Heres the part most pople were asking me to write.
How To Make a Depenable Long Bow
The first step to me is the hardest.
1. Find a limb of hickory or another type of wood in yuor area. Get a lenght that you think will suite you. remember it will be shorter after you string it. Make sure it is curved evenly. You dont want much of a curve just very slight. If you get a limb that bends more towards one end. Your bow will look like this.
If you bow comes out like that, it will not last long or shoot right. The pressure is not even in the limbs when you draw and will cause it to break.
You want your bow to look like this.
Your limb should be a little thicker than a shovel handle.
2. get a sharp knife. Start whittling the bow flat along the curve, except fo the middle leave it rounded. Thats your "handle". Doing this takes alot of time, dont expect to finish this bow in a few days. While whittling your bow flat you will hit little knots in the wood from where smaller limbs were. I found its easiest to just saw them off with a small saw like on a leatherman knife.
3. With hickory and some other types of wood you should let it dry out for a while 3 weeks at least. It really depends on the type of wood you use. Some work better dry, some green.
4. After its dry you can string it. first cut little notches about an inch down from the end of each limb (now "limb" means each end of the bow) this is to hold the string from sliding.
The way you string it is first tie a loop (slipknot works best) on one end of the string and put it on one end of the bow. Now cut the string a few inches shorter than the bow. Tie a loop on that end. Now Brace the end of the bow with the string on it on the floo and against your foot so it dosent slid. Gently bent the bow untill you can slip the loop on the other end. Now you have a bow! The first thing you do after you finish it is gently draw the string back. If you hear any cracking or popping you might as well throw the bow away and start over. And dont pull the string back more than the bow can handle because Duh, it'll break.
Now Here is the number one rule of bows, remember it! Never dry fire! this put massive amounts of stress on the bow and can either break a limb or the string. By dry firing, I mean shooting it with out an arrow.
Now its hard to explain the tricks that go into building a bow. The best thing you can do to learn, is to try it. I doubt that you will make a really good bow on your first try. I diddent, it took me several trys. I still mess up sometimes. Pratice make dosent always make perfect, but it helps.
side note: You can buy bowstring, but nylon string works pretty good too.