I am interested in PVC bows. Are they junk? Comments are solicited.

Not from some I've seen Gil, looks like they would be fun to mess around with. The Hawaiian gentleman on you tube seems to have it down pat.I saw a very short horse bow at the Kalamazoo Expo that was stained to look like wood and was actually pretty impressive.

I built some just for fun, with the idea its so simple there is a potential to have kids at a trad 3D shoot build their own and be shooting them within 1/2 hour from cutting pipe to sending arrows downrange.

The guy Steve mentions is a good place to check out the specifics. On one of his you tubes, he shows how he inserts a bundle of solid fiberglass rods into the pipe creating a #40 draw bow.

The bows at 60" have a draw weight around 20# and need to be taller than most kids. But experiments with them, and I could go a bit shorter without the risk of having the pipe buckle in the middle if overdrawn. By strengthening the center of the bow with a shorter piece of smaller diameter pipe inside rather than a staggered bundle of fiberglass rods, I could get draw weights into the 25# range.

Tips: The quality and ID dimensions of the plastic pipe varies, so if going with smaller pipe inside the bow, check for outside and inside dimension matchups when buying the pipe.

The pipe has a definite "spine" or stiff side and you need to take a second to find it and align the tip nock cuts, otherwise you get "instant warp".

I ended up using old takeoff strings and drilling a larger hole through the tips instead of a hacksaw'd tip nock. Pushing the loops all the way through the holes and then using the loop back over the end of the pipe was a quick and IMO stronger connection than a loop into a tip nock groove.

So long as the bow remains braced, there is enough curve to hold the internal added power section of pipe in the middle of the bow. But I also used rubber bands around the ends of the internal pipe to keep it in place.

The bows take a curve "set" immediately, so the above may not be needed to keep the inside pipe section in place, but it can't hurt.

Last, I bought some of those foam pipe insulation tubes. A 4-5" piece around the middle and taped down, but with foam un-taped on the upper end created a dual shelf arrow rest.

Because the bows don't generate enough energy for normal arrow tuning to be needed, that bucket of lost/found arrows always around, is the instant source of arrows for our newby archer and bow.

r.

Year ago I made a 48 inch youth recurve after watching Nick's u-tube. It's 48",42# @ 28. I draw 27" and shot 28" 1535 GT arrows through a chronograph at 155ft/sec. It shoots easy and accurately in 20yd range. I was quite surprised and remain impressed! They are cheap fun and quite easy to make. Nick(backyard Bowyer) also shows how to make more complex higher performance bows. Have fun!

Not bad till it's cold weather

I built one for my boys out of smaller diameter pipe... Pretty sure I used 1" to keep the draw weight light

A few unique touches, for what they're worth... It's not so much that I think I did a great job, but I'd bet a lot of you guys could take some of these ideas to a whole new level...

This obviously won't work with larger pipe, but it was really easy to heat the pipe to a good, workable temperature by putting it through the 'rotisserie' hole on the side of a gas grill; I had to avoid touching the metal of course, but rotating the pipe inside the closed lid got it heated up nice and even... You can tell it's ready when it looks like a fat kid on a hot day.... kinda bloated and sweaty. And by measuring and marking the pipe I was able to get to the same insertion depth on both ends, and if I were doing it again, I'd probably mark in several spots and heat it in several steps or stages so that the ends ended up hotter and more pliable than the center..

I'd expect a lot of you guys are handy enough to cobble together a "lid" for a grill that could accommodate whatever diameter pipe you want to use....

Then I formed some static recurve tips in two steps: One was that I connected 2 pieces of plywood with a bit of a hinge at 1 end and a couple small blocks screwed onto other as a separator; when I sandwiched that down on the hot pipe, it created a press which flattened out the pipe over the distance of about a foot. Kept the taper uniform and prevented crushing it on the 'riser' end. Worked well to have the blocks taller than the pipe diameter.

The other step was bending the heated tip around a suitable cylinder.. I think a 2-quart juice can was what I used, but you could go larger or smaller depending on the shape you want.

Now, the kicker is that I don't recall which of those steps came first, but I'm pretty sure I put in the curve first and then flattened it. That gave me limb tips which are flattened 'the wrong way', but that's what makes them static. I actually overdid the curve and ended up first shortening them some and then making big loops on the string so that it straddled the curve and stayed down the middle, rather than ending up on one or the other side of the limb tip.

Last thing was to heat the mid-section of the bow and bend it around a big flower pot to give the bow a subtle-but-overall-recurved shape when even un-strung.

Mistakes...

One was that I started off with 48" of pipe and after I had trimmed off the too-long recurved tips a little and had put the bend in the center of the bow, I was looking at about a 38-40 incher with around a 6" brace height. It also drew about #25 at 16", which is a whole lot heavier than I had expected... It had quite good cast, though....

The other mistake was flattening the tips the wrong way.. It makes a good static tip, but too many other complications arise. Maybe if I had contented myself with a mild, static-tipped R-D LB.... Drilling holes instead of cutting string nocks sounds like a good move...

And had I been thinking abut it, it would have been smarter to put the bend in the middle first... I just hadn't planned to do that from the outset..

And I'm still trying to figure out how to make a jig that would produce something approximating a mildly recurved/R-D Holmgaard, or, if you had a router, maybe you could figure out how to press the pipe into an Adcock type of affair. Just make sure you send them a royalties check if you ever sell one.... ;)

What is your experience with the cold , longsmoke?

Last winter, ran across them while pondering the idea of getting into archery, and checking out bows online. A five dollar chunk of 3/4" pvc, chunk of 1" for a grip/arrow shelf, little bit of hockey tape, some para cord, and away you go. Couple of mongrel arrows.. I was mostly expecting a five yard fizzle. Chucked em out a lot faster and farther than I expected, and for a guy that had pretty much no experience with bows, a lot smaller group than I expected.

I really enjoy watching the Backyard Bowyer videos. He does a great job and the bows are cool!

The Backyard Bowyer is cool, imho. He just released his first book. I saw it on eb@y. He must be self-published. I like Nick's style.

I think his book is actually fairly well received. It seems to be out there and not just on ebay.

As to cold - if PVC gets to cold it gets brittle and is far more likely to break than bend. Probably would be OK for target shooting and such, but leaving it outside when it's real cold will have a detrimental affect on the bows integrity.

X2. I have had several break or crack. Something to do with heating it I think. I dropped one on when it was about 30 degrees I the concrete and the tip broke off so I just quit messin with them.

dropped on concrete

sorry smart phone issues ha ha

I made this one following backyard bowyer's videos. 1" pipe 60" long (58" ntn). Used a heatgun, 2x4, and a paint can for the recurves. 50# @ 28, 55# @ 30

Strung

I tapered the tips and cut string notches, then heated them up so they opened, brushed contact cement into them and pinched them shut before they cooled.

Has anybody here actually taken game with one? I have no doubt you can just asking if anybody has. It would be a fun challenge.

Nick has also played around with off setting the handle/grip to make it a center shot bow.

There are some guys out there making some pretty amazing bows out of PVC.

No game. But Im gonna try :0)

I have made a few and broke a few as well.

In summary I would say they are equivalent to a good all wood self bow. They shoot about the same speed (enough to hunt with) and about the durability (not as tough as a fiberglass lam bow).

Todd

Pretty nice Dingas :)

"In summary I would say they are equivalent to a good all wood self bow"

I don't know about that. I have owned some selfbows that will rival the finest glass bows. I guess I'll have to shoot some PVC and see.

Thanks Marshall.

They are fun to make (and cheap! That cost me about $4 for the pipe, I had everything else).

I have made them with the boys club at our church on our campout last summer and the boys loved it. We did a 48" length and 3/4" pipe and got a 40# bow with a straight handle, not the "horse bow" profile mine has.

As to the cold if you use the grey PVC pipe (electrical conduit) it is supposed to handle the cold better but I havent tried it in the cold. Mine is the white pipe but the ones we did with the boys we used grey (one of the leaders is an electrician and his boss gave us all the pipe free)

I was going to say as well that although they do make a nice bow, I wouldnt compare it to self bow. It throws an arrow pretty quick and certainly it is enough to kill but I think a well made self bow will outperform it. Also wood has a warmth and beauty that plastic and spray paint cant compete with. But then I am a cabinet maker and prefer wood for pretty much anything ;0)

Did not mean to offend the self bow crowd. I have made more then a few wood bows from yew, osage, hickory backed red cedar to name a few. I would say mine are "average" performers shooting 100 fps plus draw weight of bow. For example a 50 pound shoots about 150 fps. No doubt some people have built wood bows that are to superior to mine and my hat is off to them.

I am going to dig up my notes and give some actual numbers to compare to.

Todd

Okay I found some notes on my PVC bows:

All shot with tab, drawn 27", and using a 485 grain wood arrow

Hungarian style- 55 pounds---avg. 162 fps

Korean style----50 pounds---avg. 158.1 fps

Assyrian/Turkish style-55 pounds---avg. 166.5 fps

All bows used fast flite strings either 12 or 14 strands.

Todd

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