Self Bow Building for Beginners - Complete Guide

In this step by step bow making video, Clay Hayes takes you, step by step, through how to make a hickory self bow from self bow design through tillering and finally shooting our new longbow. It is a complete guide, DIY self bow building for beginners. We start with a small hickory bow stave and use very few bow building tools to make this wooden bow. These techniques will work to build bows in the recurve bow, longbow, and flatbow designs. For this build we’ll use a drawknife and farrier’s rasp for the bulk of the work. We start by using the drawknife to remove the bark and cambium form the bow stave, then use a chalk line to mark center. We lay out a 64“ longbow and rough it out before starting to tiller the bow. Before the final tillering, we clamp the selfbow to a form and heat treat the belly to harden it and make a more efficient weapon. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 09:40 Bow Building Tools 10:53 Self Bow Design and Layout 18:29 Roughing the bow out 20:40 Cutting the fades 43:53 Floor Tillering 46:46 Heat Treating 52:22 Tillering 01:18:38 Handle and arrow shelf 01:25:00 Shooting Some other videos that complement this one: How to tie string nocks: Choosing arrows: Tuning for perfect arrow flight: Finish Work: Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. We’re uploading a new video each week that features one of the following topics: archery, bow hunting, bow building, survival skills, bushcraft, self reliance, primitive skills, primitive bows, hunting, camping, fishing, and a lot more! Big thanks to our partners who help support these videos! Backpacks - Archery Gear - Tents & Tarps - Binoculars - Broadheads - Arrow Shafts - Clothing - You can also connect with me on my other media outlets! Website: Facebook: Instagram: Patreon: