Last year (or maybe the year before), I made an all-bamboo recurve bow, and to my amazement it actually worked. So I decided to try another one last year. But this time things went awry. The biggest problem was that the tips were horribly misaligned. I set the bow aside thinking there was no hope for it, and I haven't touched it in a year. But yesterday I decided to see if I could fix it. I figured I had nothing to lose at this point.
To my great surprize, it's a bow! It's not my best work, it's not tillered perfectly, but the tips are aligned, and it shoots.
The back is raw bamboo, the belly is bamboo flooring, the core has one lamination of aromatic cedar and one lamination of bamboo flooring, there's a piece of maple that runs through the handle and half way down each limb.
The handle is zebra wood, birdseye maple, bloodwood, and Osage.
I know that handle wrap looks like crap, but it was my first attempt at doing it that way. I got the leather from a leather jacket I bought at a garage sale for about $2. I couldn't even get a strip long enough for the whole handle wrap. so I used two strips.
This is my feable attempt at doing a fiddle back design with analine dye.
I never have been able to get that to work. I've tried all kinds of things--different dyes, different kinds of cloth or applicator, different ways of putting it on. I just can't get it to work.
I didn't bother to check draw weight or anything, but it feel like about 45#. I'm going to give it to a neighbor who has been begging me to make one for a couple of years now. I told him there was almost no chance this bow was going to make it, but that if I could save it, he could have it.
