08/16/2026
Last year I was given a few old youth bows from the 1950’s/60’s. These bows were commonly used at schools and YMCA camps of that time. Notice the small hole in the upper limb over the string grooves. It was used to hang the bow in stores for display.
This was a project/experiment that I took a lot of time with. All told…about 16 weeks. I disassembled the riser and all glue joints. I lightly sanded and removed the old finish before letting everything sit about a 2 months while checking moisture and weight regularly. Once the weight and moisture stabilized I started to sand and reassemble with glue and clamps. Once dried I wrapped all glue joints with synthetic sinew for strength and piece of mind. I lightly heat treated and put a little reflex back in the limbs (which reduced the deflex set on each limb by over an inch). It went from 2 1/4” to 1” on one limb and 2” to just under an inch on the other and is still holding that after I lightly re-tillered out to 22”. After twisting a new string I bought the appropriate arrows for the draw weight and shot it many times drawn to that max to see if it would blow. I’m both thrilled and honestly surprised it survived.
This is a perfect weight and length to teach my nephew how to shoot a bow.
And even at just 20 # of draw weight it is not a toy. It is a snappy bow at 70 years old.
