My latest Homemade Longbow

[Rancid Crabtree]

I then began to focus on the arrows for Josh's new bow. I bought Gold Tip Traditionals because of the wood grain look.



After capping the back 9 inches of the shafts with white lacquer, I started cresting the shafts using a color scheme that resembles the riser. I will write Josh's name on all the shafts.





The fletching will be 4 1/2 inch long LW barred turkey feathers. Since nobody sells 4 1/2 feathers, I bought 5 inch parabolic cut and converted them to 4 1/2 shield cut.



Now the fletching begins.



One down, 11 more to go.



While waiting for the fletches to dry, I made the rug rest and strike plate for the bow.

For the strike plate, I used 2-3 Oz. leather and for the rug, I used the fuzzy side of some adhesive backed Velcro strip I had laying around.



The leather was from some scrap I had so I needed to add some double sided tape to make it stay on the riser.

[Rancid Crabtree]

With the finish on the bow all set and hard, I was able to to the task of making the leather grip. The finished wood was very slick and needed some texture. I started with a piece of 4 Oz. tooling leather and got it good and wet so I could form it to the shape of the grip. The wet leather is on the right. I gets much darker when you wet it.



While it's wet, it can be formed and shaped and stretched to fit the contour of the riser. Once I had it shaped, I used a blow dryer to dry it off.





So far during this build along, I have been pretty good about taking pictures of each step. Until now. I must be getting tired because I did a bunch of stamping and tooling on the leather but forgot to get pictures of the process. After stamping and cutting the leather to it's final size, I punched some lacing holes. I then applied a coat of rubber cement to both the inside of the leather and the bow's riser.



After lacing, I gave the leather a coat of Neats foot oil to restore the oils lost during the working of the leather and from blow drying. The oil makes the leather even darker. Now, you can see the tooling and stamping I forgot to take pictures of earlier.





Then I took it outside for a picture in natural light.

[Rancid Crabtree]

The bow project is finished with the exception of the fact that Josh wants to design and make his own broadheads. It was a fun project and I learned a lot of useful stuff for the next bow.















And finally he got to shot if for the first time.





I then shot the bow through a chorongraph using a 125 grain field point. This brought the total arrow mass to 425 grains. The speed at 28 inches of draw was 174 FPS. This will produce 28.5 Foot pounds of K.E. giving him even more reason to keep any shots on game at less than 20 yards and broadside. This will also be a design consideration when he starts to design the broadhead. All good lessons.

Now, as for naming the bow, We thought on it for some time and kept coming back to the first post where I explained the the bow was being made with a sort of legacy piece of wood. That name stuck. I explained to Josh that this bow is only to be handed down to one of his children. I hope I am around to see that.

[Rancid Crabtree]

During the bow build, I bought a new digital camera that will also shoot video so I used Josh as my Guinea Pig. I told him to shot 3 arrows into the target. I had him stand about 5 yards away because I was burning brush in our backyard fire pit and that was where we had to stand to stay out of the smoke.

I told him to fire the 3 arrows and not to talk or look in the camera. His first shot was a dead center hit on the bullseye. The second shot cracked the nock of the first arrow and made it glance out. You can tell by the way he shakes his head that he wants to look at the camera and say something.

Here is my first ever video staring Josh and his homemade custom Longbow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsU5S6fwV6g

[Jack]

Rancid, that bow is truly amazing work!

[gumpokc]

I second that, very very nice, and quite interesting too.

[jplonghunter]

Rancid

Terrific post! Let us know when Josh takes his first deer with Legacy.

jplonghunter