Oh, I forgot to mention the kinds of bows. Its like everything else, personal pref..


There are :
recurve, which will give you a greater energy store in the design and can make a smaller bow with good cast.

Longbows (flat back), more authentic but has the worst hand shock of the designs. If you use bamboo, you won’t have to big of a problem with hand shock.

Longbow reflexed or deflexed, or both, stores more energy in the curves and helps with cast and hand shock.

Longbows come in different versions like English longbows which don’t have a riser and are long D shaped bows; American longbows have a riser and usually are in a pyramid limb design.

Self bows, any of the above, just made out of one single piece of wood. Hard to make if you don’t read your grain right and tiller poorly.

All bows can be made by either a board, wood laminates, wood laminates under glass, or horn. There are also lots of other designs like horse bows, Hungarian bows, static limb, Penobsco Indian bow, etc. etc. I’d stay clear of these until you have made a few other bows and start to get the hang of it. I hope some of this helps. Im just rambling


I justpulled two American long bows out of the oven last night and added tips. Ill try to tiller and shape tonight. One I simply reflexed and the other is deflexed and reflexed. The reason I did so was due to the materials I was using. The reflexes is black walnut with a backing of bamboo and a belly of maple. With the bamboo, you really don’t need much deflex. As for the R/D bow, it was a cherry and maple lam, all wood. So I used a R/D design to get better cast and string flow. Ill post pics when I get them finished.