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I would allow her to make a bow out of bones found in one of our encounters without problem. 


 

 As the DM, it's your job to break the rules when necessary/cool/fun to do so... DMs don't break rules, they simply redefine or reinterpret them.

 There are two commonly-used terms that you should be aware of, and the distinction between them...

 Refluffing - This is when you take a game element such a weapon or a class feature and simply change the explanation behind it or the physical description without changing the mechanical rules...

 Retooling - This is changing the mechanical rules of a game element so that it actually interacts differently than it originally did...


 An example of refluffing...

In the game world, one of my characters is a shape-changing crow spirit from the Feywild who spends most of his time in the form of a crow sitting on another party member's shoulder. In combat, he takes to the air, divebombing and wheeling around opponents and slashing them with his supernaturally-sharp claws. His magical abilities are simply the racial abilities of his species.
 On paper, however, he's a pixie predator druid built for charging. The racial and class abilities of a pixie druid provide the mechanical rules elements necessary for the character to do what I want it to do.

   If the end result of what the player wants refluffed makes sense within the logic of your campaign world, and the player and you come up with in-game explanations for the how and the why that are acceptable to both of you, then that's really all you need.
 Can the player give you a feasible explanation for how the character's making a bow out of dragon bones or where they acquired the skills and materials to do so? Can you come up with a list of the appropriate steps they'd have to take to do so (whether it's finding the materials, finding a craftsman with the necessary skills or simply just forking over the right amount of gold)? Do you not even feel the need to sweat the details? If so, then hooray they've got a bow made out of dragon bones. For all mechanical rules intents and purposes it's just a regular longbow no different than if they'd bought it at a shop. It's entirely possible that in your game world some cultures make bows out of dragon bones rather than wood...

 Refluffing is officially encouraged in 4E, and is generally very easy to do without unforseen consequences.

 An example of retooling...

  If the bow made from dragon bones had a longer range or did more damage than a normal longbow (because, narratively speaking, it's made from tougher materials), that would be retooling an existing game element to make a new one.
 While refluffing something generally doesn't require much effort, mechanically retooling something does require a bit of effort to ensure that it's still balanced against other game elements of it's kind. Advantages given must be balanced out by disadvantages elsewhere or by more stringent prerequisites. To keep with the example of the bow, if you wanted to give it increased range or damage that would make it roughly equivalent to a greatbow rather than a longbow, and should probably be a superior weapon requiring a feat to gain proficiency in it. Perhaps in your game world, all greatbows are made from the bones of enormous monsters like dragons rather than wood and it's the material they're constructed from that makes them more powerful.


 In my opinion, if the character is of a class that would know how to make a bow, possesses some element in their backstory that could have reasonably given them that knowledge, or knows where to find somebody who knows how to do it, then it shouldn't be a problem. Whether or not it actually takes up in-game resources and/or RP time during a session is entirely up to you and your player.

Could it be? Somehow I'm agreeing with Lunar. Maybe it's just because I didn't post first and had I done so, he'd have to agree with me. Yeah, that's definitely it.