#self-bow

[wolfandiron]

Traditional Archery: Part 2 - Wood Types and Backings

Traditional Archery: Part 2 - Wood Types and Backings #archery #manliness

“As I was drawing the bow, I travelled a long road. Now I release this arrow knowing that I took the necessary risks and gave of my best.” – Paulo Coelho, The Way of the Bow My appreciation for bows grew immensely when I began to understand the various qualities and characteristics of wood that had to be considered when crafting a hunting tool or weapon on which your life depended. While the…

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[trailheadpress]

Here’s a couple of friends roughing out their bow staves.  “Roughing out” is one of the initial steps in making your own archery bows.  Looks like Kent (on left) has his bow pretty well roughed out. This picture was taken around 1993 or ‘94.  His next step will be “tillering” which will be the subject of the next picture.  

[allaboutarchery]

Primitive Bows

Primitive

Primitive bows are wooden bows that have no fiberglass. They can be composite bows: in two or more pieces (perhaps different woods laminated together) and with different materials like horn and sinew, like the Hungarian styled bow below.

Then there is the self-bow which is made out of a single piece of wood and is often the kind you see in the archery tag when people post photos of bows they made themselves! (If anyone submits a photo of their primitive/self bow I'll use it in this post with a link to you!)

If backed by hide or sinew, it is still a self-bow since the wood itself is one piece.

As seen above, primitive bows can be both longbows and recurves.

Note: I don't know if using a modern string would negate the "primitive" aspect of a bow; I think it might just because it's modern but I'll check and get back to this. This goes for modern glue as well.