Tomb Raider Compound Bow by Silesti

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Brought together some separate parts with make the whole a little bit better!
18/01/21 - Added Assembly guidance and pics
20/01/21 - Additional information. This bow is based upon the Bowtech Specialist (the current model II is still very similar) so that can be used for additional reference if anyone needs it.
What is it?
During ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ Lara Croft finds compound bow parts in crates across the areas she’s exploring. Once assembled she is able to use, and modify, this weapon to great effect!
One of the key modifications is the addition of a lighter which allows Lara to use fire and explosive arrows.
The model
This is my version of that compound bow and has drawn from a number of sources for it’s construction and design. In building the bow I’ve also created a little narrative or backstory which explains both it’s look and why it was in pieces around the scenery!
The main part of the bow (the riser) is a relatively common part. When new it had a carbon fibre look to it, but our the years of use and abuse this has worn away for the most part leaving only traces of the pattern and much of the aluminium frame underneath showing through.
The grip has been modified and fixed during it’s life and also shows it’s years in wear and tear with shaping and rebinding to suit the hands of it’s owners.
The limbs are pretty much shot! It’s no surprise that these were cast aside and probably replaced with new ones. Wear around the cams and some obvious bracing attempts show that they’ve been used almost to death, but they’ve still got enough oomph for Lara to make them work!
As a whole the parts come together to make a functional compound bow for Lara, it’s not going to win any beauty contests but it’ll put an arrow into the bad guys and that’s all that counts!
The build
The main parts of the build come from a Thingiverse model posted by R3dfox Studios (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1466525/) but there are a couple of things I’ve added or changed to make the finished item more functionally accurate and in line with the imagery of Lara’s bow.
The first was the secondary cams for the ‘cables’ which actually make a compound bow work. These came from a design by Firebird on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:456919/). Interestingly Firebird uses a parallel cam setup on his bow which looks great and I did toy with the idea of duplicating for this piece, but Lara didn’t have that setup so I set that notion aside. Firebird also shows the stringing method for the cables and bowstring.
The second addition was a grip to serve as a base for the final grip on Lara’s bow. This is a Hoyt Defiant grip by eki27 on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1995918)
The lighter is a cheap Zippo knock of which cost £1.35 of eBay. It’s brand new, but I abused it with a grinding wheel and wire brush along with some weathering paints to give it the “something someone dropped and forgot about” look in line with the in-game imagery.
Everything else (bolts, bits of wire and widgets) was from my boxes-of-stuff-to-make-things-with!

This was a great little project and I learned a LOT about compound bows getting everything together.
Finishing and weathering
grey primer, matt black and silver were used for the base colours and the weathering was a combination of Black, Umber and Burnt Umber acrylics finished with silver 'Rub and Buff' to produce the look of worn edges.
The pseudo carbon fibre look was done using an airbrush with a thin mix of grey and silver acrylic spray through a grip mat with a black wash over the top and wiped off.
Assembly
I've added some screenshots of the 3D model pieces showing how they relate to each other.
I've included the main bow, the limbs (top and bottom are the same) and the sight. Interestingly I noticed in putting this together that MY model (in the phots) actually has one of the main body pieces backwards.. didn't notice at the time!
I haven't added the Hoyt grip into this as it's an add-on which needs some additional sculpting with Miliput or similar and I've also not included the cams as they're pretty simple two-piece assemblies.
I hope this helps any aspiring builders of Lara's compound bow!
The issues
So…. There are some issues with the design of this bow. It’s pretty true to the bow featured in the game so the problem lies there I think.
The main one is with the stays which keep the cables away from the bow string are in the wrong place and mis aligned. The angles they take the cable through would put massive friction on them and they don’t actually move the cables out of the line of the arrow or the grip.
In terms of the models, you'll notice that the upper limbs are not a pair, actually two of the same piece. I simply mirrored one to create the pair. R3dfox has been advised of this mistake in her model. I will re-do the STL bundle at some point and update here.