My son is almost 4 and wants so bad to shoot my bow his mom is the same way. I am building her a bow that should be around 25# @ 24". I am wanting to build him a bow for his B-day in a few months.

What have yall done to get a small light draw bow for a small child?

Thanks for any help you can give.

I'll be very interested in this as well.  My 4 yr old wants to shoot as well.  I've been thinking of trying my first sapling bow for him.  Maybe a dogwood.

Hi cobbow, since I don't have much experience yet with glas laminated bows, I built my daughter a bow out of Manau. Its a Malaysian palm tree, its wood is very light and can take tremendous bending stress. The bow is 54" NTN and draws 22@20.

i came in way overweight on my first try,36NTN laminated recurve  24#@16 i think, i am going to try again.
i used (2) 0.040 glass lams , (2) 0.033 maple lams, and a 10" riser.  3/4 inch deflex 1 3/4" reflex
that is some data to start you out for a lam. stack

 next try will have about 10 deg. of deflex out of the riser, and be 44-48" NTN with 0.030 glass.

i would recommend making the handle simple.  sanding the little one was about 10 times harder then a full size riser.

 


 
 

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This is a 36" recurve I made for my grandson.  I used 1 1/2" .030 glass and one >030 parallel lam.  The riser is 12" long, no deflex and 2" recurves.  I got 8# at 16".  By cutting everything into 18" sections you can get a bow from one strip of glass.

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My son shoots a scaled down bow of mine that came in under weight.  I just cut it down to about his draw lenght using double his draw plus handle, but the handle was kina big for his 6 year old hand.  John Scrifes was helpful and hooked me up with a few bows for the other kids that were hounding me in the neighborhood with a few bows of rattan.  I think that rattan bows are cheap and easy to build all wood bows for kids.

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I finally got the pic to load.