Category Archives: Deer Antler

Osage R&D sinew backed longbow 52#@27″ (bow no. 22)

Trying to get your hands on osage staves in the UK is hard these days, which is a real shame as osage is one of my favourite bow woods, second only to yew (due to sentimental value mainly). I bought this particular osage stave from Anthony Hickman over in Texas who has an Etsy shop which can be found here: HickmanCreationsShop – Etsy UK

Anthony sometimes has some nice osage staves in his shop for a reasonable price (by todays standards anyway!) And the stave which this bow was built from caught my eye as being worth the near $100 price tag. I could see from the photos from this staves shop listing that the growth ring thickness (and the composition of late wood to early wood) was very good, and that this stave carried no propeller twist or potentially problematic knots/splits etc.

At 62″ long, this stave was a little shorter than I’d ideally have liked, however I would struggle to get a longer stave shipped out to the UK without incurring a massive increase in shipping costs. So after a bit of consultation with Anthony, he managed to secure a not too absurd shipping price, so I decided to pull the trigger on this stave feeling pretty sure it would make for a very nice bow. And I’m glad I did!

So total cost including shipping, this stave came in just a whisker under $200, which is an awful lot of money for a hunk of timber, but unfortunately this is just the going rate nowadays for osage shipped to the UK!

The stave arrived on my door step in only 12 days which was bloody good these days. And after a thorough inspection of it, I was happy with what I’d received. Since the stave had the felling date written on the end grain, I knew that this stave was still fairly green. So I was a little worried that drying checks might have formed during transit from the states.

But I couldn’t see any signs of drying checks, other than what was obviously already present on the sapwood. And Anthony had made me aware of these sapwood cracks before I bought it. Since all the sap was destined to come off, the sapwood checking didn’t concern me at all, as more often than not, the cracks rarely ever continues deep into the heartwood.

Osage heartwood can check quite badly if dried too fast though, so I immediately painted the staves ends and the sapwood surface with TBiii, before putting it aside in my spare room to dry out for another 6 months. I kept weighing it each week so I could see when the weight loss would plateau and finally cease altogether. That way I would know when the stave was dry enough to start working on.

And by the early part of the summer of 2024, the weight lost had completely stopped, and I finally felt confident that I could begin sapwood removal and general roughing out, without running the risk of incurring drying checks from the rapid loss of any remaining moisture.

The sapwood came off nice and easy and chasing a decent latewood ring on the back was made simple by the fact that the first ring directly under the sapwood was perfect in it’s composition by being nice and thick, so I chased this faultless first ring and made that ring the back of the bow.

Now I had to think about design. This bow was destined to finish out at 60″ nock to nock, so being a bit on the short side, I needed to consider incorporating some design features to maximise draw length potential, without over stressing the limbs. Ideally this bow would go back to 27″, but I’d have to wait and see.

A 60″ bow drawn beyond 24″ will experience some “stacking” towards the end of the draw cycle unless some reflex is incorporated into the tips. So I planned to flick the tips on this stave, but not enough to be able to call it a recurve.

But flicking the tips alone would add at least 3-4″ of overall back set to this stave since the back of this stave was essentially dead straight. That much overall back set would definitely create the potential for overstressing the limbs of a bow this short, since the working sections of the limbs would only incorporate a max of 20-22″ of each limb.

So to counter the back set created by flicking the tips, I decided to deflex the 3″ fades either side of the 4″ stiff handle. Ordinarily I would have steamed the desired deflex into the centre of the handle, but I could see a couple of tiny drying checks on the belly side of the roughed out handle section, which would most likely have opened out considerably if I had attempted to steam bend the deflex into the handle.

The fades however appeared free of drying checks, so with the help of the heat gun, a shaping form, and a pile of G clamps, I pulled enough deflex into both fades to cancel out most (but not all) of the reflex, which I had now steamed into the last 8″ of the tips. After subtracting the deflex in the fades from the reflex in the tips, I was now left with around 1-2″ of overall back set. Much more realistic!

I opted for a simple slender pyramidal face profile on this bow, as this design works very well for woods like osage and yew. Since osage (like yew) is so strong in compression, I didn’t feel the need to go super wide with the limbs, so opted for limbs around 1 1/2″ wide at the widest section just outside of the fades, tapering down to 1/2″ tips (which I would leave static for the last 4″ in order to resist the reflex being pulled out of the tips over time with heavy use).

The handle section in the roughed out state was nice and deep, even once the bulk of the splintery rubbish had been removed from the belly side. So at 2″ thick, I decided to keep the handle a little deeper than I normally do. This would also enable me to retain nice deep fades too, so I fancied shaping them up to a nice crisp sharp ridge to create a nice aesthetic leading into the handle section.

In terms of character, this stave had one simple clean and featureless limb, and one limb featuring a small hollow knot (which I pegged), plus four small pin knots aranged in pairs in two different locations. This limb also had a small amount of lateral wave to the grain, which presented some nice edge contour to the face profile of this particular limb.

This limb also had the remnants of an old impact scar which must have occurred whilst the tree was still living. This old scar presented throughout the entire width and thickness of the stave, including the sapwood, and appeared as a pretty cool looking lighter coloured diagonal line of grain about 4mm wide running across and through the entire width and thickness of the outer third of the top limb.

This kind of impact injury to a living tree is usually as a result of another tree falling, or being felled into it. The tree heals rapidly by reinforcing the cells within the injured section with additional lignin and other strengthening compounds.

This healing process creates dense and interesting grain changes, which not only look nice, but are also denser and therefore stronger in both compression and tension than when compared to the surrounding uninjured wood. As such, these healed wound scars can be left within the working sections of a bow limb without any fear of weakness. In fact these sections are stronger than the rest of the limb.

As this limb clearly held all the character, I opted to make it the top limb which places most of the character closer to eye level. And since this bow was going to be asymmetrical, this more characterful limb was going to be 2″ longer than the more plain (but likely stronger overall) bottom limb. Since bottom limbs tend to take more stress over the years of shooting and stringing, they benefit from any additional design decisions which ensure optimal strength in this limb.

Since this bow was a little shorter than I’d have preferred, I decided to sinew back it. This would add significant durability to the bow, and it would also significantly reduce the amount of set which such a short bow would ordinarily take when being drawn back beyond 26″. I also consistently find that sinew backed bows retain their zip much better as the years roll by too, (so long as they are stored and cared for properly!)

So once the shape was roughed out and the back was suitably prepared, roughed up and sized ready for sinew backing, I added 3oz of processed wild English Red deer leg tendon sinew to the back of the stave with my own home produced hide glue made from cooked down red deer rawhide and sinew scraps. After sinew backing was complete, I then wrapping the stave up with bandages and put it away in a cool dry spot to cure for another 6 months.

By the beginning of this year (2025) the stave was dug out of hibernation for an inspection and I was pleased to see that the sinew was now fully cured. An additional 1″ of backset had been drawn into the stave as the sinew had shrunk down, so the overall backset was now almost back to where it was before I deflexed the fades.

This is very normal for sinew backed staves and I felt confident that after tillering, this extra 1″ of back set would likely fall out leaving something close to a more suitable1-2″ backset. And sure enough, after tillering to 27″, the stave was now back to around 2″ overall backset. Perfect!

After a good bit of early shooting in and a little fine tuning of the tiller, the bow seemed to settle into and hold the 1/8″ positive tiller really well. She was turning out to be a nice quiet snappy shooter, and a very enjoyable bow to accompany me about the woods stump shooting for a few weeks. not only did she not kick at all, but pound for pound, I recon this bow is possibly one of the fastest shooting bows I’d ever made.

Now to finish her up I decided to cut an arrow shelf into the handle as I personally love an arrow shelf and knew it would enhance the pointability of this bow significantly. And for the tips I went for wild red deer antler overlays.

Whilst the sinew backing on this bow provided great functionality, it did look a bit plain, so I decided to cover up the rather bland looking sinew with a couple of nice dark brown/purple cobra skins I’d had lying around for ages. The edges of the skins where then sealed and decorated with white dots made from ground deer bone dust mixed with glue and applied with a sharpened stick. I find that this edge work really helps to make the skins pop.

For the handle I ended up contouring the back of the grip to create a very slight pistol grip with the dip pulled up nice and tight to the arrow shelf so as to keep the arrow as close as possible to the top of the index finger of the bow hand. I really find that this little detail allows me to shoot a bow instinctively with considerably more accuracy through enhanced pointability.

After sanding I sealed her up with 8 coats of danish oil. Then the final extra fine sand and pumice polish was finished off with my favourite home constructed linseed oil/bees wax paste wax polish, setting her up for a nice deep satin look to compliment those snake skins and the wonderful golden yellow of the osage heartwood.

For the grip I found a nice rustic piece of home produced bark tanned red deer leather laced up with some roe deer leather thong. And for the arrow pass/shelf I fitted a couple of nice pieces of natural coloured hair on bark tanned red deer shin leather. Which is a better looking wild and rustic version of the commercially available “calf hair” leather the archery suppliers sell!

Fitted with a custom built ultra low diameter fast flight sting, I put a dozen or so 50# 550grain doug fir arrows over the chrono to see how she performed. The chrono recorded an average arrow speed of 168 FPS, which is about what I’d expected given how spicy she felt when first shooting her it. Easily capable of being classified as a “hunting bow” and very accurate and enjoyable to shoot split fingers and instinctive.

This bow is now available to purchase through the Southmoor Bows Etsy Shop, listing available here:

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me either here, or through the shop!

Here are her stats, hope you like the photos and video!

Draw Weight: 52lbs at 27”
Mass: 650 grams
Length NTN: 60” (asymmetrical limb layout)
Width: 1 7/16″” at widest part
Tips: last 4” static reflexed, 1/2” wide
Back: Crowned with undulations. : Pyramidal face profile
Belly Profile: Working limb sections rounded D shaped, transitioning at the tips to a ridged cross section.
Tiller: Eliptical. 1/8” positive
Brace height: 5.5″

Sinew Backed Primitive Elm R&D Longbow 48# @ 27″(bow: 20)

It’s been ages since I made myself a bow. So when I uncovered a forgotten Elm stave which I’d had up in the barn rafters for a couple of years, I rather fancied turning it into my next favourite stumping primitive.

Whilst the stave was fairly clean, it did have a knarly looking end section which looked more trouble than worth the effort to work around. So I opted to cut this end off. This only left me with 61″ to play with. That’s not much for a white wood bow.

A white wood bow this short, intended to be drawn back to my 26″ draw length, would stack unless the tips were flicked. But flicking the tips on an otherwise short and straight stave would probably overstress the limbs.

As the added reflex was only to reduce stack, not add speed, I opted to deflex the handle section/fades so that it would cancel out the added stress from the recurve induced throughout both outer thirds. This is something that I tend to do routinely now, as even just a whisper of R&D makes for a much smoother, less stacky draw.

And as this white wood bow was always going to be a tad on the short side of ideal, to make sure that there would be no risk of his bow blowing up on me in a few years time, I decided to sinew back it with 3oz of Red Deer leg tendon sinew. Whilst it’s always a hassle and a massive faff to sinew back a bow, in addition to the extra durability sinew backing brings, it don’t half add some resistance to set, not to mention a fair bit of extra zip!

The stain on the wood is iron chloride, and the light dark effect on the sinew was achieved by painting the rough sinew backing jet black using my local “bideblack” earth pigment mixed with TBIII, which was then sanded along all the high spots to reveal the underlying natural sinew colour standing proud above the black sinew valley bottoms.

Edge work was done with the same black paint and the white dots are deer leg bone dust mixed with glue. I personally really like this kind of edging as it really makes the face profile pop.

Tip overlays are wild Red deer antler, and the handle/ arrow pass is covered with my home produced traditional spruce bark tanned wild roe deer leather. The wood was finished and sealed with shellac.

Given the sinew component, this bow took a full year to build from start to finish, but I’m really happy with how she came out. She is fast and light in the hand, and produces zero hand shock. Quiet as a feather and very pointable too. Whilst I’ve yet to put more than a couple of hundred arrows through her, she is already rapidly becoming one of my favourite woodland bows.

Here are the stats:

Draw Weight: 48lbs at 26”
Mass: 660 grams
Length NTN: 59.5”
Width: 1 3/4” at widest part
Tips: 5” semi static 3/8” wide at the nocks.
Back: Moderately crowned with a pyramidal face profile.
Belly Profile: Working limb sections flat with rounded corners, transitioning at the tips to ridged shaped cross section.
Tiller: Elliptical. 1/4” positive
Brace height: 5 1/2″

Here are the photos/video.

Sinew Backed Yew Primitive 46# @ 27″ (bow no: 19)

Since gaining a bit of a reputation locally for being the guy who makes “Character bows”, I’ve been “gifted” rather a lot of “character staves”! And not wanting to appear ungrateful, I’ve become prone to accepting these staves, rather than politely declining the “generous” offer of yet more firewood!

Actually, once in a while, some of these typically low diameter branch staves don’t look too bad, (at least upon initial inspection) and the bow featured in this post was built from one such branch stave which was donated to me in 2022.

Despite the low diameter and general knottiness of this particular branch stave, there was one face which looked quite nice and could make for a sound back. So other than a couple of branch whirls to deal with on the belly side, I could easily envisage making a simple but effective primitive bow from this stave. So in the spring of 2024 I set to work on it.

Roughing out was straight forward enough and I was pleased to get past all the pith without running low on heart wood material. I decided to keep the face profile fairly narrow so as to minimise the amount of sapwood which was curling around the edges towards the belly due to the low diameter and high crown on the back.

The stave was fairly straight other than a tiny amount of deflex right in the middle where I’d lay out a stiff handle with fades. I decided to leave this deflex alone since I only had 62″ of overall length to work with, and really hoped to get 27″ of draw length out of this bow. I figured that lightly flicked tips could possibly work since the deflex in the handle would help cushion the extra strain that any reflex might place on the relatively short working sections of the limbs. Flicking the tips would help reduce any stack experienced which might result from the short length.

A stiff 4″ handle with 3″ fades, and 5″ stiff tips would reduce the overall working sections of both limbs down to around 20″, which isn’t a great deal to support the load that a 27″ draw would place on a bow as short as this one. So after roughing out and steaming the tips into a light reflex, I decided to sinew back this stave and leave her to cure out over the summer of 2024.

By early autumn the sinew backing appeared to be thoroughly cured and a little bit of overall reflex had been drawn into the stave as the sinew had shrunk down tight. This often happens when enough sinew is used, which is why I typically apply my sinew backings by weight to ensure enough (but not too much) sinew is applied.

I find that a total of 3 ounces of sinew (an ounce and a half of dry processed sinew per limb) is the perfect amount for a bow in the 58 – 64″ range. 3 oz is plenty enough sinew to add significant extra power and resistance to set, but not so much sinew that the added weight of the sinew starts to add power robbing mass to the limbs.

I find that more than 3oz of sinew on a bow this length crosses the point of diminishing returns, and the extra weight the additional sinew gives to the limbs can actually start to decrease arrow speed and create a fair bit of limb vibration too. This vibration post string release is typically felt as an uncomfortable form of hand shock. So when it comes to sinew backing a bow, more is not necessarily better!

So 3oz of dry sinew is about perfect, so long as the bulk of its distribution is along the working sections of the limbs, as opposed to the handle section or the last 6″ of the tips, which will not be improved one bit by the added weight of a full thickness layer of sinew. In fact the tips really only want as thin a layer of sinew as is possible. Just enough to cover the visible surface of the back. Enough to add structural integrity but not weight.

The stave was brought into shape and a rounded D shaped belly was chosen so as to get as much sap wood off the belly corners as possible. This allowed for the retention of as much heart wood as possible and resulted in an overall ratio of around 50/50 sapwood/heartwood. Which was pretty good for a low diameter branch stave.

Three of the small knots presenting on the belly were a bit weak looking so I opted to dig them out and fill them with a mixture of epoxy and yew dust so as to add back some strength whilst retaining as best a natural look as possible.

Before putting the long string on for the first few pulls the stave held about 2″ of overall reflex, but I new that a fair bit of that overall reflex would disappear once the tillering got well underway. And as expected, by the time 26″ had been reached the overall reflex had reduced to about an inch. My expectation was for it to drop another inch by the time full draw was reached and the bow had been properly shot in, and my expectation was spot on.

So after a thorough shooting in period, the overall reflex/deflex reduce to about neutral, which was ideal for a bow which was going to end up only 60″ nock to nock. The light reflex in the tips had held it’s shape, even with their relatively low diameter, and the 1/4″ positive tiller had stayed true throughout the shooting in period.

46# at 27″ was about right for a stave of this nature and she was pleasant to shoot too. So to finish her up I fitted her up with a pair of red deer antler tip overlays. To decorate the back I fitted a nice King Rat snake skin which I had squirreled away. As well as looking quite cool, I also like that snake skins are pretty water resistant and afford a sinew backing quite a bit of extra protection from water/humidity ingress, which is always a bonus in a humid country like ours!

This snake skin wasn’t long enough to run tip to tip so I left the tips bare to show off the sinew backing. The transition from the snake skin to the sinew at the tips was wrapped with deer back strap sinew to tidy up the termination of the snake skin. The snake skin and the sinew wrappings were then edged with a black paint made from my local black earth pigment (Bideblack) mixed with hide glue. And the cream coloured dots added to the black painted boarder were made from mixing hide glue with deer bone dust.

The bow was finish and sealed thoroughly with 8 coats of danish oil made satin in appearance through a final pumice polish buffed down with wax paste. I opted to cover the slightly contoured handle with a nice piece of my home bark tanned red deer leather in a nice natural red tan colour, laced up with some leather lace cut from a roe deer hide I bark tanned last year.

The arrow pass is a piece of red deer shin leather which I tanned with some of the hair still on. It’s a bit like a rustic primitive version of the calves hair leather pieces you can buy from archery shops, only cooler!

I really enjoyed building this bow and found her to be really pleasurable to shoot. The chrono consistently recorded speeds of around 150ft/sec from a 400 grain arrow which is quite reasonable for a character branch stave.

The balanced tiller and flicked low mass tips helped mitigate any hand shock and the slightly contoured handle made for a nice comfortable grip. I can imagine this bow giving someone many years of enjoyable and reliable shooting so will be offering this bow for sale in my Southmoor Bows Etsy shop, the listing can be found here:

Specifics are as follows:
Draw Weight: 46lbs at 27”
Mass: 725 grams
Length NTN: 60”
Width: 1 3/8” at widest part
Tips: 5” working 3/8” wide at the nocks.
Back: Moderately crowned with undulations with a pyramidal face profile.
Belly Profile: Working limb sections D shaped, transitioning at the tips to ridged shaped cross section.
Tiller: Elliptical. 1/8” positive
Brace height: 5 1/2″

Here she is, hope you enjoy!

Sinew Backed Yew Holmegaard 70#@28″ (bow no. 17)

Back in the spring I was contacted by Ross, a friend of Matt who had purchased the character yew flatty I blogged about here: Primitive Character Yew Flat bow 52#@28” (Bow no. 14) – Southmoor Bows which Matt had bought through the Southmoor Bows ETSY shop. Ross really liked Matt’s bow, so he got in touch with me to ask if I could build him something with a primitive vibe, but a bit heavier. Ross came from a ELB background and was accustomed to shooting bows in the 65lb plus bracket.

After a bit of discussion we settled on a plan. I had in my possession a rather nice and character laden Yew branch sucker stave, which I could easily envisage being turned into a Holmegaard type longbow. This stave measured 71″ so was both long/wide and clean enough to produce a heavier draw weight bow built in a classic Holmegaard/pyramidal/flatbow type design, as opposed to something more like an ELB, which is a widely accepted design, recognised as being well suited to bows intended for higher draw weights.

Ross and I had settled on a target draw weight of somewhere around the 65-75lb mark, so I had to now figure out how I could optimise the bows design and features to encompass the heavier than average draw weight, as well as all the wonderful characteristics of this particular stave.

Rather than go full on Holmegaard and get all anal about precise authentic dimensions, I decided to let the stave dictate the overal profile. And to ensure long term durability I opted to incorporate a robust application of sinew backing to minimise both potential set, and vulnerability to wear and tear over time.

So my plan was to build a straight limbed pyramidal profiled long bow with semi lever like needles for tips, and a completely static handle section. The bow would end up 70″ nock to nock and have 8″ static tips. These none bending tips, combined with a 4.5″ stiff handle with 3″ long flowing fades, would leave me with just about 43.5″ of working limbs. Since this wasn’t a massive amount of moving wood, I decided to lay the bow out asymmetrically so as to give the bottom limb a bit more support over the long term.

The intention was to maintain the original crowned shape of the back, whilst adopting a rounded D shaped belly cross section throughout the fades and working sections of the limbs. The tips would transition in cross section from D shaped to ridged to reduce mass whilst remaining static. The handle would remain deep and relatively straight with no shelf as the chap who asked me to build this bow was a fan of shooting off the knuckle.

The stave had no overall natural reflex or deflex, but the 6 sets of branch whirls which were evenly distributed between both limbs did have some contour, thus giving the false impression of deflex where the grain flowed around the knot whirls. These flowing lines would need to be incorporated into the final profile of the bow as my intension was not to interfere with the natural shape of the staves side profile. Fortunately, this particular stave was completely absent of any twist or snake, so other than working around the knotty branch whirls, laying out the intended profile was, for once, a doddle!

The Heartwood/sapwood ration was about right too, with this stave having no more than 1/4″ of sapwood under the bark. Subsequently, I only had to get the bark off in order to expose what would end up being the back of the bow directly below the sinew. This meant that the final composition of heartwood/sapwood would end up being around a 70/30 ratio. Perfect!

So after roughing out the face profile and reducing the belly to facilitate better drying, I set about the arduous process of applying 3.5 oz of wild red deer leg sinew, applied to the back of the stave with my own home made sinew glue cooked up from a bunch of sinew scraps and tendon sheathing material. After applying all the sinew and given the glue plenty of time to set up, I wrapped her in gauze and left her to dry and cure out completely for 6 months. And what a long wait that was!!

The sinew backing came out great, so after what felt like an eternity, I fitted a pair of stag horn tip overlays and got a long string on her for a few short pulls. All looked good and after a bit of tweaking here and there, she was soon at brace and being pulled to 26″

As usual, I like to spend a fair bit of time shooting in a bow before attempting to get the last couple of inches of tiller finalised. So I spent a week putting her through her paces so that she could settle in and reveal any tiller correction that might be necessary before calling the job done. For once this bow didn’t budge off tiller, and had settled in to a nice 1/4″ positive tiller, which felt very well ballanced at full draw.

Final touches included a stag horn inlay for an arrow pass, and a gorgeous piece of my home produced bark tanned red deer leather as a handle cover, all sewn up with lace cut from some flank leather from the same hide. To seal her up I saturated the gorgeous grain of the wood with several applications of raw tung oil, caped off with half a dozen coats of Danish oil to fully protect her from dirt and moisture. Last but not least, the glossy Danish oil finish was sanded smooth and polished with fine pumice powder to leave her with a beautiful satin finish which sheds water and really shows off the grain.

I really enjoyed building this bow and will definitely build another “Holmegaard” like this one just as soon as I get my hands on another suitable stave. She’s a little on the heavy side for me personally, but I did enjoy the speed and power that was greater than what I’m used to. The loud whack she delivered when sending my stumping arrows on their way never got boring! She turned out to be quite nippy across the chrono too by consistently sending 550 grain arrows over the sensors at between165-175Fps, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, isn’t too shabby for a simple English yew branch stave!

Specifics are as follows:
Draw Weight: 70lbs at 28”
Mass: 850 grams
Length NTN: 70”
Width: 1 7/8″ at widest part
Tips: 8” static 1/2” wide
Back: Crowned with undulations. : Pyramidal face profile
Belly Profile: Working limb sections D shaped, transitioning at the tips from semi circular, into ridge shaped cross section.
Tiller: Eliptical. 1/4” positive
Brace height: 6″

Anyway, here she is. Hope you like her!

Spring 2025 Edit: Ross has kindly sent me a couple of video clips of him shooting his bow which I’ve added at the end. So far he’s been sending his roving arrows out to 200yards! Phew!!

Native inspired Yew HLD R&D Longbow 46#@28″ (bow no 16)

This bow started out life as a fairly short branch stave at 62 inches, but I had to lop off another couple inches due to deep drying checks in both ends. This left me with around 58 inches to play with, which isn’t really enough to produce a bow intended to reach a typical 28″ draw length, so right off the bat I planned on being content with a 26″ final draw length, if she survived the plan!

The stave had a small amount of natural reflex at the middle of the handle section, and natural deflex in what would be the inner third of the top limb, so rather than fighting with that, I opted to add the same amount of deflex to the inner third of the bottom limb to balance the natural shape of the stave.

Since the stave was quite short, I also opted to flick the tips to counter the deflex a bit, plus, since she would end up quite short, the recurved tips would significantly reduce any likelihood of uncomfortable stack at the end of the draw. Whilst shaping the bottom limb I also took the opportunity to improve the overall string alignment by tweaking the outer third of the bottom limb in order to make the alignment of the tip section straighter, which in turn pulled the string back in line with the centre of the handle.

I always seem to find that deflex reflex profiled bows tiller a lot quicker and easier than straight limbed bows for some reason, and this bow was tillering out nicely. That was until I uncovered a significant and unavoidable delamination in one of the heartwood growth rings in the top limb. The ring was so deep that the only way I was going to clear the delamination was by digging out most of the heartwood. Since most of the heartwood was going to have to leave, I was left with no choice but to opt for a mild hollow limb design as all I was left with was mostly high crowned sapwood to build from. Fortunately I’d not removed any sapwood at this point as i didn’t feel the need to chase a ring, so I still felt confident that I had enough wood to make a bow.

Personally I prefer a yew heartwood/sapwood ratio of around at least 50/50, but this bow was going to end up more like 40/60. Many bowyers would condemn such a ratio, but in my experience, for flatbows at least, an almost entirely sapwood yew bow will still make for a snappy shooting and durable bow if tillered well. And this bow did not disappoint, despite the loss of so much heartwood.

In order to emphasis what little heartwood I was left with, I decided to fume this stave in ammonia, which really added some character by giving the wood a unique, almost antique like look which only yew can bring about. I’ll definitely be fuming more yew bows in the future as the results I’ve experienced so far have been fantastic!

This stave had a couple of potentially problematic knots in the top limb which needed to be delt with before putting any significate torque on them, so after drilling the soft rotten material out, I decided to plug them both with yew heartwood, as there was quite a cavity left after all the muck had been removed.

After getting to brace height I decided to rawhide back her with wild red deer rawhide for extra durability, which left me with quite a canvass to decorate after tillering was completed. Since I had nothing in the way of snake skins to back her with, I opted to use a native design which I’d seen in the Bowyers Bible Vol 1. So after shooting her in I mixed up some of my local Devonian earth pigments with my own hide glue and set about painting the backing in a pattern inspired by the “Hupa” Western Indian tribes recorded from the Northern California/Southern Oregon region.

Tip overlays and arrow passes made from red deer antler were fitted, and the handle cover was made from a gorgeous piece of Bark tanned wild red deer leather, which I tanned myself in sitka spruce bark that came from the very same group of trees which are in the background to the photos bellow. The leather grip is also sewn up with red deer leather lacing.

After a lot of shooting in and a little re tillering to balance things out post settling in, I was really pleased with the end result. She’s super pointable, snappy, light in the hand and performs without any hand shock at all. And she turned out to be a nippy little thing, consistently hitting speeds around the 150FPs mark shooting a 500 Grain arrow. She would make for a great hunting bow, especially in a blind as she’s so manoeuvrable due to being so short.

She is now listed in my Southmoor Bows Etsy shop and can be found here:

Specifics are as follows:
Draw Weight: 46lbs at 26”
Mass: 630 grams
Length NTN: 57”
Width: 2” at widest part
Tips: 4” semi static 3/8” wide
Back: Crowned with undulations. : Pyramidal face profile
Belly Profile: Working limb sections undulating to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to D shaped/ridge cross section.
Tiller: Aggressive eliptical. 1/8” positive
Brace height: 5.5″

Here she is: