I started to build a take-down recurve a few years ago but I made enough mistakes that I never completed it.
This past summer I bought my first longbow and liked it so much that I hung up the wheels and might not go back. I am a teacher with three little girls under 3 so I don't have much time to do much.
However, this semester I have a student teacher. He is doing well so my job is to be out of the room to allow him to do all the teaching.(students are much different when I am there giving them the teacher look) So...what do I do with a few extra hours a day when we have a shop class that has all the equipment to make bows? Of course that is a no brainer. I have access to a straight limbed form with forebode and a hot box. All the tools I could need.
I expected these first two bows to be more of a learning process than making nice good shooting bows. The first bow is like the Hill Sirocco that someone else has copied on a build here. (Feel a bit bad ripping off a design that somebody else ripped off
). It's flattery right?
The stack back to belly:
.050 black uls glass
.100 parallel actionboo
.110 aboo w/ .002 taper
.150 curly maple. 002 taper
.050 clear uls glass
Total of. 460"
Zebra riser
I was looking for around #50 @ 28".
I have a 30" draw and in talking with Steve Turray of Northern Mist Longbows I needed to go with the. 004"per inch of taperand to maintain a little less than 90°great string limb angle at full draw to prevent stacking.
The other bow uses some yew lams from idahocurt. Beautiful!
The yew bow stack:
.050 clear uls glass
.030? Yew lam
.100 parallel aboo
.110. 002 tapered aboo
.110 .002 tapered aboo
.030 yew lam
.050 clear uls glass
Total ..470 ish
After glueup and using way too much smooth on this is what I had.