Fred Bear's Polar Bow

The Bear Polar 1950-56 Dual Shelf bow

by Larry Vienneau

In the early 1950 Bear made several models with dual shelves. The Dual Shelf Models were the Lower priced Panda, Cub and Polar as well as the middle and upper end Alaskan, Kodiak and Grizzly bows. At this time most of these bows were actually long bows, the recurves made an appearance in the late 1950s. As Fred Bear tweaked his designs his bow started to evolve, first long bows, then semi-recurves and finally fully functional recurves. The lower end models are usually more plain maple while the upper end bows has more expensive woods used. The bows were essentially very similar.  

1956 Polar

1951 Polar

The Polar was introduced in 1950 as a 62" simple reflexed longbow with the woven glass and the aluminum lam, maple riser with wedged leather shelf with a leather grip. It was marketed as a target bow but it was also a favorite hunting weapon.
1951 - A 62" longbow with woven blond glass and the aluminum lam. The aluminum proved to be a structural problem and stopped mid-year like the rest of the Bear line-up. Same maple riser wedged leather shelf and leather grip.
1952 – A longbow with length increased to 64" with blond parallel fiberglass front and back. Same maple riser with wedged shelf and leather grip. Though the catalogs states the use of aluminum, it was actually stopped halfway through the previous year (catalog are produced ahead of time and the change didn’t make it into the catalog) Draw weights- 25lbs to 75lbs
*1953 – A 64"Longbow with red glass, this was a *single shelf model with a leather grip. Maple riser. Weights 25 lbs to 75 lbs. Special order special weights or left hand
1954 – A 64" and 68" Longbow with Red glass, and maple riser dual shelves on leather grip. This is the last year the Polar was a simple reflexed longbow.  Draw weights - 35lbs. to 75lbs standard and up to 100lbs as special orders.
1955 A 64" Semi-recurve with brick red glass and maple riser dual shelves, leather grip. Draw weights - 35lbs. to 75lbs
1956 – A 64" Semi-recurve with the same brick red glass and maple riser dual shelves. For most of the year, there were single white tip overlays. Draw weights - 35lbs. to 75lbs. This was the last year a dual shelf Polar was produced.

My 1956 Bear Archery Polar Bow 40lbs.

I own the 1956 Model with brick Red glass and white tip overlays. Mine also has darker wood accents which did not appear in the catalog. In 1956 the darker wood accents were used in the Kodiak. My bow is in excellent condition with the original leather; however the rests were gone so I added a fur arrow rest with snakeskin strike plate. It is a 40lb. bow and is a very fine target bow. 

These dual shelf bows take a little practice to get used to, they do shoot differently than modern center shot bows. Tuning any dual shelf bow is tougher than a single shelf bow; I needed to try several arrow spines until I got the right one. The dual shelf is not a true center shot so the arrow does have to travel around the rest, though not as drastically as a medieval longbow which had not cut shelf and was shot off the knuckle.  The arrow speed isn’t about to break the sound barrier, it pushed a 410 gr. Arrow at 157.07 FPS. But i t is a consistent shooter  and I got some impressive groups from this bow. Overall it is in excellent shape and performs well for being close to 60 years old, something few of us old geezers can boast!!

Here is a great forum post which I found very helpful

http://tradgang.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=003321

© Copyright, Larry Vienneau Jr.

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