Reddit mentions of The Impossible Bow: Building Archery Bows With PVC Pipe

I second /u/otis888's suggestion of looking up the work of Nicholas Tomihama. He has several books out on Amazon, The Impossible Bow among others. He also has a YouTube channel showing people how to use heat from a heat gun, stove top or even a box filled with electric light bulbs to heat form the PVC into very slick tapered bow shapes. These PVC bows made by tapering the PVC outperform non-tapered PVC by quite a bit, and his bows have been known to shoot arrows (at around 10 grains per pound) at more than 160 fps. Some arrows have been clocked at up to 196 feet per second, when shot from a 65 pound bow made form $1 worth of 3/4 inch PVC.

I've made a bunch of these bows, some for myself and some for my kids and their friends. The youth bows cost me under $2.50 each, including the PVC, strings, paint, etc, and shoot as well as any commercial bows you can buy for less than $100. It takes me less than an hour to go from unfinished PVC tube to a nice, working hungarian style horse bow, or a traditional recurve. Another hour to paint it and put on a comfortable hand grip, and it's ready to take out and shoot.

So far, I've used my main shooter (a 40 pound recurve) shoot over 1000 arrows with no signs of degradation at all. I can still hit a 4" target from 20 yards away with it, and the arrows sink the same distance into the target today as they did the first time I used it.

Some of my friends, upon making bows for themselves or their kids, tell me that the PVC youth bows shoot faster than the bows that they have bought for their kids in the local sporting goods store. I know the weights are about the same - 15 to 22 pounds, depending on how long the bow limbs are and how much you recurve the bow during the build process.