help wanted with my wooden homemake bows from wattle

[aaronjezarchery]

Hello all archery makers, Why do you think that my wattle long bow broke about 4" away from the handle, the crack wasn't along the bow but straight through, just like pencils break.
the wood was dried 2 months
it broke when i was putting the string on by my self for the fist time since i made it, the way i was putting it on was with my feet against each other. The limbs were evenly bending when tested on the tiller.

already broke three bows that way don't know if its because of too much tensions on one limb or wrong type of wood, the grains did go straight without any knots,
one of the bows was recurved bow from tas oak and the others were flat bow make from also white gum and this last one was long bow from wattle......
please help because I'm loosing my motivation one making any more.
i carved the long bow completely with only a hatchet and knife, and sanded it smooth with sand paper.
the limbs were about 1 1/2cm wide from the bottom and 1cm on the top the thickness was about 1/2cm from the top and 1 on the bottom.
was bending nicely on the tiller but as soon as i tried to put a 4" shorter sting than the actual bow on with hand it snapped
sorry thats the best photo i got from my recurved bow when i just got it glued still needed to be sanded.

Aaron.

[Sabinus]

G'day Aaron,

Sorry to hear you haven't quite cracked the bow making business yet (joke!), but seriously, there's nothing like making a bow that stays together and works to fuel your enthusiasm. Don't give up!

Now, there are many more qualified people on this forum than myself who are sure to weigh in pretty soon with advice. You are definitely in the right place!

A couple of things that come straight to mind on reading your post - buy a bow stringer!!!! or make one. I can't quite picture the technique you describe for stringing your bows, but recurves especially can be twisted, damaged or broken if you don't do it just so....
Get a bow stringer.

I'm no sort of authority on using Australian timbers for bow making, but most things I read about using Tasmanian oak are not so encouraging. The other woods you mention, I couldn't comment on. Spotted Gum and Ironbark are two aussie timbers that can be purchased in floor-board form, and have good bowmaking characteristics. Dave (Yeoman) is a forum member and an expert in these timbers. If there is a Masters hardware store within Coo-ee of you, they sell red oak which is also very sevicable.

Read all you can on this forum, and read The Bowyer's Bible series of books- they are a goldmine of info. If you're not the reading type, watch a million youtube videos on bowmaking. I'm only five bows into my bowmaking career and I've found all my information in books, videos, and on forums like this.

Like I said, you're in the right place. Makers of wooden bows tend to be naturally generous with their time and knowledge as you'll find out. Maybe post some more photos of your bowmaking attempts so far- even photos of the broken fragments will tell a story.

Good luck Aaron- stick at it!

Darren

[greybeard]

.....the limbs were about 1 1/2cm wide from the bottom and 1cm on the top the thickness was about 1/2cm from the top and 1 on the bottom......

Hi Aaron, I can't follow the dimensions you have shown.

Can you give us the n to n length of the bow along with the limb width and thickness at the string nocks, mid limb and fadeouts.

Do you know the species of the wattle and do you have any photos of the broken bows you can post?

It might be the photograph but the limbs of the recurve look quite thick.

Can you include your location in your avatar as there could be some bowyers in your area.

Daryl.

[aaronjezarchery]

Thank you very much guys,
yes i did realise that the recurve i made was way to thick so i afterwards sanded it down with a belt sander to 1 cm on fadeout. will definitely try that bow stringer next time,

also sorry but i don't have any photos of the bows except only of the recurve bow when it's not completely finished.
i will post the dimensions soon once i get on doing the other ones i have dried out (which are dogwood and tea tree>ti tree) because at the moment i don't have any bows to measure. but i did take the dimensions for the long bow from this layout,though i didn't do the recurves as shown on the layout on photo.

preview6.pdf[/attachment than after those bows kept on breaking i decided to do something that won't even think about breaking [attachment=0]Photo on 12-11-2014 at 1.14 am.jpg

i finished it and it shoots better than i expected for a homemade compound bow.( although its probably only 40lbs)
but must say that theres nothing like shooting of a traditional recurved bow, they just so soft when firing unlike the compound.
anyways will try to taper one out next month from Blackwood/dogwood or maybe tea tree/(ti tree) and will post my project once its done, (if not broken again).
and if that doesn't than will see about ironbark if that works.
hope you guys will be here to help me out,
oh and my location is Deloraine< Tasmania.


cheers archery M8's
Aaron

[yeoman]

You made a compound? Wow!

I had a lot of luck with Silver Wattle (scientific name unknown, but that's what it was known in in and around Parkham/Elizabethtown, so you might know what I'm talking about.).

I found some of the bigger saplings, up to 3" diameter often had a flat side to them, up to 2" across which made for a terrific flat back.

The tea tree I found was always brilliantly hard and strong, but notoriously twisted. I never had a tea tree split with less that 90 degrees of rotation across about six or seven feet of trunk length. If I could have found straight splitting wood, I think it woulda been terrific.

After years of trying to make bows in Tasmania, my best advice would be to try to make simple sapling longbows from Silver Wattle. Or if you can afford it, some ironbark or spotted gum backed with bamboo.

[greybeard]

Aaron, without seeing the broken bows we do not know if it was a design fault, timber fault or a combination of both.

With future bows it may be beneficial to keep a photographic record of the build process so if in the event of something going wrong you have a record of it.

I agree with Dave that simple longbows are a good starting point.

If you have timber suitable for flat bows the designs below should work. The first one is from an old Popular Mechanics;

P M Flatbow.jpg (63.87 KiB) Viewed 4134 times

and the second one is by Dennis LaVarenne.

Basic-flatbow-design - Copy.jpg (50.24 KiB) Viewed 4134 times

There are a lot of videos [some good, some not so good] on YouTube regarding bow making so it may pay to check them out; i.e. 1990 Bow Building with Al Herrin is quite a good video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xdiiwO4UUc

Daryl.

[aaronjezarchery]

here is a flatbow that i have recently made which snapped on the limb,
it was made out or dogwood,
i have attached a few photos of the disaster and thought that maybe you guys could tell me why it happened

20141218_162233.jpg (229.59 KiB) Viewed 4071 times

i used the dimensions of a regular flatbow design
there were no knots on that limb
it snapped while i was drawing it to about half the draw.

20141212_181851.jpg (312.23 KiB) Viewed 4071 times

[yeoman]

That is a classic, textbook tension failure. It would have broken across the back first, with the fracture going to about half the limb's thickness. Then the wood would have started to split longitudinally from the neutral plane, with a bias towards the belly. Thus, you have the very wide, flat triangle of wood that appears to have popped off the belly.

This 'dogwood'...what does it look like? The dogwood I remember had red to purple bark and very dark leaves. Grew in close stands near the bottom of valleys but not necessarily next to water.

What was the draw weight?

[aaronjezarchery]

this is the dogwood tree i used

images-4.jpeg (15.54 KiB) Viewed 4033 times

it was about the diameter of 4" like this one in the photo.
about the draw weight i don't have the equipment to check that.
hope you can explain a bit more on why it snapped?
cheers
Aaron.

[Sabinus]

Hey Aaron all you need is a set of bathroom scales mate- $8 at bigW. Put your tillering stick on top of it and read the weight when you have the bow drawn to a given draw length during tillering.

Darren

[yeoman]

The bow snapped because the wood fibers on the back were not strong enough. This could have been down to a number of symptoms (depending on what you've done with the stave):

* The wood might be weak in tension. So the solution is to make a bow from a larger diameter tree, or decrown the back.
* The back might have had a violated back surface. An errant file mark could be all it takes.
* The bow may have been overstressed. The solution is to make the bow a little wider. Though I don't know how wide the bow is that just broke compared to the draw weight.

[aaronjezarchery]

yea, excellent points there i thought of those also and i think that that was the case,
the back was to weak,
I'm making two flat bows now from Tas Oak boards that i found In my collection of offcuts with reasonable grains and hope that works out.
these are the dimensions I'm using to tiller them.

oak5.JPG (13.29 KiB) Viewed 3989 times

oak6.JPG (11.41 KiB) Viewed 3989 times

is there anything i should consider in doing/thinking about before i start to tiller.
please give opinions, will be more than happy to listen out.


Aaron

[yeoman]

I'm not a superstitious person, but there is something sinister in 'tas oak'. I've had I don't know how many bows inexplicably snap, even with perfect grain, even with 75 mm thickness with only 30 lb draw weight.

The only successful bow I've made from tas oak was backed with fiberglass reinforced tape. It's suggest you do the same.....or back it with jute webbing.

Better yet, ignore the horror that is tas oak and try something else. If you can find dogwood, you should also be able to find some silver wattle.

Trust me: a board of tas oak with perfect grain is like a siren from The Odyssey: very tempting, but will lead you to doom.

[greybeard]

"Tasmanian Oak is not an actual species;

rather it is the trade name for the mixture of 2 or more species from a group of 8, all with similar appearance and feature."

Definitely not recommended for bow making.

Daryl.

[aaronjezarchery]

thanks guys, i must say i absolutely agree with yous that Tas Oak aint really the best wood for archery
i will be posting soon a few photos of what i have achieved from Tas Oak than you can tell me if it will last for long



Aaron