How to Make a Vinyl Backed PVC Pipe Bow With Folded Recurve Tips

Hey fellow backyard boyers, Nick here. Today I'm going to show you how I made this 35 pound bow with folded recurve tips. I'm starting out with a four foot length of schedule 40 furniture grade pipe, though you could use regular white pipe for this as well. I've measured and marked the center of the handle two inches on either side and then an additional mark six inches from both ends. I'm using an adjustable flattening jig set to three quarters of an inch for tapering the limbs of the bow, though you could also use a two by four with three quarter inch tall spacers. Next I have a simple heating trough which is just a piece of cardboard with some aluminum foil to reflect the heat and make it more efficient. The heating trough helps retain heat and it allows you to not only work faster but also work in cold temperatures when just using a heat gun by itself won't work efficiently. I carefully heat the pipe from the center of the handle down to the end and I do that for about five minutes or until the pipe is very soft and pliable. I then take it out of the heating trough, center it on the jig and then place the top part of the jig right at the center of the bow. And after cooling for about three minutes the limb is finished. And here you can see the even taper going thick from the handle and down to thin at the tip. I start heating my second limb. Now that the second limb is tapered I take it back to the heat gun and heat up the four inch handle section making sure to heat an inch beyond the marks so that when we shape the handle there aren't any hard creases. Once the handle is returned around I place it onto a flat surface and then start squishing it sideways so that I have a nice comfortable handle that fits the hand. Once it starts to set the handle is pretty much finished. You can see it fits the hand nicely at this point. Next I work on shaping the folded recurve tips. I start by gently heating the front and back of the pipe making sure that I don't heat up the sides because they could crack. Once the pipe starts puffing up I use gloved hands to fold the pipe over and press it down into shape. Once I've got the crease down to about four inches long I heat it up a final time and put in my recurve. Once that's done I repeat it on the other side so that both tips match. I go back to the heat gun and gently heat up the fade outs so that I can give the bow just a little bit of reflex. Now that the bow has about four inches of reflex I take it back to the heat gun again and gently heat up the front and back of each limb so that I can give it a nice gentle curve. This slight bit of deflex will help cut handshot and make the bow a lot smoother to draw and shoot. After shaping the bow will drop back down to about a three inch reflex. Then I use an eighth inch rat tail file to file nocks or string grooves into the tips of the bow. Then I fit the bow with a temporary paracord string so I can test the brace height and how the bow draws. Now that I'm happy with it I finish up the tip. Now it's time to apply a vinyl backing. I'm using an automotive vinyl wrap with a leather pattern and this is not only for looks but to help protect the back of the bow from cuts and scrapes. So I start by applying a strip down in the middle of the handle and then bring it out to the tips. Once I've smoothed it down I use a heat gun to set the adhesive and make sure there aren't any air bubbles. Once I've applied the vinyl to the other bow limb I trace out a three and a half by five and a half inch rectangle onto a piece of leather for the handle wrap. I use a pen to mark my lacing holes a quarter of an inch apart and then I cut my handle out using a pair of shears. I like using these because it gives a nice clean finished edge. Once it's cut out I use a leather punch to punch all of my holes so that I can start lacing up the handle. I fold over about a quarter of an inch of the top of the wrap so that two of the holes line up. That way when I start lacing I'm lacing through two holes of leather to start with. Once I've tightened it up I have a nice looking wrap. I continue lacing and then fold up the last quarter inch of the handle. Once the bottom is laced and tied a couple of times to secure it I trim off the loose edges with a knife and the handle's finished. Here's the bow all finished up. I hope you enjoyed building this along with me today. If you enjoyed this video be sure to check out my channel for others like it. And I've also written several books on different topics including bow making and I'll leave a link to those in the description below. If you'd like to see a longer video of me shooting this bow I'll include a link to my second channel where I did a full shooting review of this bow. So here it is. As always thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time. Bye!