I am thinking of building a bow and was looking for an opinion.
Do you think I should make a recuve or a longbow, and why?

I have a Fred Bear Montana longbow andmy old Ben Pearson recurve from when I was a kid,and I'll shoot either, but I'm not sure which to attemp to make myself.

I may just get a floor-tillered kit to start and just finish it off since building from scratch will require more in tools and experimenting than I want to get involved with right now. (although the actual woodworking and building is not hard for me. I've the home-made guitars and such to prove it)

How about places for kits and/or supplies? I've visited the 3Rivers site but they are limited in kits although they do have the raw materials.

i think a longbow would be easier since you dont need to bend the laminations as much. check out binghamprojects.com for laminated bow kits and supplies. rudderbows archery has some nice looking kits and supplies and whatever else you would need for bowbuilding. hope this helped.

I just ordered materials from Binghams last weekto bulid my first lam-longbow. Ill let you know how it goes...I may even try to do a build-along, assuming I can get my camera working.

This will be my first lam bow Ive ever built, so I cant offer much advice, but i have scratched out a few selfbows, and I can suggest trying a floor tillered hickory stave from Bowstick.com or Rudderbows.com, If you'd like to do a selfbow.

Bowstick.com also offers a few lam-bow kits for the first time builder. I may have to get the Sytka bow kitto try...