Youth Board Bow Questions

[ibohuntwhitetails]

HELP PLEASE!  First a brief rundown of my situation. I am tryin to make a few youth board bows or maybe a board bow then a stave bow then a glue up bow or any combo of the 3. I have 3 daughters and 3 nieces all between 12 and 6 years old and all are beggin to shoot with me. I have went and bought a few of the cheap youth half wheelie bows you can get for like $15 that they all have to share as of right now. I would really like to make and personalize one for each of them.

Now for the questions:

1) I have a red oak board bow in the works right now. Right now I have it rough cut and it is 48" ntn 1"wide handle that is 8"tall and 3/4" from front to belly. It is 1 1/2"wide at fades tapering to 1/2" at the tips. Now the question how thick should the limbs be to get about 15lb at 15 or so inches?  Just roughly as I know each bow will be diff and each kids draw and poundage will be a little diff too. I just need to know what to rough down to to start on the tillering tree.
2) Do I need to back these bows? I found a piece for this bow that had really good grain running straight down the board and no knots. But I wasn't sure if it was so thin to get the 15lbs if it needed backed.
3) Where can I get or where can I learn to make strings of this length? And how many strand? If the bow is a longbow at 48" ntn then a 45" string is what i need right?
4) Any place selling youth staves, forms for glue ups, bow blanks, bows you just have to tiller, any other options to get them all shooting? I'm thinking I might be able to do an easy one for each of them and then after the pressure to get them all shooting one is off I could really put some serious time into making some really nice bows.


Thanks in advance for your help!! I will probably have alot more questions as I go since I am completely new to this so please bear with me. I have made up my mind that I will invest as much time and effort into this as it takes to do this for each of them. With the help of all the fine people here I am sure I can get it done.

Thanks
Tom

[poekoelan]

I wouldn't mess with a design with fades for kids bows or for your first attempt at wooden bows. But if you already have it started that way then I suppose you should finish it that way.

No way to tell how thick the limbs should be. The bow will tell you that. I would just make the bows as tall as or nearly as tall as the kids. This will give them a little to grow. I would also go with a full bend through the handle with no fades. Not too much bend there, it should appear almost straight at brace height. I would finish out the one with the fades and make next ones like I said. Much faster to make the bendy handle types as there is less work involved.

I would make them one inch wide from mid limb to mid limb.

If the grain is nice and straight, no need to back them. If in doubt, a couple layers of drywall tape ( the perferated type ) works very well.

3 Rivers used to sell a video on making strings. It showed you how to make the jig and the strings. I bought this video and couple rolls of dacron when I first started. The video has long since paid for itself. Do a search of the sponsors here and see who has a string making video.

That's my two cents. I'm sure others will chime in.

Austin

[John Scifres]

Make them narrower or they will be about 1/4" thick and fragile.  1" is good.
  Kids Bows Tute  
  String Tute

[tim-flood]

at the stick bow site is a tute from Dean on making kids bows!! is is under self bows

[Glenn Carl]

Try this link. Elk Ninja has a build along that works really well to make a youth bow and its easy.
 http://tradgang.com//noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=035877#000000

[BenBow]

Here's a little more complex kids bow.
   Grandson\\'s bow

[ibohuntwhitetails]

Thank you all for the great info. I knew the wealth of info hear would help me. Only thing I can't figure out is where all those trad gang links came from? I did a search before posting but didn't find the great links you all posted!

Thanks Again
Tom