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Main Boards => PowWow => Topic started by: upatree on February 27, 2008, 05:56:00 PM
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I have started to build a red oak long bow. I have no knowledge on how to build a long bow but I thought it would be a fun project. I have made the bow and it shoots O.K. The question I have is the brace hight is 5" and I hit my wrist when I shoot. How do I fix this? :confused:
The bow is 68" long and the draw is about 27" but I can pull it to 28" with no problem. I don't know the bow weight.
Can someone help me out? :confused: :goldtooth: :confused:
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Raise the brace height a little and try again. Otherwise wear an armguard. When do we gets pics of the bow!
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I set the brace height above 6" on my selfbows. the other thing you can do is put a DF-97 or other low stretch string on your bow. Selfbows tolerate fast flight type strings well and they don't follow the arrow to your wrist like B-50.
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I build mostly board bows, mostly osage these days but I've been through a LOT of woods. Absolutely, if you want this bow to last and be as good as it can be, stop right now, flatten the back and glue on some bamboo. I made a lot of bows with pignut hickory (the best hick for this purpose) but got tired of them cracking; it just doesn't happen with boo. However, boo will take much more a "set" than hick, and with a long and straight longbow, hick will likely suffice. It's easy -- just get a thin lam of backing and glue it on with C clamps, then re-tiller the belly until you have the weight you want plus 5 or 10 pounds ... as it will gradually get weaker. This is by far the easiest, cheapest, and highest-odds way for beginners (which I still am, some 40 bows later!) to build a bow: board with backing. Have fun.
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Thanks for the replies. I am as new to this as can be and need all the advice I can get. I will leave this one more as a display and a reminder of where I started. The next one will hopefully be a better built bow. Thanks again for the replies.
Upatree