Making a primitive bow...

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When making my handmade bow I really didn't expect the first couple tries to turn out so I used Oak, probably not the best bow wood but I had a woods full. After it was all said and done though I was really pleased with the way it shot. And after a hundred or so shots the limbs only follow the string less than an inch.
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After roughing out the bow with a friends band saw I glued a narrow strip back on for the riser section. This seemed easier to me than leaving a bunch of wood on for the riser and then rasping it away.
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After roughing in out I then began to taper the limbs with a rasp. This takes forever by the way. The back of the bow needs to be a single growth ring its entire length to keep a splinter from raising and/or the bow breaking. After the limbs began to bend I took a 2x4 and cut a notch in one end and drove wood screws in till only about a quarter inch below the heads showed an inch apart down the length of the board.
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This allowed me to bend the bow an inch at a time and step back and see how it bent. I took forever to do this over several evenings, maybe I was being overly carefull but I knew this was the most important step. When the bow was bending real well I backed the bow with sinew.
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Sinew is the dried tendons that conect muscle to bone. I used dried deer sinew. After the sinew is dried you can pull it apart into tough stringy fibers. I glued the sinew on with hide glue I made with a piece of deer hide. To make glue you put I piece of hide in water and boil it. And boil it and boil it, I think it took around ten hours for mine to turn into glue. You know its done when the water becomes a thin golden liquid kind of like watery maple syrup. After the sinew was applied I let it dry for a week then finished tillering out the bow. Once this was done I put a little bit of sinew down the belly (the side facing the shooter) of the bow and put a sinew ring around the bow every few inches to try to guard against breakage. I then let the bow cure for a couple weeks before I shot it.
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I also made a sinew string for the bow besides the dacron string I've been using. I'll probably practice with the dacron string to save wear and tear on the sinew string since it took like six hours to make the sinew string by twisting strands of sinew soaked in hide glue together into three sperate strings then wrapping these three into one string.
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The quiver I made of a piece of goat hide I got at a garage sale. The wood arrow is poplar and is fletched with feathers I found on walks glued on with hide glue and sinew wrapped.
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The broadhead is patterned after trade points that were cut out of old barrel bands and sold to the Indians in the early 1800's. I cut mine out with a hacksaw and shaped with a file just like it would have been back then. It shoots an inch lower than my aluminum arrows and field points but does fly straight. I'm going to try the whole works out on a whitetail next fall.
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