Mini Bow

I finally finished my short bow. I initially started it about 4 years ago when my brother was just getting into bow making. He gave me a 38 inch stave to work on. I eventually got tired of working on it, but a couple months ago I decided to pick it up again.

Being so short, the bow can't withstand the same bending as a long bow. So the furthest I draw it is about 17 inches, well short of my 30 inch draw length. To help with the stability of the bow I made the limbs 1/2 inch wider than I would a long bow. I also didn't taper them till the last four inches. In the picture below you can see the limb width and the camo pattern I stained on it.


Over a year ago in my second bow making post, I said I was going to write about tillering. The bow I was working on at the time blew up so I didn't end up writing about it. This time I took a few pictures to show tillering. I didn't do a very good job tillering this bow. Ideally, the bend in each limb is even throughout and the two limbs match. As you can see below, when I first finished my bow, the limbs were not even. The limb on the right bends pretty evenly throughout, but the one on the left bends a lot more in the middle of the limb between numbers 3-6 on the wall.


Once I realized this, I went back and removed more wood from the right limb. The basic idea of tillering is to remove wood where the bow bends less and leave wood where it bends more. The picture below shows my final tillering. The limbs bend the same amount here, but they don't bend evenly throughout, so I only got it half right.


The bow pulls 47 lbs. at 17 inches. I wood burned this into the belly so I wouldn't forget.


To give you an idea of just how small this thing is, I put it next to my long bow. I also put my arrows for comparison. The short one is 20 inches. I'll have to play around to see what the best length will be. I took a few practice shots and the arrow fired higher than I expected. I think it is because when resting on my hand it is off center of the bow. By this I mean closer to the top tip than the bottom tip. This is the same with any bow, but with a shorter bow, being off center a couple inches makes a bigger difference.


Although this bow pulls 47 lbs., I'm not sure what the actual arrow speed is since it only pulls to 17 inches. I'll have to play around with it to see how it compares to my long bow. It should be noticeably slower since the string has so much less distance to travel.