making a kids bow

[Bodork]

 My 5-year-old grandson is finally showing an interest in flinging arrows, so I am going to make a bow for him. I'm looking for suggestions on bow length, riser length, limb width, stack, etc.  It will be a laminated longbow and I plan to just make it straight limbed for simplicity, but it's possible I'll try to use one of my mild reflex forms.
 Anyone with pointers or incites would be appreciated.
 Thanks, Mike

[Pat B]

15#@15" but that's all I can say about a laminated bow. 

[rmorris]

Mike,
I will be following this one closely. Have been thinking about this for about 10 years.

[Longcruise]

I feel like it's hard to scale a glass bow to the size needed for that age.   Kenny thinned some glass for me once and that might be a good option to keep glass/wood ratios right.   But,  maybe that's being too anal about it?

When my grandkids were in that age range I made pyramid bows out of those 48" oak slats from the big box.  They were hugely successful with them and got them started.   One of them took his first game with his.  A cotton tail.   

Admittedly that solution is not as satisfying for you but it works.

[dbeaver]

Any engineers or physics guys down to do the math on this?  Take your standard 1.5 inch wide laminated flatbow with a known taper rate stack size and draw force rate lets say its 40#@28" and is 60" ntn.  cutting that same bow in half lengthwise to a 3/4" wide bow, all things the same what would the draw weight be. 

then we know piking increases draw weight by some proportion to length cut off. Lets say we are aiming for a 48 inch bow.  From our example bow above  40#@28" cut in half we get some lighter draw weight 'x'.  now that can be stiffened up by piking but we can also think about it backwards. If you wanted to be a a certain poundage @ 48 inches, call it 'y', on the kids bow you can do the math see what weight decrease would occur if you extended it to 60" and then did the math to double it width wise.  That brings you to a poundage(probably heavy its a hypothetical number) that would work with our original weight stack with known draw force rate and known stack height.

[Bodork]

  I missed math class so many times I can’t even count.

[jess stuart]

This is how I do mine.  I split 2" glass down to 1" width.  I use a 12" riser one taper one parallel lam.  I build them 46" long and a stack of about .220 gives a 15-18 pounds at 20"  I can get one and a half bows from a single strip of glass.  Sorry don't have pics on my phone.

[jess stuart]

Found a pic.

[rmorris]

See if this helps also, I do not build this now and believe it is a mass produced kids bow but my kids shot it and had a lot of fun with it.My notes are written on the table and transcribed below.

.04 glass with 2 laminations

Parallel back with .001 tapered belly

13” riser-48” end to end

10# bow

1.16 wide down to .58 at nock

1.25” x 3.5“ grip

Unstrung

My 4 years old pulling it back.

[Kirkll]

These are about as time consuming to build at a full size bow, I used .040 glass and could get 2 bows out of 2 sticks of 72” glass. I was looking for the old 60’s style recurve.

The only down side to these is that the draw length maxes out at about 26” draw, so when the kids start growing, you need to pass them along to the next little ones.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CH7Mi2b3UYDicGMt5

[mmattockx]

When my grandkids were in that age range I made pyramid bows out of those 48" oak slats from the big box.

My first thought was that a FG bow was pointless and just making a simple wood bow was the way to go, as you say. At age 5 they grow so fast that OP will be making a new bow every 6 weeks to match. Not only is wood more than adequate for the job, but OP could involve his grandson in making it and turn it into a family project.

Any engineers or physics guys down to do the math on this?  Take your standard 1.5 inch wide laminated flatbow with a known taper rate stack size and draw force rate lets say its 40#@28" and is 60" ntn.  cutting that same bow in half lengthwise to a 3/4" wide bow, all things the same what would the draw weight be.

Half the width = half the draw weight


Mark

[Bodork]

 Thanks for all the input guys! You all gave me some great advice and confidence to get things started. I think I have enough scrap wood and glass to move forward. We will see how it turns out. He loves black and camo so I don't need fancy wood. I know it will be a lot of work for a bow that may not be used all that long but since Poppers made it, he will appreciate it more when he grows up. Hopefully I'm still around to build a couple more for him as he grows up! (and his twin sister!)
 Thanks again, Mike

[garyschuler]

I have 2 matched Black Myrtle risers that would make great kid
Longbows. 1-3/8” x 1-5/8” x 14” . If interested i can send pics to your cell ph. You pay shipping and they are yours. These are dry.

[Mad Max]

That would be nice Gary


You could make it longer and pike it back, every year also.