I don’t hunt with them because I’m a veg, but I guess it’s nice to know that I could in the unlikely event that shit completely hit the fan in a way that necessitated that. It also just feels good to do something with my time that actually makes me feel human.
I’m sorry I don’t know what community to post this in. Feel free to correct me accordingly.
c/anprim when?
That's really cool though! I'm not exactly well versed in wood work, so how long does it usually take to build one? How do?
Thank you! It depends on how pretty I want it to be when it’s finished and the type of materials being used, but I can probably have a functioning laminated bow shooting in about 25 hours or so of work spread over a week or two. But that’s using modern heat-curing epoxy and kiln-dried wood, which saves a lot of time.
If I wanted to make a legitimate primitive bow with all natural materials that would last a long time, the labor time would be about the same, but one typically needs to wait 6 months to a year to let the wood properly air dry. It’s also common practice to reinforce it with animal sinew to prevent breakage, and that usually takes a few months to fully cure, depending on conditions. I’ve actually got a bow like this planned. Maybe we’ll have a c/anprim for me to post it on by the time I finish it.
One could also make a survival bow out of a freshly cut sapling in a few hours, but it would lose its strength quickly, because green wood likes to hold the bend over time.
Here's a very cool video basically showing what I described in my second paragraph: https://youtu.be/Fq0-dAC5lZE
Or better yet, I could listen to Noel Grayson talk about bowmaking all day. I’d gladly pay him to do an ASMR track for me to sleep to: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6dMgUugIBSA&t=220s#dialog
do you use traditional material for the string as well? i've watched a lot of youtube videos on this, fascinating stuff.
I don’t yet. I’ve only made them with b55 Dacron, which is just a strong nylon material. But I’ve got a spool of hemp cord here on my desk that I hope to try making a string out of.
Curious, you claim to desire c/anprim yet you use a computer? Owned by Facts and Logic™ 😎
Joke's on you, they're inputting individual bits with hand-forged copper wire and an electric eel.
You’re following in a lineage of tool craft as old as humanity itself! Hell fucking yeah!
That’s one of my favorite things about archery. Essentially every culture on the planet developed it in parallel with the materials that were available to them, and every iteration of it is awesome and fascinating — no exceptions.
Okay, one exception: modern compound archery. Obviously very effective for hunting, and interesting from an engineering perspective, but it’s not for me. Its explicit goal is to remove the human from the equation as much as possible, and I just don’t find that to be much fun.
I, too, have a judgemental and not entirely reasonable disgust for compound bows.
I hadn't thought of that! That really adds dope points onto this, haha.
My wife takes care of that part. I min/maxed my way out of that capability
Thank you! It's made from Bamboo and Osage Orange, with a Red Oak handle. It pulls at about 55 lbs at a 28" draw.
Thanks! Yeah, I’ve done archery since I was a little kid when my dad taught me to shoot, but making my own bows has been on my bucket list for years, and the quarantine provided an interesting opportunity for me to give it a try.
I haven’t tried making my own arrows yet, but I have plans to in the very near future. It’s supposedly not actually that hard if you happen to have the right hand tools.
I htink you just need sturdy, dry wood or canes, and a fire to heat any bends out of the wood.
Yeah, I've been looking into making a jig like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvwernxQi8A
Forging broadheads or flint knapping are whole worlds I have yet to explore though.
Preparing for the anarcho-primitivist revolution I see.
Seriously though, that's a nice looking bow. What a cool hobby
Neat. As a kid I was super into the idea of carving my own bow and actually spent a summer working a decently suitable pine branch into a short-bow form. Then I realized I hadn't spent time drying/treating the wood and it broke when I tried to bend it back & put weight on the draw string lol. Archery is definitely something I should get back into - but my declining eyesight over the years tells me that I probably won't be able to shoot bullseyes anymore with a 40lb bow :'(
Try it! This is where most of us start: http://poorfolkbows.com/oak9.htm (100% big box hardware store materials, with the exception of the string, but some paracord can make an adequate placeholder until you can get a proper one). You can also do a lot with PVC pipes from the hardware store, but that's a whole side of things that I haven't gotten too involved with myself.
I'm sorry to hear about your declining eyesight. When I'm just tired and need to decompress, I get a lot of enjoyment out of just going out and spraying the target, without really paying much attention to how close my grouping is. Feels more like war archery, where you don't need to be dead accurate -- just accurate enough to turn an oncoming grunt into a pincushion. The high-weight war bows they used to use for that were really too powerful to shoot with the sort of laser accuracy that we like to imagine today anyway. English (bleh) war archers shot longbows that pulled at 80-150 lbs.
And yeah, even if dried properly, pine is a less-than-ideal bow wood. It's very soft and doesn't hold up very well under compression. A good, dense hard wood is generally what you'd want to go for. Breaking bows is how you learn though!
My understanding was that for war-bows they'd practice by putting a circle of rope or cloth a couple of yards across at a fixed distance, then the archers would try to put their arrows in to that circle. More like artillery than sniping. If you put enough arrows in to a dense mass of infantry or cavalry you're gonna get lucky enough of the time.
Hmm, I'd know how to treat a wooden bow with a bit of twist, but I'm not certain about fiberglass. I'd suggest asking on r/bowyer or r/TraditionalArchery if you still mess with reddit.
I suspect that it might be possible to hit it with a heat gun on low to soften up the glue enough to carefully bend it back into shape, but that could run the risk of damaging it permanently if you were to heat it too much or something, so don't try it without asking someone more experienced first. In the end, it might be easier to just get a new bow and shelve your inherited one as a memento until you can find someone who has experience fixing that sort of thing to do it for you.
I don't eat meat, but I would if I hunted - and the hunted animals were at healthy/sustainable levels etc. Herbivores do breed until there's too many of them for the ecosystem to sustain and then suffer population collapse from disease/malnutrition, so they won't be missed and their lives up to that point would have been all natural. People hunting is a bit different from animals hunting because we have the choice not to, and that choice is to cause suffering... but other human activities like roads and agriculture and development also cause animal suffering, so maybe we wouldn't do it under ideal conditions, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to other immoral things humanity does.
Industrial farming is incomparably more evil than hunting.
I completely agree. The main reason that I don't hunt is that I personally just prefer not to kill. I'm confident that I could if I had to, but until then, I'd just rather not.
And yes, fuck industrial farming. I'm not under the delusion that me personally abstaining from eating meat in protest will have any significant impact, but at least I get a slightly cleaner conscience and a healthier lifestyle out of it.
The herbivore explosions are less common when they have a proper ecosystem with predators. The removal of wolves, bears, and pumas from North America has been a disaster.
True! There're islands where it happens naturally... The justification for hunting would be that we're just another predator - though one with the potential power of genocide.
oh hey! I used to do this like... 10 years ago and I've wanted to get back into this for ages! this is so cool! lay the deets on me. is it r/d or a regular recurve? is it backed? process pics? :D
if we get to like... 5 people, I'm going to start lobbying for a comm.
Thank you. It's a Bamboo-backed Osage recurve (normal -- no deflex) with Red Oak accents.
Sorry to say that I don't think I have any progress pics besides the original image, but here's one of it 100% finished, strung up, and ready for the range: https://i.imgur.com/YaRCXHX.jpeg (I did not make the bow quiver, the arrows, or the shooting glove).
Bamboo-backed Osage recurve (normal – no deflex) with Red Oak accents.
*drools*
very cool. where do you get your wood from? ebay? I've been lugging around a stave of yew and some bamboo for yeaaaars in the hopes that one day I'll have the space for a little workshop.
I would love to work a yew stave someday. Hang onto that thing, because as I’m sure you know, the ain’t cheap! I get my wood from a variety of places. I got my Osage from 3RiversArchery for a while, but they’ve been out of stock lately. I got an 8’ Ipê board from a local lumber yard for about $50 that I managed to get 6 r/d longbows out of, miraculously. I’ve also had some luck finding nice straight grain boards of various types at a local woodworking store here. And lately I’ve also been getting wood from Pine Hollow Longbows out in Arkansas (would definitely recommend them).
I also get a lot of bamboo from Echo Archery out in Oregon. Some of the best stuff I’ve been able to find — they put a lot of care into their selection.
