How To Make A Bow And Arrow By Hand

After a compound bow failed him on a turkey hunt more than a decade ago, 29-year-old Michael Spink of Spink Wooden Bows in Pocahontas, Arkansas, started making his own wooden bows by hand. He walked us through the process of crafting a 68-inch Native American longbow. 1. Find your tree. Avoid weaker woods such as pine and willow in favor of hickory, oak, and maple.

Look for a diameter of at least 8 inches, which will require less carving. 2. Cut and split the tree. An 8-inch tree provides six or seven bow staves. Leave enough room on the end of each stave to cut off roughly 6 inches, where the wood might have cracks.

Keep the stave roughly 1√ inches wide from tip to tip and 1 inch thick. Leave the bark on to reduce cracking as the wood dries. 3. Let the wood dry. This typically takes at least three or four weeks but can be up to a year. The most flexible wood will warp into a bend called a reflex. 4. Debark your bow with a drawknife, as shown above, and mark the shape of the bow's broadside.

For a Native American longbow, the 5 inches in the center should be narrower than the limbs—1¼ inches across, widening out to about 1½ inches. 5. With a drawknife or band saw, refine the shape. Use a pocketknife to finish things off. 6. Lay the bow flat and taper the sides of the limbs with a drawknife. The middle 5 inches, which will be your grip, should be ¾ inch thick, tapering off to 1/2 inch when you reach the ends.

7. Use a chainsaw file, as seen above, to make string grooves at a 45-degree angle on the outside of both tips, about 1/2 inch from each end. On the bottom limb, make an extra set of grooves for the bow stringer, a separate string used to bend the bow for stringing. 8. Sand down the edges and tips and smooth the front and back surfaces. Then, with one tip of the bow against the ground, apply pressure to the top to create a slight bend—this is called floor tillering—inspecting the bow for any cracks or imperfections.

If you see anything other than small cracks on the front, you'll have to start over with a new piece of wood. 9. Create a tiller tree (above) to test your bow's flexibility. Vertically secure a 2 x 4 to the wall. Starting 5 inches from the top, make a horizontal notch with a Skilsaw every inch until you reach 30 inches.

String the bow loosely with parachute cord, center it on the top of the tree, and slowly move the string down the notches until it reaches the 28-inch mark, a typical full draw. At each step look for unevenness in the bend of the limbs. If they don't bend equally, even them up by shaving from the side that doesn't bend as much. 10. Shorten the parachute cord to make a small bend in the bow (5 inches between the bow center and the string).

Repeatedly draw the bow in a mirror to see which side remains slightly stiffer. The stiffer limb will be your lower limb. Once you identify it, use a sander to create a shallow indentation above the handle to the right or left, depending on which hand you use to shoot, for the arrow.

11. Sand and finish the bow. Hunters may want to use a dark stain because it's harder for animals to see. 12. Once the bow has been stained, dried, and sealed, wrap the 5 inches of handle with hemp cord using a whipping technique (above). Apply a light coat of glue, such as Titebond III, and let dry.

13. Create your final bowstring using a new length of B-50 bowstring material. A properly strung longbow should have enough bend to leave roughly 7 inches between the bow and the string. While you can cut your own shafts, you don't want to. It's too complicated, and even the smallest imprecision can throw off your shot.