Compound Bows Made Of WOOD?!

Below is a selection of videos and photos about compound bows that have been made out of wood - which is unusual since most compound bows these days are made out of aluminum, alloys and carbon fibre in an effort to reduce weight. As you will see most of these wooden compound bows are homemade by people who evidently felt the need to experiment.

The first video here is a bow made out of mostly wood and PVC pipes.




The 2nd video here is made of wood laminates, zinc and more. The maker goes into detail as to the building materials at the end of the video.



The 3rd video here shows a guy who made a bow out of wood - and he shows the process he uses for attaching the 2nd cam on the top of the bow after his 1st attempt at making compound bow with only a bottom cam fails. (For some unknown reason he designed the bow to shoot off a right side arrow rest when it should properly be on the left side.)



Some of the wooden compound bows shown below are made in a factory, but very few compound bow manufacturers use wood these days. If you go looking to buy a wooden compound bow the easiest way to do so is to buy an old one made in the 1970s or 1980s.

At the very least the videos and images shown here should give you some DIY ideas if you want to design and make your own wooden compound bow.

How Compound Bows Are Made - Bowtech in Oregon

The video below demonstrates how compound bows are made at the Bowtech factory in Oregon, USA. One of my bows (I currently have 18 bows) was made in the Oregon factory, so it was interesting to me to see where my bow was actually made and how it was made.

For those people looking to get into bowhunting with compound bows I recommend getting compound bow archery lessons so you actually know how to tune your compound bow properly and proper form with your bow - both are necessary if you want to the best possible accuracy. Not knowing how to tune your compound bow sights / etc and not knowing proper form means you will make all sorts of mistakes (and probably lose/damage lots of arrows) when you could have learned the proper way from the beginning. It doesn't matter so much where you get your lessons from, but you should get someone to teach you how to do it properly.

Websites for Bowyers

The following list of websites was sent to me by Toronto bowyer Mike Meusel following a conversation he and I had on March 24th.

#1. Tuff Tooth

https://www.tufftooth.com/ for bandsaw blades of every length. (This came up in our conversation in relationship to my two bandsaws and my difficulties finding bandsaw blades that fit my old bandsaw.)

#2. Great Lake Arrow Traditional Fletching Supplies

http://www.greatlakearrow.com/  for arrow supplies. The company sells arrow shafts, feather fletching, nocks, arrowheads, adhesives and tools.

#3. Rodney Wright Archery

http://wrightarchery.com/boutique/  Mike bought a leather side quiver from him. "He’s good." say's Mike. Rodney Wright also sells high quality arrows, bow building materials, bow strings, and a variety of high end longbows and recurve bows.

#4. Marc's Bows and Arrows

http://ironwoodbowyer.com/ – "Probably the best bowyer in Ontario, and definitely one of the top in North America," says Mike. Sells composite bows, longbows, arrows, quivers and much more. Also has a fair chunk of info on bow building techniques.

The photo below is from Marc's website, which I thought was fascinating.

BONUS

Basically Bows Archery
http://basicallybowsarchery.com/ - This isn't one of the websites Mike sent me because he knew I already know about this particular shop in Toronto, but I felt I should mention it too. Basically Bows sells longbows, recurves, fletching tools, feather fletching, bow string, nocks, arrowheads, tools and more. If you are into longbows and traditional archery, Basically Bows is the place to go in Toronto.

2nd BONUS

Century Mills in Stouffville, Ontario
http://centurymill.com/site/foreign-hardwoods-1/
+ http://centurymill.com/site/domestic-hardwood-1/ - For both domestic hardwoods and foreign hardwoods, Century Mills in Stouffville sells a variety of woods good for both bowmaking and arrowmaking - and you can easily find them in the right sizes for bow staves, making them easy to browse and find what you are looking for. Mike mentioned Century Mills recently in a different conversation.