I've been making bows for about my whole life, when I lived on Maui as a kid my friends and I used bamboo for bows and arrows. They were simple and no more than 20 pound draw. When I moved to michigan, Ivery made them from all kinds of woods. Maple, ash, hickory, black chery, black walnut, and osage orange if I could find osage. Most of the time they were either longbow, my favorite. Or flatbow. Or a combination of several styles.
I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to jig a recurve, and exceed 80 pounds in draw for any bow. This one is white ash, cured for about 8 months, 64" long, pulling 100 pounds at 29". All that's left is a permanent string, silencers for it, sanding it down, a leather wrapped handle and arrow shelf. I may even wrap the handle with some wire for an extra grip surface and looks. This bow is along the lines of a recurve longbow flatbow selfbow lol. No power tools were used at all, only a bow saw to take the tree, a hatchet to move some wood fast, a multitool and pocket knife to tiller it like a wood plane. Mostly the multitool because of its small saw and file for the notches and arrow shelf. The concept was could I be dropped into the woods with limited hand tools and come out with a recurve. A small fire and some oil was used to heat the wood to be bent between two close by trees. I'll have to make heavy duty arrows that have the spine to stand up to the war bow weights.
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