Category Archives: Bows

Ash HLD Selfbow – Heat Treated 51# @ 27” (Bow No. 8)

Ash is a timber which is super common in my part of the world. As a firewood, Ash is a favourite of mine. As a bow wood though, it is never my first choice. Nor is it my second choice come to think of it!

Ash staves always seem to find their way into my stave collection though. Not surprising really given the abundance of clean and relatively straight logs which abound within my local landscape.

The stave which this bow came from was cut out of a hedgerow by one of my neighbours who was in the process of laying an old derelict hedgerow. The hedgerow in question was full of nice straight and clean 4-6” diameter Ash stems which had coppiced up from the remnants of the parent trees which were laid decades earlier.

I dread to think how many bows I’ve made from Ash. Back in my late teens I would try and make English style D shaped longbows from Ash only to be bitterly disappointed when the bellies chrysaled and the set was measurable in feet not inches! (Joking of course).

So when I pulled this stave out of the rack a few months ago I knew that, without optimising the bow design, a bow made from this stave would only make a “reasonable” bow at best, no matter how clean and straight it was.

So I decided to make yet another Ash bow, but one which would incorporate design features which would enhance efficient and durability whilst also making it a pleasure to shoot. But without any frills! This was going to be a quick and simple primitive bow with only one none essential addition – An arrow rest. Just because I fancied one!

As is the norm around here, this typical Devonian Ash stave showed thin rings and way more early wood than I like to see. But this is just the way most of the Ash in this part of the world grows. Here in the South West, our mild and wet 10 month growing season produces timber which is fast growing through the spring months. This long growing season leads to many of our native hardwood species laying down a considerable proportion of its total seasonal growth ring to early wood.

Ash in general is weak in compression. Our local Ash is even weaker in compression than normal, so if this stave was going to make a bow which would perform and last, then I would have to pull out all the stops to prevent any delaminating in the fades and/or the belly getting crushed. Both of these faults are common place with our local Ash unless extra care is taken.

This bow came from a stave which was 76” long. I cut it down to 68” to ensure that the length was adequate enough to mitigate for the weaker than average compression strength I’d envisaged this stave suffering from. The plan was to end up with a bow measuring 66” nock to nock with limbs 2” wide for the inner thirds tapering down to 3/4″ wide self nocks

In terms of basic appearance I was going for the typical flatbow face profile with limbs lenticular in shape. The cambium had been left on this stave so I worked a camo effect pattern into it. The handle would be deep and contoured simply because I can knock my favourite shape out so quick and easy these days that it takes me no time but adds tremendous comfort to the grip.

Tiller would be circular and the limb tips would be made to do as much work as the rest of the limb in order to maximise the distribution of compression over the greatest possible surface area. Fades would be 3” max in order to get as much limb bending as I could without sacrificing a rigid handle.

The limbs would be slightly hollowed out so as to almost mimic the crown on the back in order to increase the surface area of the belly. Thickness across the width of the limb would increase slightly towards the centre line and thin towards the edges. And the corners on the back would be slightly rounded in order to take some of the tension strong back wood out of commission. This would achieve a better balance between the overpowering tension strength and the compression weak belly wood which this particular Ash stave presented me with.

After basic roughing out, the stave was pretty straight and with a moister content probably around 12%. I wanted some overall reflex in the bow before starting the tillering process so I clamped the stave to a reflex form with about 2” of induced reflex. Clamped in reflex, I then force dried the roughed out stave over my wood burner until the weight would not reduce any further.

After some time to recover ambient moisture levels (6-8%) I tillered the bow to brace height. Most of the force drying reflex had fallen out so before commencing with full tillering, I decided to put the bow back on the same reflex form and thoroughly heat treat it over my wood burner stove top.

My stove was running scolding hot thanks to some lovely dry beech logs. Each limb got about an hour and a half sat over the stove top in order to cook both limb bellies right through to the centre of the limb. The bow’s mass was reduced significantly and given the depth of the cook, there was no way this bow was going to take in much ambient moisture again.

One of the benefits of heavily heat treating white woods is that the cooking process makes the belly side of the bow somewhat hydrophobic. This reduces the woods ability to suck ambient moisture back in. Raw untreated/unsealed Ash loves to suck in atmospheric moisture, which is why it can become a noodle very quickly in damp condition without very good sealing.

After heat treating, I gave the bow a couple of days to rehydrate back to something more like 6-8% moisture content. An untreated, unsealed ash bow will soon suck in enough ambient moister to raise its moister content back up to around 10%. that would be a recipe for set. However a heavily heat treated bow will not slip back to that kind of moisture content without actually wetting it.

After a couple of days to reacclimatise, I then carried on with tillering the bow back to brace again. The cooking of the belly had moved the tiller slightly and added several pounds in draw weight. This is usually what happens so should be expected. In fairly short time she was finished on the tiller tree and looked and felt about 1/8^th positive at 53lb at 27”.

I find that heavily heat treated bows will produce the same arrow speeds as untreated bows of significantly higher draw weights and this bow proved that theory once again. The chronograph demonstrated average arrow speeds of 168fps with a 450 grain arrow. That’s not bad for a simple Ash self bow which was only drawn to 27”!

For a finish I just used a clear polyurethane which I had kicking about. The colour which you can see in the remnants of the cambium are as a result of a couple of days sat in the ammonia fuming pipe before roughing out and force drying began. The tannins in the bark went a nice dark green/brown. The cammo effect looks great.

I didn’t bother with a handle covering on this one. It feels very comfortable even without a covering. For the arrow rest I just used some leather scraps. Nocks were a rendition of the classic Sudbury bow design as depicted in the fantastic book: Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows & Quivers Volume 1 page 32. My nocks were filed in at 45 degrees though, as opposed to the original 90 degrees as illustrated in the previously mentioned book.

The mass was reduced tremendously by the heat treating process and this bow feels nice and light and manoeuvrable in the hand. After shooting her in, the reflex had dropped a bit. Immediately after unstringing there is about 1” of reflex which settles back to about 1 ½” after resting.

This ended up being a super snappy lightweight bow settling in after 2 weeks of shooting at 51lb at 27”. She is certainly plain and simple but has all the power and functionality that you would want in a primitive hunting bow.

She balances well in the hand whilst being carried and feels well balanced through the draw cycle. She doesn’t stack and is lovely and comfortable to hold back at full draw. The release is nice and quiet without any hand shock due to the low limb mass and comfortable grip. The bow string is the one I made for the previous blog post article I did a few weeks ago discussing using a squirrel tail to make string silencers. You can read that post here: https://southmoorbows.com/squirrel-tail-bow-string-silencers-quick-and-easy-way/

So here she is, hope she inspires you to have a go at heat treating an otherwise simple white wood flatty. Enjoy!

Yew HLD Recurve Character Branch Bow. 48# @ 27″ (Bow No. 7)

This bow started out life as a 2-3” branch which I harvested a couple of years ago. Given all the knots, kinks and wiggles, I knew it was going to be a challenge to turn this ugly little stick into a bow. Yew is one of those few bow woods which can be incredibly forgiving however, so I decided to give it a go!

The main challenge with this branch was going to be placing a bow back somewhere on it, and in a way which would keep the back from including any of the larger more fragile knots. One particular face was cleaner than the rest, but by choosing to use this face as the bows back, I would have to deal with a significantly deflexed 8” section which would have to fall somewhere between one of the limbs fades and the middle of that limb.

The branch measured only 68” long so I would have little opportunity to manipulate the handle location anywhere other than in the approximate centre. Given all the potential weak points on this branch, I did not dare to aim for a bow any shorter than 66” nock to nock.

I knew that I’d be able to steam out some of the unsightly deflex in what ended up being the top limb, but given all the knotty material in this deflexed section, I dared not try to straighten it out completely as the likely hood of one on the knots popping was very high.

After roughing out the basic limb thickness and face profile, I set about reducing the deflexed section with steam. After that was taken care of the small amount of string misalignment plus a little twist was corrected with some dry heat. At this point I also steamed in the gentle recurves. Now I had a more workable and predictable shape, I could then start to think about the final limb width and general profile/cross section.

The heartwood content of this bow was not great and the sapwood was about 8-10mm thick. The back was covered in small raised pins so chasing a ring was totally out of the question. And since the likely-hood of this branch ending up as firewood was high, there was no way I would consider investing time and effort to sinew back a risky bow like this, just to get away with violating the back in order to improve the ratio of sapwood to heart wood.

As with all branches, the pithy centre was biased towards the side which had the tighter growth rings (1-2mm) which happened to be on the same side of the branch which I’d chosen as the back. This meant that the pith was currently contained within both limbs and ran right through the handle.

Whilst I have no problem with the pith running through the handle section or even the thicker parts of the fades, I do not like leaving the pith in the working parts of the limbs. Experience has taught me to expect cracking, splitting and even fretting to occur when the pith runs close to the surface of the belly material.

Given that the crown on this branch was significant and the pith was currently buried inside the roughed out limbs I opted to hollow out both limbs to match the crown, whilst hopefully getting deep enough to remove the pith at the same time.

This worked fine but left me with very little heart wood. In fact the sapwood to heartwood ration was around 70/30%. Not ideal so I decided to take the sides in as the sides were entirely sapwood. This reduced the limb width down from about 1” 7/8ths to around 1” 5/8ths.

Now that the pith was out of the limbs and the heartwood sapwood ration had been improved, I didn’t have a great deal of bow left to play with, so I had to be realistic with the outlook. I guessed she would probably make for a finished bow around 35 40lbs at best. So I was really suprised when I actually managed 51lb at 27”!

I tillered the bow to 27” as my brother will likely get this bow. His draw length on a good day is about 27”. I took the tillered (albeit unsealed) bow stump shooting for a couple of weeks with only tillering nocks cut in and a leather strip wrapped around the handle to double as a grip and arrow pass. After a hundred plus arrows I checked her over for faults but found none.

I was expecting some of the steam correction to pull out in the deflex section but it didn’t. The finished bow looks like it has a very positive tiller but it is deceptive. The deflex section right out of the top fade is what gives this bow the look of excessive positive tiller.

In reality, this bow feels very well balance through the entire draw cycle and the limbs time together great when I shoot it with split fingers. I’ve shot enough bows over the year to be able to feel when a limb is weaker than the other. Despite the appearance, this bow is very well balanced.

After double checking the bows tiller by feel and then by tiller tree, I confirmed that the top limb is only slightly weaker than the bottom limb which is perfect for both my use, and my brothers use, since we both shoot split fingers.

It never ceases to amaze me how you can take a bow which looks to be tillered very well, only to draw it back and feel that torque on the wrist that you get when one limb is significantly stronger than the other. Nowadays, when it comes to final tiller, I place more emphasis on feel than I do on appearances. Where wooden bows are concerned (especially character bow) appearances are incredibly deceiving!

After shooting and sanding, I weighed her again and she was settled in at 48lbs at 27”. Happy with that I fitted her static recurved tips with a pair of Red Deer antler tip overlays, and I inlayed the arrow pass with a patch of buffalo horn. For the handle I chose a simple leather grip fitted after sealing the finished bow with 8 coats of Tru-Oil.

This bow put a smile on my face. I could well have imagined this bow breaking mid tiller. Not only was I impressed that she held together, but she actually ended up a being a proper little looker too. So much character and more than satisfactory performance has made this little bow one of my favourite character bows so far this year. (I have others to show off soon!)

In terms of performance, with a 12 strand B50 string on she sent a bunch of 450 grain arrows over the chronograph at an average speed of 143ft/sec. Not bad for a knarly old branch bow! Mass is 560 grams and she carries about ¾” of set immediately after unstringing which returns back to almost straight after resting.

Here she is. Enjoy!

About 3/4″ of set immediately after unstringing. Returns to almost straight after resting.

Thanks for looking!

Sinew Backed Yew Recurve Flatbow 55# @ 28″ Bow No.6

This is one of the many “lockdown bows” which I made through 2020/21. Having been furloughed for a couple of months I took the opportunity to tinker with a pile of difficult staves which I’d had kicking about for years. A good time to try and sort the potential staves from the firewood!

This bow came from one such stave. It was nothing more than a branch to be honest but was still one of the better potential staves in terms of its overall shape. That said, It was still flawed to some extent with masses of pin knots on what would be the back side of the stave. It also had quite a lot of deflex across the entire length of the back. Especially in what would be the bottom limb.

Despite the imperfections I committed to making a bow from this stave and had long since promised to build a mate of mine a yew recurve. So I made it my mission to honour my promise using this far from optimal Yew branch. The basic plan was to build a 66″ nock to nock” 50-55lb recurve flatbow.

The stave had nice tight growth rings of between 1-2mm thickness but unfortunately carried little heartwood. The sapwood on what would be the back was too thick at around 12mm thick, but due to all the tiny raised pin knots, it would be impossible to properly chase a ring down to a better sapwood thickness without violating the back around all the tiny raised knots.

A trick which I have used many times before in this situation is simply to accept the violation of rings on the back but mitigate against limb failure by sinew backing. So that’s what I decided to do with this bow.

The stave was only 3″ wide so the crown was moderate. Rather than try and reduce the sapwood thickness in a rounded fashion as would be necessary to mimic the natural crown, I decided to just flatten the whole back with a rasp. In doing this I was able to work down to approximately one sapwood growth ring right down the centre line of the bows back and follow that from one end to the other maintaining a totally flat back profile.

Now that I had nearly 50% of the limb represented by heart wood, I roughed out the general limb thicknesses and finalised the face profile. In order to counter the significant deflex I recurved the tips with steam and performed a small amount of dry heat correction to line up the tips and correct some small string alignment issues. Then it was on with 3oz of deer leg sinew, glued on with my own home made sinew glue.

After the backing was completed I wrapped the whole thing up for a few days in cloth strips to keep the sinew from peeling away from inside the recurves and around the handle.

Once I could see that the sinew was dry I unpeeled the wrapping so I could take a peek. To my disappointment some of the sinew had dried out to form some small fissures. I put this down to one reason. Taking way too long to apply the sinew!

I’d timed the sinew application with the kids getting home which invariably led to a pile of requests, Dad jobs and other frivolous distractions all when I’m trying to slap on my glue soaked sinew bundles. Lesson learnt!!

Anyone who has done any amount of sinew backing will tell you that the best sinew jobs are done quickly and smoothly whilst the glue is still warm and not allowed to set up in between bundle applications. Each fresh bundle of sinew wants to be laid down alongside its neighbour before the neighbouring bundle has started to “Gel”. That’s where I’d gone wrong.

All the distractions had led to me applying bundles as and when I got chance as opposed to in one fast fluid operation. This meant that by the time my next sinew bundle got applied it’s neighbour has gelled up reducing the ability of the fresh sinew bundle sticking to it’s neighbouring bundle.

The result is bundles of sinew separating apart from one another when the bundles start to shrink during the drying process. I should add however that the adhesion between the glue soaked sinew and the bow’s back is not affected by this phenomena.

As disappointing as the end result was, the imperfections that I was seeing in the dried backing were only aesthetic. The functionality of the bow’s backing was completely unaffected.

So onwards we went. After the cloth wrappings had been removed and re-tightened several times over the initial drying period (a week), the wrappings came off and the stave was set aside for nearly a year to cure thoroughly.

I’d kept the limbs asymmetric to try and mitigate for the lower limb deflex which was now substantially less than it was. This was due to the sinew backing pulling the stave back about 1 & 1/2″. Now the deflex was only about 3/4″ in total which was a massive improvement as before backing the natural deflex was about 2 “. After coming out of hibernation, deer antler tip overlays were fitted over the top of the sinew and the tillering began.

In order to preserve as much heart wood on the belly as possible I opted to create a slightly rounded albeit mainly flat belly. An arrow shelf was added in the form of a scrap piece of deer antler.

The bow was quick and easy to tiller and looked nice pulled down to 28″. At this point the weight was 58lb which was about right for the guy who would be getting this bow.

Before finishing the bow I shot stumps with it for a couple of weeks then re adjusted the tiller slightly to weaken the top limb just a tad bit more then called her done at 55lb at 28″ with a neutral tiller. (The owner of this bow shoots three under.) To finish I coated the sinew with a good covering of Titebond III so seal and smooth out the sinew. After sanding it was on with 8 coats of Truoil to finish.

The handle was covered with a piece of scrap leather and the same leather in reverse was used to protect the arrow pass.

I really like this bow. It’s a bit heavy in the hand (630Grams) due to the extra weight from the sinew but isn’t really noticeable once you get in the swing of shooting her. The limbs are an even tapper from 1″ 3/8ths at the fades down to 1/2″ at the tips.

This bow made for a snappy shooter which I really enjoyed shooting. I shot her over the chrono to see if she was quicker than usual and, whilst hardly getting blown away by the speed, I was quite happy with the 162ft/sec average that I got with a 500 grain arrow. That’s not bad for a stick and string bow!

Anyway, I hope you like the pics!