When I was young my step grandpaw took me in one day and said I was going to learn how to make a bow. Wow it changed my life. It was a little hickory sapling easy to do and we strung it with weed eater string. I was Robin Hood though. Since then Ive been building bows for me and my friends and loving every minute of it. Just easy self bows , but I wanna do something nice soon. How did everyone else get into building bows?
i grew up shooting an old recurve my grandpa had, and my brother and i always built slefbows from variuos woods when we were younger, although we never had any great succeses. when i moved here i had access to a shop and machines/tools so i decided to look into building and found sam harpers site. from there i lurked here finding info and other stuff until i joined when i made my first successful bow and then i joined.
When I was a kid my grandpa also show me how to build a kids bow from a sapling. Mostly used hedge or hickory. Cut the string grooves with a pocket knife and string it with cotton string that wouldn't stretch too much.(no such thing as a weed eater then). Then we would cut some cane for arrows. Cut a nock groove to a joint on one end and just past a joint on the other so we could butt a nail head against the joint and tie it in place for a point.
Lots of fun for a kid. We didn't have any video games, thank goodness.
my parents wouldn't let me have a bow when i was a kid. "bows are outdated, only good for wounding animals" my dad would say.
when i was a teen working at a Sportsman Show i met some guys from the TBW and they invited me to a Bow building session and i made my first bow... 46lb draw vine maple. since then I've made 10 self bows from different maples, pacific yew, ocean spray, and others, and will build many more.
(if i can find wood to use around my new place in Germany)
He made sure I learned how to cut nocks at a young age. I've built a few bows since then but it is something I will never forget. For that I am absoutely grateful thanks pawpaw. Just wondering if anyone started like I did. spell check is giving me crap on the word pawpaw but that is how it is so who cares thanks paw
I've always been interested in Indian culture. When I was a kid I only had western movies that I remembered. I always cheered for the Indian. I remember deciding that I wanted a bow and bugged Mom until she took me to town to get one. I don't know what happened to that bow.
When I was pregnant for my third child, I dug up some sod for a flowerbed. I found my first arrowhead. I got some library books and studied it. Turns out there is a technique and I have found several since. But I picked up a copy of "Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans" by Jim Hamm at a pow-wow. It was so informative and entertaining I was compelled to make a bow.
It was horrible. But I was smitten. My skills have improved, (it couldn't hardly get worse), but I don't feel at all accomplished. After 13 years of off and on bow making, I still enjoy it.