First PVC bow build

[SwissArmyKnife]

Awhile back my wife bought a bow for our 5 y/o boy at a fair. All it was was about 2 1/2' of 1/2" pvc pipe with some twine and spray paint. Arrows were dowel rods with gigantic odd randomly shaped foam tips glued on. Well he had fun with it for about half an hour cause he couldn't hit anything consistently with it. I let him use one of my spare carbon arrows without a tip and he went to town, hit my deer bag target dead center at about 10 yards! I saw someone else here post about making a pvc bow and quickly I began to think of reshaping my son's piddley plinker. I stripped off the pipe insulation grip and hot glue, ditched the twine, and heated up our electric stovetop. I didn't have boards to make the limb jig so I used a couple wooden cutting boards to shape them. I had to reheat one limb because I didn't get part of it hot enough and it didn't take shape well, so it wasn't drawing back evenly on both of them. I gutted some paracord and after some trial and error, fixed my bowline knots (think that's the right knot name), trimmed and singed the excess, covered the limbs in camo cloth tape (more for safety if they shatter), and the grip in OD green duct tape. With my carbon 28" arrow and a 100grn field tip, and about a 10" partial draw, it penetrate my bag target about 2 1/2" to 3".







I'll be giving it back to him tomorrow after school, I'm pretty sure he'll dig it. I might see about posting some pics and/or video of him shooting it later.

[muerte69]

That's pretty neat and I am sure your son will enjoy it.

[Loogaroo]

Thinking of making one for my daughter. Very cool.

[tim martin]

i have thought about doing this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zyV8tZGJtE

[SwissArmyKnife]

I like it, but I think I'd leave out the last rod he puts in. I've got bursitis in my shoulders so over 50lb gets painful. I wonder if with the pvc he puts inside if you can still heat it up enough to form it.

[tim martin]

i dont see why not. you would just have to bring it up to temp. slower so as to not burn the outside before the inside got hot

[Pappy Frank]

That is some kinka greatness. Your son should love it.

I have been contemplating building a PVC bow and ran across this fellow on you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/backyardbowyer

He has a lot of info about building PVC bows. Over 200 videos on the subject. Worth checking out.

He also has info about making bow strings that is very interesting.

My bow should be done in a few days, I hope and and am planning a thread on it then.

[bone collector 85]

Thats awesome now i have to build one lol my son just told me he wanted one after seeing the pic

[SwissArmyKnife]

Update
My son really likes the "new" bow. He has made a friend in our new neighborhood and they like to take turns with it on my bag target.

I adjusted the position of the grip a little off center since the bows so short. Then I took a bit of metal in had laying around and made an arrow rest. I then used a square and measured from the rest to the string to mark off a nock point. I added some white cloth tape strips on either side of this point wide enough to easily nock an arrow. I used a bit of gorilla duct tape around the arrow rest because it was chewing up my fetchings. This has cured the accuracy inconsistency problem my son was having. He has attention issues (like most 5yo boys, but a bit worse) and I don't want him to get discouraged because he can't hit the target. So we're taking baby steps.

All in all, it's a pretty sweet little bow. My wife even had a bit of fun shooting it (SCORE!). I may make my next project some light weight short arrows, right now it's pushing that 26" carbon express 4" vane arrow with a 100grn field tip pretty well, but this project ain't over yet... More to come...

[forgeblast]

Thats a real nice bow, I have made some long bows for my wife and daughter out of pvc, but that recurve looks great.
I built mine on the http://www.tradbow.com/public/269.cfm bows of many colors design. I was impressed with how they hit.