Poor Folk Bows
Bow building for poor people and apartment dwellers
Brought to you by: SAM HARPER
Bow building links
General bow building web pages
John Scifres John used to have a lot of build alongs on a web page that no longer exists, and I learned more about tillering from him than anyone else. But he's still got some stuff on this new web page, including a thing on tillering. A lot of stuff from his old web page can still be found on the wayback machine. It's definitely worth checking out.
George Tsoukalas More good information from a very helpful gentleman. He's a regular on the leatherwall discussion forum. He's got some good articles on building board bows. He's also got a variety of other build alongs, including arrows.
Trad Gang's 'How To" section There's a wealth of tutorials on this page for how to do all kinds of things. Also check out their Build Alongs section.
Bow building discussion forums
The Leatherwall This is the one I use most often.
Trad Gang. A variety of boards. I mostly use the "bowyer's bench" forum.
Paleoplanet. Wide variety of topics discussed here.
Archery Talk. I don't use this one, but there it is anyway.
Build alongs I think are super cool
V-Archery build along This is a very detailed build along for a beautiful fiberglass laminated longbow.
Lothlorien apoxie sculpt. I had to use the wayback machine to find this, but this is Justin from G.I. Bow showing how he puts the leaf designs on his super cool Legolas bow replicas. This tutorial is complete with Enya music from one of the movies to get you in the mood. I made one of these myself.
Two piece take down fiberglass sleeve I've actually done one of these, and they work very well.
Another two piece take down fiberglass sleeve (more detail/YouTube video): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10. I think the way this guy grooves out his handle before applying the fiberglass/epoxy works better, although it's a little more labor intensive.
Steve Moore's ERC ELB This one is incomplete, but I learned a cool method for roughing out character bows--using the circle stencil.