I have picked up a couple of bows built by William Folberth. Does anyone have any info on these bows or know where I might find more of these fine bows?

sIR YOU ARE HOLDING ON TO SOME REAL ARCHERY HISTORY Mr Folberth and his brother invented the automotive wind shield wiper and sold the patent rites to the big 3 ,and became millionairs, Bill lived in Cleavland Ohio and took up archery as a hoby he then invented the shelf sight window and patend that idea and was receving $5 for every bow that Bear archery sold with a sight window! I own one of Bills Bows and an origanall news paper article with all the info (Cleavland Plain Dealer) REB

I've got a Folberth bow that I've had in my collection for years, it has a Pat. date of 1933. Folberth also made a sight that was very popular.

Bill was one of the contributors to "Archery on the technical side By Klopstag & Neagler. Which was one of the excellent books written on the subject of archery in the twenty's. He tried to create a shoot through bow. You do have a piece of History take goo care of it. Bob

Nice to no more of Archery history, why I like this site!

Thanks for the info guys. I have 13 Folberth bows and around 4 doz of his arrows with the small tapered knocks. I still shoot everyone of these great bows.They are the most quite and smooth bows I have ever shot. I will be bear hunting with one in Sept. All the equipment I will be useing will be at least 50 years old. Old and smooth , like me!!

Wow ! thats quite the colection! did you know about the Folberth history? before this post? I dont shoot the bow in my colection but I do use wind shield wipers !:) REB

That's really neet.

I have 3 of these fine bows , but my rarest one has a Bamboo back.

I wrote an article for Instinctive Archer some years ago about Folberth. I got hold of his son to find out about his father. He was 83 years old at the time, and one crusty old fart. He told me his dad only made a dozen or so bows a year and didn't think it was worth my time to write about him. Then in the info that he sent me was a copy of an invoice where Ben Pearson had paid his dad 7 cents a bow for the cut out window patent for a year of production. It came to somewhere over $1500.00 dollars. There was a hand written note from Ben Pearson apologizing for being late with the payment. So if Bear was paying $5.00 per bow he was getting the shaft. The info also had a copy of an article that appeared in Popular Mechanics stating that Bill Folberth had shipped about 3000 bows overseas. He made his original cut out from the 6 side strute material of the early airplane wings. He would insert osage limbs in each end of the metal strute and wrap a handle up out of leather. I had one of those early bows, and dumb me, I let a friend talk me out of the bow. I have a 70# Folberth that I have never been able to shoot. Glad to hear that they are such good shooters

Acording to the news paper article I had they said Bear paid $5 each, of course we Know how acurate the paper can be;) REB

That was probably a typo on Bear, and I'm betting it was 5 cents a bow. Another thing that is little known about William Folberth is that he developed the alloy for 24SRTX aluminum shafts. At the time it was revolutionary and was the beginning of tough aluminum shafting. The use of aluminum was banned in the 1940's because of the big war, but after that we saw what happened with aluminum arrows.

I have a Folberth bow which has the same patent date as the one pictured. It is not a recurve but a longbow. It had the bow site which I removed. It has the same red lacing handle.

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