u/Facelyss

I finished this bow today after a couple of months of working on it. The bow is made from Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) with a deer sinew backing. The string bridges are black walnut, the snakeskin on the back is a Great Basin Gophersnake, and a couple of the knots have been drilled out and replaced with cow horn. The overall profile is based on a Coast Salish bow.

I've long had the idea that I may be able to get away with a bit of artistic liberty on the belly because juniper is so incredible in compression. It's by no means the ideal and it was really hard to get the tiller mostly evened out, still, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. It did develop a couple longitudinal hairline cracks in one limb, but they haven't grown or done anything really in over 200 shots now. I plan on shooting this bow regularly for the rest of the year at least to see how it holds up.

The bow is 45" nock to nock and draws #50 at 20". After 5-6 hours of brace time and dozens of shots, it sits at about a half inch of set which returns to dead straight after some rest. After first applying the sinew but prior to shooting the bow in, I was closer to an inch of reflex. This design is one of the more stressed I've done with juniper and a real testament to the wood that it's survived so far.

This bow was an experiment with cable backing as an alternative to sinew backing juniper. The bow is made from Sierra juniper (Juniperus grandis) with a braided hemp cable backing. It is 68" nock to nock and pulls #42 at 32".

Juniper can pull itself into some pretty severe deflex while the staves are drying. This particular stave had about 5.5" of deflex when I pulled it out. I tillered the bare bow to #32 at 32" with no set before adding the cable.

The cable is about 13' of braided hemp. I pulled the bow into about 2" of reflex before applying the cable and tensioning it. After releasing the bow, I was pleased to find the unbraced profile was pretty much dead straight. After bracing and working the bow in, it dropped from about #45 to #42 at 32" and the unbraced profile went back to about 3.5" of deflex. I'm not sure I can get more tension out of the cable to prevent it from having so much tip follow at this point.

I think if I was to continue to tinker with the bow, I would play with adding bridges. I suspect that changing the angle that the cable attaches to the bow might give it more leverage and help maintain a more neutral unbraced profile. As for the cable, I like the hemp that I used, but it would interesting to play with different cable materials as well. I do think braiding was a mistake as it just adds too much stretch into the backing. It does look nice though.

Overall, I'm relatively pleased with the bow. It is a smooth and easy shooter, if a bit sluggish. I was hoping for an easier alternative to sinew backing juniper, but I'm not sure that this is it. It's very fiddly in construction and the performance just isn't the same. On the plus side though, it is faster to put together and it looks cool.