Black Bamboo - Purple Heart - Osage Orange Carriage Bow

[Lehtis]

Snowy Greetings from Finland.

Got to start this project because of my previous bow broke after couple of thousands arrows; it´s black bamboo backing broke. Anyway, I stubbornly wanted to use black bamboo again for this new takedown bow to be able to travel easier to England next February to sling arrows in IFAA´s Indoor World Championship Competition.

So, I chose black bamboo for back, purple heart for core and osage orange for belly and glued them to reflexed stave with Smooth-On EA40. Then I cut the stave at it´s mid point and fitted take down sleeves on the halves.

[Lehtis]

Then scraping and sanding as usual to achieve proper tiller... until in the final end the difficulties started: I heard an unpleasant "crack" caused  by popping splinter from lower limb´s bamboo back. Looks like that bamboo is not good at tension.

First I almost gave up but on next morning I diceded to try something new I have not done before. I carfully added some epoxy under the splinter, squeezed it down. The next step was to glue a moistened rawhide patch over the splinter area with TiteBond III. When the patch was dry I carefully sanded both limbs and covered them with rawhide hoping the best. When dry more sanding to remove excess TB III and back to tillering. Surprisingly no new explosions and the tiller and pounds were as before the crack.

[Lehtis]

So, it looks like the rawhide patch and backing saved the bow and I was able to finalize the bow by sanding and shaping the nocks and installing the arrow pass; all water buffalo horn. Then some one hundred arrows without problems and I was ready to coat the bow. First two layers of stained wood wax to cover the rawhide and visible bamboo at sides. Then several layers of TruOil, leather handle and some more TruOil and the bows was ready. The string is polyester (16 strands of BCY 55, to meet IFAA´s rules) from the earlier broken bow. Some more shooting and the bow is still alive.

[Lehtis]

The bow is 71" long ntn, draws 80 lbs @ 28" and got name "The Leatherback" for obvious reason.

... and some more pics ...

[Buggs]

Great looking bow Your last one was a looker also. Love the blackened Bamboo. It looks like the rind on the Bamboo lifted. I think some bowyer scrape the rind off completely?

[mmattockx]

Beautiful bow with very nice detail work. Perhaps a dumb question, but why so heavy for a target bow?


Mark

[Lehtis]

Not heavy for me …. 😎 Actually, I want to use the same bow(s) both indoors and outdoors. IFAA distances vary from 20 feet to 80 yards and I have some advantages with these due to lower trajectory in longer distances. Switching to lower poundage indoors would require some time to get back to higher poundage when outdoor season starts in spring… especially the older I get.