Nephi's Steel Bow Competition

BYU's mechanical engineering department held a competition right before Thanksgiving where the contestants had to build a bow out of all steel and then see whose would shoot an arrow the farthest with a 50 pound pull. Brice found out about it and thought that he could probably make one at home in a short amount of time and that it could be a pretty good one. There was a cash prize, so he went for it. He got a set of leaf springs from a junk yard and went to work with the stuff we have in the garage (we have a lot of tools). His bow was a really good idea and it looks really cool. It was competitive, too! Unfortunately, one of the mechanical engineering classes offered extra credit to their students if they participated. They got to do it in groups, they had a month or more to work on it, and they had access to all the machinery and tools on campus. Brice was kinda bummed about that because there would have been a lot less competition otherwise. Still, Brice's bow was really cool and it worked well. While the kids and I were standing around waiting for Brice's turn, I heard lots of the other students talking about Brice's bow and what a good design he had. Yeah, I married a genius.

Here's Brice's bow. He had to alter it on site at the last minute because they changed the weight of the pull from 80 pounds to 50 pounds. Good thing he's handy and had brought some tools!

They strapped the bows to this thing and used a spring and a crank to pull back the string until there was 50 pounds of pull on it. Then they let 'em rip! The winners' arrow went across the entire field and across the street into an apartment parking lot. No one else was even close to their record. Everyone else's bow was in about the same range as Brice's. It was a pretty fun competition. But COLD!