In drawing out some new bows to get working on I found myself with the same dilemma as always. How can I make the best of these cheap lumberyard boards from lowes. Most of them around here don't even sell maple, so I found myself thinking about finished a red oak takedown I'd make the riser for some months ago.
The rise is 12.5 inches from end to end, and will seperate the limbs of the bow by ~7.5 inches. With the fades included we're talking 13-14 inches of very, very rigid handle. At 5'3" I'm not going out there with a 70" bow so the bottom limb can scrape the ground. I need this thing to be 62" tip to tip. And had to be my hunting bow ... no job ... no money ... lots of time.
I should also mention the riser was built to accomidate limbs of 1.5" wide (standard 1x2 lumber).
So I decided this thing was gonna take a ruthless set, and probably explode so a solid oak board was not going to be a win. Long story short I made a form, and laminated 2 limbs out of 1/4"x1.5"x 4ft red oak, very carefully selected from the craft boards at lowes. Total cost ~$15.
Limbs started with ~3 inches of reflex, working length of about 24.5", and thickness of just about 1/2". After some insanely careful tillering, which mainly involved working in the limbs as they're a rectagonal as I could bear to leave them, I had something I was too afraid to draw.
A week went by and I finally knew it was time to do it. Slowly I got the limbs bending back to ~26", and started shooting the thing.
Draw weight is ~40# @ 26", and man does it shoot nice. Ended with about 1.5-2" of resting string follow, which was expected but still kind of insane. Bow has been shot a couple hundred times and has developed a few chrysals in the top limb. No noticible decrease in draw weight or uncomfortable creaking sounds. I think they're stable, but time will tell.
Pics to come later today so check back and see the beast. Thinking that my next set of limbs for this should probably be heat treated hickory belly with hickory back for insurance purposes.
This has been my first attempt to push red oak to it's limits, and limits there are. I've glued down two splinters on the back, had it chrysal and taken 5" of total setback. Let me say finally that it was awesome experience, and it actually shoots really well.
Topic: Mission "red oak" Impossible (Read 425 times)
