Almost twins - A couple of Enlish Longbow stylish bows

[Lehtis]

Greetings from Finland!

Some time ago I made two Black Bamboo backed English Longbow stylish TD bows which, unfortunately, broke at the very beginning. Then a friend in Belgium contacted me and promised to send me some good bamboo as Christmas present. And so he did! I got one Tonkin and one Madake bamboo slice on top of three common Moso bamboo slices. I decided to convert those two hard bamboos to bows with Purple Heart core and Osage Orange belly. That Purple Heart was brought to Finland from USA by a friend some years ago. He didn´t find time to use it and sold it to me. And this year I succeeded to buy (under the counter) three pairs of European origin Osage Orange billets. My aim was to make two ELBs, ca. 75 lbs @ 28" for myself and use them in the coming WBHC 2023 competition in Rovaniemi, Finland. There are ca. 900 registrations from all over the world going to shoot 3D in four competitions.

Shortly: I used Smooth-On EA40 for gluing the parts together, plenty of rasping and sanding, then added some water buffalo horn pieces to convert the staves more like bows and finalizing with several layers of TruOil. Some leather on handle and stringing with BCY55 (polyester to meet IFAA´s rules). I hope the photos tell the story clear enough.

[Lehtis]

More pics...

[Lehtis]

Madake Bamboo - Purple Heart - Osage Orange

Got it to 73 lbs @ 28" due to a bit too stiff lower limb after pre-tillering and I had to scrape it a bit more.

[Lehtis]

Tonkin Bamboo - Purple Heart - Osage Orange

My aim was 75 lbs @ 28" and after test shooting it´s precicly that. 
Some "beauty spots" on upper limb bamboo but after some comments elsewhere I´m going to leave them as character features.

[KenH]

VERY NICELY DONE!

[simk]

As usual those from Finland are nearly perfect! I really like them and your craftsmanship and the draweights presented and shot seem impressive. I bet they shoot hard! Historically, do we know about elbs with such stiff and pronounced grip section? Just curious. cheers

[Lehtis]

Thank you, simk, for your kind words.

I´m not expert in history, that´s why word "stylish", but at least take down bows, a.k.a. carriage bows, used in the British island were stiff at handle due to the connector pieces.

Speaking about their speed, my mutual feeling is that these sling same arrows faster than my 78-84 lbs bows. The trajectory seems a bit flatter and the "twang" sound at release sounds sharper in my ears. Must shoot through chronograph some day at our club.

[inksoup]

I love them. very nice.

[Lehtis]

The story continues... No need to cover those beauty spots on tonkin backing... and that´s because of it popped up a splinter on lower limb after ca. 300 shots. After some swearing and thinking I decided to sand it down and replace it with common moso bamboo. And so I did. I had not to do anything to the tiller, the bow bends nicely but during the surgery it lost some 12 pounds. A bit tool light now for me now but I´m aware I´m not getting stronger anymore so it will be my future bow in the coming years... or, perhaps, somebody is willing to buy it at good money...

By the way, got to make new nocks also: The lower one is regular water buffalo horn but the upper one is cow horn from a shoe horn found from a flea market.

[Lehtis]

Some more... Full draw later when I´ve got my wife to look at me through camera...

[KenH]

I wondered about using Tonkin rather than Moso, Madake or one of the other "timber" bamboos.  It's good for flyfishing rods and smaller construction projects but very small in diameter for bow-building.  Glad you were able to make the repair even if it cost a few pounds of draw weight.