Hickory Bow

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KellyG
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Hickory Bow

#1 Post by KellyG » Mon Jun 04, 2012 11:16 am

Well my Osage recurve lifted a splinter so I have set it aside. I will come back to it later and back it and see if it wants to be a bow or not.

I started this one as a plan B bow for the swap I am in. If it works out It will be a hickory long bow. 67" from ttt. It will be about 1.5" wide from the fades until the last 10". It has straight taper from that point to the .5" tips.

Here is the stave with the back off.

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The back with cut to profile

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it is about .5" thick for now it will be thinned as I tiller of course.

Image

and an end to end view.

Image

Well lets just hope I can make a bow in just over a month.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#2 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Mon Jun 04, 2012 4:15 pm

I like the mottled look of the back of the bow Kelly. Is the back surface the outside of the tree immediately under the bark? I hope all goes well with this one. :biggrin:

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Re: Hickory Bow

#3 Post by rodlonq » Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:36 am

Looking forward to your progress Kelly.

Cheers........ Rod

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Re: Hickory Bow

#4 Post by KellyG » Thu Jun 07, 2012 2:17 pm

Jeff that is what that is. That is the great thing about white woods; remove the bark and there is your back. My first attempt at a bow was hickory and it did not make it. I feel real good about this one. I am going for simple just a hill or american style long bow.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#5 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Thu Jun 07, 2012 7:38 pm

It sure does look good and I hope it all turns out well mate.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#6 Post by Gringa Bows » Thu Jun 07, 2012 7:45 pm

Lookin good so far :biggrin:

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Re: Hickory Bow

#7 Post by KellyG » Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:48 am

Well I got it on the short sting that is about 17". Only about 11 more to go. It looks like I need to leave that fades alone and get the rest of the limb bending more.

Image

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Re: Hickory Bow

#8 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:58 am

KellyG wrote:It looks like I need to leave that fades alone and get the rest of the limb bending more.
I would certainly agree with that mate. :biggrin:

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Re: Hickory Bow

#9 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:50 am

Kelly,

My suggestion would be to equalise the amount of bend in each of the limbs where I have indicated with arrows, THEN start removing more wood outboard of the midpoint of the limbs to bring the tips around more and lessen the bending load closer to the dips.
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I have trued up the picture a bit to remove the cant in the original picture so the tiller is vertical.

When you have gotten a bit more whip into the outer limbs and they start to take a more rounded bending shape, you can move back to the inner limb and put a little more bend in there.

Your limb tips will only come back about 12 to 14 inches from their unbraced position at full draw, so you are about 2/3 there already. Putting more whip into the outer limb can bring them back another 2 to 3 inches and putting the last bit of bending into the inner limb will bring them around for the last bit.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

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Re: Hickory Bow

#10 Post by KellyG » Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:51 pm

Dennis La Varénne Thanks for the info. I will get some pic up of my progress. Before your advises. I was taking more scraps off the tips, a few of the mid and none off the fades it is looking better but not great.

Here is a pic of it braced.

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and here is just to show the string tracking.

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I will scrape some more off tomorrow.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#11 Post by KellyG » Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:38 am

Here it is at full draw about 45# at 28".

Image

Tell me what you think.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#12 Post by Bent Stick » Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:58 pm

I like the grain, looks good, hope it shoots as good as it looks
If your not having fun, your doing it for all the wrong reasons

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Re: Hickory Bow

#13 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:31 pm

Those tips certainly stayed pretty straight. :biggrin: Congrats on making another shooter mate.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#14 Post by KellyG » Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:26 pm

I have scrapped a bit more and am shooting it a bit. It has a little bit of hand shock but is quiet. I will look at it a some more later and might take a bit more off to see if it helps with the hand shock.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#15 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Thu Jun 21, 2012 4:10 pm

Kelly G,

Most of your limbs are still a bit on the stiff side mid-limb. You can see where the white arrows are pointing in your picture that almost half of your limbs have very little bend in them. They need to 'belly' out more at mid-limb so the tips are a bit more whippy.
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Your limbs should look a bit more like this second (slightly larger for clarity) picture where I have overdrawn them and changed their shape in Photoshop so you can compare a better shape to that which they already have. Your original limbs are still there behind the overdrawn limbs so you can compare shapes to see what you can aim for. Your limbs' side profile should look more rounded at full draw.
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As well, reduce the dimensions of your tips. Your close up picture shows them to be very blocky and massive. A lot of mass in the tips will always increase hand shock. You can safely reduce them to 3/8" wide and to almost spear points which will help a lot.

Next, if you have not done so already, make a string from one of the various fastflight materials. The non-stretch aspect of these string materials improves the transfer of stored limb energy to the arrow and less as wasted vibration coming through the limbs.

Since it was first invented, I have use fastflight strings and no other for all my very many selfbows without a single problem. All the old naturally occurring vegetable based string materials like hemp and linen have no stretch in them just like fastflight and they were used successfully for millennia. They just didn't have the durability of synthetics and were a bit heavier of course. In short, fastflight will NOT damage your bow if there is no existing damage.

Your bow is a good dense hardwood - HIckory. It is hard and dense enough not to crush from string loop compression using fastflight. I don't even re-inforce my loops to pad them out these days. My Hickory bows have no problems with it and I have quite a few now. Hickory is hard enough not even to suffer any kind of string marking through the nocks. You will be amazed at the drop in handshock from only this one change without reducing your limb-tip size.

But, for the longevity of your bow and to get good value from all your hard work, I would still advise continuing with whipping your limbs more as well as reducing your tips. You will lose some draw weight, but you can then simply cut a second set of nocks about one inch further in from the first pair and use them. That will bring your draw weight up again by 3 or 4 pounds. If they work OK, then you can dock the original nocks off. Your bow is long enough to tolerate that.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#16 Post by KellyG » Sun Jun 24, 2012 1:19 pm

Dennis La Varénne,

thanks I have scraped on it some more. I will get some pics up later. The little scraping it did reduced the hand shock in itself. The Tips will get reduced when I finish the bow. I am going to heat it up once I get the tiller better and add a little reflex and if it is still light I will pike it a bit.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#17 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Sun Jun 24, 2012 6:46 pm

KellyG,

Keep up posted on your progress. It not only teaches you but everybody else as well. Piking and reducing the tips will reduce hanshock even more. In regard to heating some reflex into your limbs, don't be surprised if it a lot of it comes out pretty quickly within a few shots. I have trodden that track myself and mostly, you lose much of what you put in.

The best I have ever managed was to get a bow which remained almost straight (about half an inch of string follow) which was a considerable benefit over the horrible amount of string follow which the bow had already taken - around the 3 inch mark as I remember. I have since given this bow away to somebody else, so I don't know its state now.

There is one way in which anybody can keep a good deal of reflex in almost any bow and that is to incorporate either a Penobscot cantilever or the Eskimo cable backing system, both of which operate on a similar mechanical principle. Try googling Penobscot bows or Cable-backed bows. The Penobscot Indians in the Maine area of the north eastern United States were using this remarkably advanced system at the time of European settlement, so who knows how long they were using it previously. I seem to remember that Grahame Amy posted a thread on a cable backed bow he built some years ago, so you could also do an Ozbow search on his name for all his posts.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#18 Post by KellyG » Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:44 am

I scraped a bit more on the bow. In this pic the bottom limb looks really good and the top is closer then before.
Image

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Re: Hickory Bow

#19 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:51 am

Yeah mate that top limb is still stiff alright.

Jeff

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Re: Hickory Bow

#20 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:29 pm

KellyG,

The upper limb is still FAR too stiff in the outer half. It is almost straight. The bottom limb is much better. The highest point of the bend in the lower limb is at mid-limb as it should be. But the upper limb has its high point inboard of the mid-limb which will concentrate too much bending load into too short an area of limb.

Have another look at your picture below. Where I have drawn the red line is the ONLY place you need to do any scraping now. My guess is that your bow has a lot of positive tiller in the upper limb - far too much, because I can see in my enlarged version of your picture that your riser it starting to lean forward when I should be vertical.
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Positive tiller in a bow should not really exceed 2mm except in exceptional circumstances. For the average shooter, 2mm is quite sufficient to cause both limb tips to move forward and backward at the same time, so that both limb tips reach the end of their power stroke at exactly the same time. This will also remove handshock.

I have also drawn a yellow vertical plumb line from your upper string nock. You can see that your upper nock is at least one inch further back than your lower nock. They should be on the same vertical line. You can also see how much more bend you have put into the inner half of the upper limb compared to your lower limb when you compare the area occupied by the pale blue tint I have applied which is all the bent area which your limbs occupy at full draw. Those two areas should be almost identical.

The only way to correct this is as follows. It will lose a lot of draw weight unfortunately -
1. Put more bend into the upper outer limb. The upper limb will still have more bend because it is already much weaker than the lower limb.
2. Scrape the lower limb along its full length so that both string nocks align in the same plane and the shape of the bends matches.
3. Measure the draw weight and re-cut new string nocks about an inch further in from the old ones to bring the draw weight up again. DO NOT discard the original nocks until you know you have a reasonable draw weight again.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#21 Post by KellyG » Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:29 pm

Dennis La Varénne,

Thanks for the info. I understand completely get the the outer 3rd of the top limb bending more. I have worked on that a bit. I did not notice the difference in tips thanks for pointing that out.

Here is where she is after few scraps today.

Image

It is not much difference but it is a little better.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#22 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:37 pm

Yeah I can see a little difference Kelly but it needs more. :biggrin:

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Re: Hickory Bow

#23 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Tue Jun 26, 2012 4:35 pm

KellyG,

You are almost there. The tip nocks align vertically now and the shape of the upper limb is MUCH better. It is much more obvious in your picture how much closer to symmetrical the two areas (formerly pale blue) are under the limbs.

Like Jeff said above, there is just a bit more to do in the area I have marked again in red. You are at the most critical stage now and you will not need to take much off at all to get it spot on. If the bow turns out lighter than you originally intended, you have enough length and width in this bow to recut your string nocks an inch further in from each end and bump the draw weight up a bit again without affecting the tiller shape or overloading the bow.

There will always be some string follow in a Hickory bow, but that is usual. Hickory is brilliant in resisting tension, but not as good in resisting compression. Let us know how much string follow the limbs have when the bow is rested when you can. Anything less than 1 1/2 inches is good in a selfbow, but more is not bad either.
IMG_4067_2.jpg
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Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#24 Post by KellyG » Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:12 pm

the string follow is not bad even now it is only about an 1" or less. But I did take set it is about 3" in both limbs but I am going to try and heat treat the belly and add some reflex as I do and see if it holds it. Then I will pike the bow just to see where it is at. That is the plan for now after I get that top limb bending just a bit more.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#25 Post by KellyG » Wed Jun 27, 2012 12:39 pm

closer yet

Image

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Re: Hickory Bow

#26 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Wed Jun 27, 2012 12:58 pm

I can still see that stiff section in the top limb mate.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#27 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Wed Jun 27, 2012 2:19 pm

It still needs a little more of the same in the same area.

This picture (IMG_4069) has been taken with the camera somewhat to the left of the bow with you standing slightly quartering on which makes the upper limb look worse than it actually is. If you can, try to get your pics with the bow exactly in line with the camera. Your best positioned picture so far is IMG_4067 above. If you can repeat that position, it will be good.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#28 Post by KellyG » Thu Jun 28, 2012 11:39 am

well it is getting better I dont know if it is from the same angle though. I enlist my son and daughters help.

But here is a after a few more scraps the gizmo show it is getting better.

Image

Image

I really like the info and thanks

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Re: Hickory Bow

#29 Post by Stickbow Hunter » Thu Jun 28, 2012 12:08 pm

It is getting better. The top limb still looks stiff right at mid limb to me though. It probably would only need a few scrapes and only in that section and then check again.

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Re: Hickory Bow

#30 Post by Dennis La Varenne » Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:13 pm

KellyG,

You are almost there. I have drawn in my usual lines from the fadeout to the string nock so you can see where the highest point of the bend in the limbs occurs. It is still just inside the halfway point toward your handle. So you have only to do a smidgeon more scraping in the outer half of your limbs. They are very close now and it is not going to take much more.
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What you are saddled with is that you did so much of your early tillering on the inner half of the limbs and the result of that is still showing. It also creates the appearance of the outer half of the limbs being straighter than they actually are because of the way the eye sees the shape of the curvature of the limb. Our eye is very good as spotting dys-symmetry and our brains emphasise that when we spot it.

If you do as much again as you have just done in this last session, personally, in view of the history of how this bow has been tillered thus far, I would leave it at that and have some fun with it. On my bows, I sometimes put some dots at 6 inch intervals on the sides of both limbs so I can check if the bow is going out of tiller over time. I check this by measuring the string-limb gap at each of those points and comparing that to the same position on the opposite limb. If it remains within 2mm in favour of the upper limb, the bow will shoot sweetly with no handshock or erratic arrow flight.

There is one line of thought from olden times that slightly stiffer outer limbs are better for casting heavy arrows because of the higher outer limb mass being transferred to the heavier arrow once the limbs have started moving. I am a bit skeptical about this, but superficially, it makes some sense.
Dennis La Varénne

Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.

QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8

What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?

HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.

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