I'm been meaning to try gluing up a bow with this method for a few years now. Finally got the wedges made and we are making a bamboo dragon for Ben. It will be 62" and had bamboo back and belly. Belly is tempered. Core is ipe, maple and thai ironwood. Riser is thai rosewood.
James Parker has been helping me with info on making his style bows and even got a lam grinder from him so I can do tapers now. I'm making lots of saw dust in the car port and driving my wife nuts. I'm going to be making up a bunch of these with all local woods to see what works best. Ipe and Maple are not local but I had a bit of them that Ben wanted to use in his bow.
I'm really looking forward to seeing it shoot. Ben is my new archery buddy. He recently moved here from Mongolia. He has a saxon bow and has been wanting to make his own. This will be a take down as well for travel. He's a big boy and played on the Mongolian national rugby team. I'm got plans to strap a pig and his back and have him be my mule to get it off the mountain soon as these monsoons ease up a bit.
This was a first for us doing this and something still isn't quite right. Not sure if its the wedge shape or the rope we used but we had a hard time getting them to go in deep.
But we kept at it and got a pretty good glue line (hopefully) we used Urac 185.
Here is the profile. You bend the bow and then hit the wedges in with a small hammer and the bamboo wedges then hold the profile you have put in. One problem area for us was the riser where it tapers into the limbs. I ended up taking out a few wedges and used good old C clamps to make sure it was tight. The twine also broke once or twice so we need to make some improvements with better rope next time.
We also used thin bamboo wrapped in electrical tape as outer pieces to protect our backing and belly but we decided that maybe pvc would be better as the electrical tape tore and make it hard to pound the wedges in well.
Awesome! So thats how you got to stay bent? Just bend it and drive in the wedges? I'd really like to see a video of this process. Cant wait to see it done.
Hey Marty. Good to see you around again. I saw your nice climbing stand set up. Best wishes on the upcoming season.
BB1004. I have one of James' bamboo dragons with two ipe cores and a cummaroo (sp??) center core and it is a great bow. Hits hard, shoots fast and is accurate. Also beautiful to look at. I told James he has kinda ruined me as I like my self bows but then I pick up his dragon and I end up shooting that the most.
Ben and I are both making matching rosewood pipes with buffalo horn stems as well from some of the pieces left from making risers.
Some of Ben's other talents. He cures and smokes his own bacon (also hoping to shot a hog soon for him to do that for me) and he makes his own brew. He also does some scrimshaw so I gave him an elk button to do a scene of the nice whitetail buck I was able to shoot a few years ago as it jumped the beaver creek bed before I got a shot at him. Looking forward to seeing that when its done and put it on a quiver or something.
PMB. Jaap has a few videos of making a yumi bow on youtube. James has one as well doing wedges. You'll notice Jaap's is much more complicated as he is putting deflex and reflex into the bow so you switch the side you put the wedges on.
here you go (there are more of them there but his one shows what I was talking about). I see Jaap has his rope closer together than we had it so maybe that was one problem. I think my wedges need a bit more thinning too maybe.
The reason he does that is because he is doing a yumi bow with both reflex and deflex. I was just doing reflexed tips on a longbow so you keep them on one side. But maybe I should have kept the pattern doing the whole way instead of reversing it in the center like we did. It made a bit of a problem where they met.
If you wait for it to load before clicking play you might still be able to watch it.
