Anyone ever make a "self bow"

[Matthew Campbell]

I've been looking for reasonably low mess projects to keep me occupied in my apartment. I'm playing around with my scroll saw which is fairly low mess and then I discovered plans for making the American Flat Bow - a "self bow" meaning made from one continuous single piece of wood. Has anyone tried building one of these? I'm going to try my hand at it. Once I get started I'll post pictures in the projects forum as I work on it.

[tim rowledge]

"American Flat Bow"? Excuse me, did no-one hear about the English Longbow; y'know the weapon that took out the French armies at Crécy (650 years ago!), Agincourt, Poitiers etc? And it was an old design then (claimed oldest example dated ~2700BCE)
A chest of them was found on the recovered wreck of the Mary Rose some years ago. A few were carefully dried out and tested, suggesting draw weights of 100lbf to perhaps 150lbf. I know *I* can't pull a bow of that strength anymore.

Anyway, I've not made one myself but it must be a moderately popular hobby here on Vancouver Island because both my local lumber stores sell Hickory and sometimes Yew bow blanks and claim to sell them regularly. My suggestion for making one would be to investigate some copies of 'Traditional BowHunter' and look for sites like http://www.thewoodenbow.com/longbow_onetree.html
http://www.huntingsociety.org/BowMakingLong.html
and of course
http://www.english-longbow.co.uk/

Personally I'd prefer a decent modern composite recurve. Not one of those dreadful monstrosities with wheels and cams and stuff though.