riser, I had to slightly adjust because as you see the bow unstrung here, we want the limb tips to be pretty close to the back of this handle. And originally, I had to adjust this riser four different times to change the angle and reput the limbs on, take out the pins, redo the hardware, do that over and over again until I'm getting it more dialed. The third thing is draw weight. When you do a brand new design, you have to guess like how uh how thick should each piece of bamboo be. Thankfully, with this prototype, I was within 5 lbs of the draw weight we need on the finished one. So, I think on the second glue up, I nailed it. So to glue the limbs up, I used a 6in bamboo wedge. This shorter wedge will fit with the shorter limbs. I have two pieces of bamboo and two pieces of fiberglass. This is five pieces total laminated together. Now that we have the limbs glued up, we need to make the riser and then we can match everything together. I can't guarantee that this will be the fastest bow ever, but based on the style and the design, and for a 26-in drawing, I think this could be a really fast bow. So, I'm excited to test the speed once we get it all finished. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Okay, so I intentionally took three times roughly the amount of time to attach the limbs. The reason is with this shape, we lose so much stability and with the limbs being thin. So if there's any tweak of it being off now, once we taper the limbs, it's a disaster. But I do have to say it's looking good. I think I nailed it. I was just taking a look over the plans to figure out how much I needed to cut off of the the um the length of the limbs. In Jake's drawings, he has 44.82 in from here to here. And right now, it's at 47 in. But what you'll notice is that it's a little high. So, this distance from here to here needs to be less than 2 in for max speed based on the designs I've tested. So, by reducing that closer to that 44 in, it indeed will be within that 2 in. And we can measure the difference. This would create a working bow, but I don't think it would be as good. So, we're at 3 and 1/4 in there. Now, if we drop this down to the new marks I made, we're at one right at 2 in. We can make it the short cuz we're only doing a 26 and 1/2 inch draw length. This short of a bow would be tough to get back to 29 1/2 at my draw length. So with the marks marked, I will cut it down. We'll get the taper correct, glue on tip overlays, and then once the tip overlays are on, it's going to be shaping the handle and tillering and not screwing anything up. With any project, I've noticed that the longer you spend on it, the less chance that you're going to make a silly mistake. And the shorter sections of time you build, the less chance you'll make a big mistake. So, if I build for 8, 10, 12 hours, those last 3 or 4 hours, my mistakes generally go up. But if I do a 2 hours on the bow, take a break for a while, come back two hours on the bow, I have a sharper mind to not make mistakes. [Music] Heat. Heat. I have to admit I have filmed less on this bow build than nearly any bow build I've ever done because there has not been one single thing that's been easy about building this bow with a really short riser. I was happy to use lots of phenolic cuz that's going to strengthen it. But the downside to that is that material is so hard on tools it tears up. saw blades and sandpaper. And I knew from the start when I committed to building this bow that it was going to be difficult. And I am super glad I did it. I started with building a form. Then I glued up two limbs on that form. I matched those limbs to a prototype riser. This is when I learned that the biggest problem was going to be the instability in the limbs. And that's where I learned that my angle was slightly wrong on the riser and my limbs needed to be slightly wider than the original half inch plan. Half inch was so thin that it was wavering back and forth. So with the finished limbs on this other bow, it's about 6/10 of an inch. What's 665 out of a thousand? And after all of that, this is what we get. Now it's not finished. I want to shoot it and do a speed test. Make sure everything's dialed as far as tillering goes before I finish it. then we'll give you a final reveal. But this thing is so slick and so unique. I'm really excited for it. I have not shot this yet. And what I've done is I put a white mark on the arrow here so that as I shoot it, I know when to stop drawing it back so I don't draw it beyond that 26 and 1/2 in draw length. I think it'll draw to about 28 28 and 1/2 before it's like fully stacking. So, it's nice that there's a little bit of room with it, but I don't want to draw it to that distance. The archer who will be shooting this is three under. They shoot three under or sometimes they'll string walk. This bow is not going to be great for string walking cuz it's so small, but I tillered it for a little bit lower so that it would shoot best for three under. So, okay, let's take a shot. See what happens. There's not a lot of vibration. That's kind of That's kind of cool. Okay, I want to round over right here. Um, just a reminder, I need to round that part of the handle before I finish it. So, let's do a speed test. It's hard to compare speed since I'm doing a 26 and 1/2 in draw length versus a lot versus a lot of speed test are at a 28 in draw length. More draw length at the same poundage will be faster than a shorter draw length at the same poundage. So a 26-in draw length at So a 26 in So a 26 inch draw length at 40 lbs will be a slower arrow than a 28 inch draw length at 40 lb. Let's just shoot [Music] it. 400 grain arrow 178. And I short drew it. Didn't quite get to the mark. How's it going? Good. How are you? Oh, yeah. So, I wonder if a shorter arrow at the same weight actually goes faster than a longer arrow at the same weight. the 90s. This bow is shooting much smoother than I thought. It's also a fast bow, but I don't know how to do the conversions or what's typical for a shorter draw length. Additionally, I'm trying to eyeball how far is 26 in back and I'm not super accurate with it, but my best guess 10 grains per pound of arrow and between 180 190 ft per second and then probably slightly over 200 feet per second with a lighter arrow. a lot of factors that go into play. So, I'm definitely gonna have to let Jake test it out himself. With that, I'm gonna finish it and give you the final reveal right now. [Music] All right, here it is. And I think it looks pretty cool. It's different than anything I've done before. I've never used blue phenolic. Total different look. Here are a couple notes for Jake. I went with white and blue phenolic and then the maple on the tip overlays. I thought that added a cool little contrast there. And it kind of ties in the white of the riding for the 40lb bow at 26 in in with a 47in AMO. Now, the reason it's a 47in AMO is because AMO is measured along the contour of the bow when it's unstrung. So, it is 44 in from tip to tip as the crow flies or through a straight line. But over the contour, it's 47, which would give you down to your 44 inch bow string, which works good for this style. Also, there's some character, a dark spot here on the back side of the riser. And at first, I thought it would I thought I burned it with a orbital sander from um having too high of speed with worn out sandpaper. So, I replaced the sandpaper and it was still there. And then I used a scraper and I was like, "Oh, wait a second. If you look real closely, this is the character of the wood of the curly maple here, and it's not actually a burn mark. I added felt between the limbs and the riser, and then also felt on the underside of the bolts for some silencing. I did a blue and white bow string. I thought that tied in with the whole theme of the colors of this bow. I would not draw this beyond that 27 in draw length. Um, I did test it out to 28 in. So, I drew it an inch and a half beyond the finished draw length that you're going to be shooting because I always do that to make sure that the bow's strong enough beyond what it's going to be shooting at. But if someone has a 29 in draw length, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that they shoot this. That's why when I'm shooting it, I'm stopping, you know, way early close to the chin. So, I hope Jake likes this as much as I enjoyed building it. That's it for this video. See you guys on the next one. Thanks for watching.