Awhile back there was a discussion on the Howard Hill Longbowmen about
Hill bows we'd had with bamboo under clear glass. A number of us were
sorry we'd let them get away, and I commented that maybe I'd make one.
Somehow, that thought grew just a bit and I envisioned an all bamboo
bow, i.e. the riser as well as all laminations and any wedges would be
bamboo. I felt that for such a bow, the back and belly should be natural
bamboo, rather than the vertically laminated actionboo that I normally
use for my cores. I ordered two sets of natural bamboo limbs from Craig
at Howard Hill Archery... the first lams that I didn't make myself that
I've ever used!
This was not a smooth build. I decided to rebuild an old form I had been
given that had two surfaces, one for a deflexed or string follow Hill
and one for a reflexed Hill. I opted to try a string follow bow. In the
interest of truth in advertising, I was shooting for a 68" string follow
bow of 45@28. I knew that the string follow would reduce the poundage
slightly and tried to allow for that. However, the original form was
taken off of an old lemonwood longbow and I failed to realize that this
bow had actually taken a considerable degree of set over its 50 year
life, so the form ended up with a great deal more string follow than I
allowed for. This resulted in a bow that came in 10 pounds light at its
first rough draw. It would be lighter still after finishing. Another
problem was that the form turned out to not have a perfectly curved
surface. This wasn't apparent on the form, but was when the bow was
taken off. The shiny glass was much more revealing of imperfections than
the form was.
At this point I was pretty discouraged. However, since I can only shoot
very light bows, I decided to continue the project, but significantly
reduce the poundage with the goal of arriving at a bow for myself,
looking for a finish of 25@28. I reduced the length to 66" and ground
the bow considerably narrower. I had used tip wedges and a power lam.
The length reduction took out slightly more than half of the tip wedges,
which reduced their effect, but I left the tip ends of the limbs a bit
wider to compensate for that.
I was also somewhat disappointed in the riser. The laminated light
colored bamboo was rather blah looking. However, as the final shaping
and sanding continued, the overall appearance started to look good. It
ended up a very slim, graceful looking bow. Given the light colored
wood's resemblance to my old lemonwood bow, I decided to do a shelfless,
ambidextrous "shoot off the hand" riser. I hadn't done one in awhile.
As I put finish on, the riser's appearance improved, and when I added a
darker leather wrap, it really dressed things up and it became quite a
pretty bow. I hit the final weight right on the money and ended up quite
surprised at how much I like this bow. It didn't hurt that it shoots
very nicely and even turned in very respectable speed figures for a bow
this light at my draw, averaging 140 fps on hand release. String follow
longbows are generally a bit slower than straight or reflexed bows, but
this is right up with my more recent bows. It has a lovely, smooth draw.
The name was, of course, a natural...
Here's the layup:
Form: String follow D style
Glass: .040 clear
Natural bamboo lam: .073 parallel
Actionboo lam: .107 tapered .0015
Power lam: 12" .110 to .000
Actionboow lam: .107 parallel
Natural bamboo lam: .062 parallel
Riser: 18" laminated block of actionboo, dish grip
Total Wood Stack: (exclusive of power lams) .349
Unstrung,
showing string follow, about 1 1/4"
Strung
Full
draw
Riser made up of laminated pieces of vertically laminated bamboo. The
wrap came out very nicely. A double layer of leather provides the arrow
reference and the lacing pulled it tight into the dished grip
66"
31@28 (25#25)
The
nodes show on the natural bamboo
This
is a slim Hill style bow with a nice riser for a small hand. Here it
is shown next to a Hill Robin Hood for
Comparison of grip width. Two things become apparent: The difference in
the actual width and that even with slimmer overall limb width, the
arrow position on Bamboozle is still further from center than on the
Robin Hood and will take an arrow with a lighter spine.
The grip really feels nice in my hand.
There you have "Bamboozle", an experiment that didn't come out as
planned, but still became a very nice, sweet bow. I think it's going to
see a lot of 3D shooting this summer.
Dick
Topic: "Bamboozle" - A Bamboo D Bow (Read 672 times)
