Making Laminated Bow Limbs

Whether making a recurve or a longbow trace the pattern using an existing bow or make an original.

Making laminated bow limbs.

This could be as easy as taking a stick of wood 36 long 3 4 thick and 1 5 wide cutting laminations out of it and grinding them. Making a laminated recurve bow how to tutorial solo custom archery. Mark the limb tip shape photo 11. Bow forms are usually made from appropriate sized pieces of plywood laminated together to the correct thickness.

But to kill three stones with one bird and prevent me from having to do a separate build along i m going to show you how you can jazz up your limbs a little. Use bow building glue that can handle the stresses of a bow s limbs. Other materials include fibers from trees and animal by products like horns or sinews. Making a laminated bow is something i have learned to do over the past few years.

Cut out the bow template using a band saw creating a front and back press you will use later to clamp the bow into its shape. Mark the limb cut off point and the string groove location photo 10. To achieve the longbow thickness 2 pieces of 3 4 plywood glued together will get the desired results. Cut the limbs to length on the bandsaw.

Carbon unidirectional is a unidirectional carbon laminate limb core lamination that provides the ultimate in light weight strength stiffness and increased performance by providing the highest response rate of return weight reduction and fatigue life available. Fiberglass is hard on blades so use an old one. Longbow forms are usually 1 1 2 thick and recurve forms are 1 3 4 or 2 thick. Most bows are made with yew but other woods are an option as well.

Be sure to include a well defined front and back line. Bows used in archery and hunting are created from different woods and additional materials depending on the type of bow you plan to make. Here is what it looks like without music and much editing. Rough cut the shape of the bow limbs on the bandsaw.

I m going to do spliced limbs.