Tag Archives: Buffalo Horn

Primitive Character Yew Flat bow 52#@28” (Bow no. 14)

I wanted a yew branch stave to start thinking about beginning work on, so I set about rummaging through the pile of yew branch staves I have in storage. There I came across an interesting and character laden stave which was cut several years ago. I know this because I write the date that all of my staves were cut on one end after the end grain sealer has dried.

This particular branch stave caught my eye because it had a nice bit of wiggle and a few small knots which would add character without compromising strength. This stave was pretty long but one end kicked out massively and also held a dodgy looking bulge/knot. I decided to lop this 8” section off and just try and work with whatever length I was left.

Even with the end missing, I was still left with 63” ish to play with. So now that this stave had been significantly reduced in length, the shorter than ideal overall length would definitely influence the design of this bow, as bows this length and with this much character typically need a bit of thought in order to mitigate stress if intended to be drawn to 28” or more.

Before committing to a build though, I always like to give a stave a bit of axe time in order to get a bit of a feel for the stave, plus to try and identify any major problems I might encounter once work commences properly. 10 mins with the axe and I’d uncovered a potential problem. Hidden under the bark on the belly side of this stave was a drying check, and it looked like it might run deep.

Much of the bark on the face which I’d chosen as the back was very loose. I managed to pop a fair bit of this bark off by hand. I’d managed to uncover the section of sapwood under the crack, and fortunately, I could see no sign of the crack emerging on the surface of the back. Phew!

So I pushed on working down the belly, hoping that the crack would fall out at some point. And to some extent it did but the belly side of the handle section was never going to lose that crack completely, unless I reduced the handle thickness down to proportions which would make it bend slightly. And even then there was a good chance that some of the cracked pith wood would remain within the bow.

I wasn’t averse to this though, as the bow was going to end up fairly short by longbow standards, and a bendy handle would spread the work load by adding an extra 8” (4” handle + 4” fades) of bow to the total length of “working” bow.

After roughing out the belly a bit more to give me some feel for where the bow would best sit, I set about marking out the handle. The best spot for the handle given the crack and the other features was actually about 2″ away from dead centre between the limbs, so I decided to make this bow asymmetrical.

Next I wanted to rough out the face profile so that I could see what the sapwood/heartwood ratios were like, so after popping off as much bark from the limb sections as possible, I took the draw knife to the sides. This stave was only moderately crowned and was always destined to be a flatty, so I worked the edges down to a vague pyramidal profile to see if I could work around the major features without compromising strength.

There were four knots which were large enough to need to be kept away from the edges, two in each limb. Fortunately, all four of these knots could be kept off the edges without having to divert the natural flow of the lateral grain which could potentially compromise the integrity of the bow through excessive grain run out. I always like to follow the grain!

A few pin knots would present on the edges but none of these looked like they would cause me any trouble. The only other issue that the knottiness of this stave would create would be in preventing the application of significant heat bending. Recurving the tips was definitely out of the question as the top tip section was carrying enough knots to cause it to bust off if significant heat bending pressure was applied.

A lack of recurve was actually a good thing as I could now simply reflex the outer thirds slightly leaving both tips static for the last 4” therefore minimising stress to this fairly short stave. Since the handle section plus all but 4” of the tips would be working to some extent, there was now a real likelihood that this bow might even draw to 28”, despite being as short as it was plus having lots of potential weak points, AKA “character”!.

I should probably mention here that after getting all the bark off, I was struck by the beauty of the back of this bow. The sapwood was infected by that gorgeous bluey grey staining which yew sapwood often gets, This gave the back some wonderful colour variation which I know from past experience looks great when finished with a quality hardening oil such as Tung or linseed oil . In addition to the wonderful colour, the back of this stave had quite a bit of nice wiggle and undulation too, all of which was orientating around and over a multitude of pins and knots on both limbs. It reminded me of a piece of driftwood art, only with a tangerine belly!

The ratio of sapwood to heartwood was around 60/40 but there was absolutely no way I was going to attempt to reduce the sapwood on a stave like this one with such a striking and character laden back. So the ratios would have to remain. Not that this was going to be an issue anyway as the heartwood on this bow was that wonderful deep and dense orange stuff with the nice tight growth rings. Yummy!

Once the face profile was established and the handle and fades roughed out, I took a bit of time to study the small amount of twist in both limbs. This would come out easily with dry heat, as would much of the excessive deflex and reflex which was apparent at several points between the fades and the tips of both limbs.

So before going any further, I decided to spend a bit of time getting all the twist out, as well as easing off some of the unsightly deflex and reflex. A total of six sessions with the heat gun spread across a couple of day finally resulted in a stave which now looked completely free from twist and had a fairly even distribution of about 2” of overall reflex.

At this stage I’d left the limbs a bit on the thick side so that I could dig out the belly to mirror the crown and its generally undulating topography. There was no way this bow would have an even distribution of thickness (and therefore stress) unless I followed the back as a guide to dictate the profile of the belly.

So once the final thickness of the sides was established with the drawknife and the rasps, I began to dig out all the dips and valleys with the gouge and curved scraper. As is usually the case, this wasn’t a five minute job, but a job well worth doing all the same – in my opinion. And once I felt that I’d created an even thickness throughout, I set about floor tillering both limbs.

Once both limbs felt and looked like they were bending evenly on the floor, I cut in some tillering nocks and popped her up onto the tiller tree for a few first pulls with the long string. “Pretty good” was my first thought, although I was now made a little more aware of a bit of rather ugly looking deflex which was presenting itself in the top fade and also at a point about one third up the top limb. At this point I should probably say that I’d chosen the top limb to be the limb which had a rather nice wiggly tip section. I could imagine this tip looking great once refined and augmented with a nice elegant overlay.

This delfex in the fade just would not do however. It would not be possible to remove it completely but I felt confident that much of it could be reduced. I should also say that the top limb which contained this 4” deflexed fade was showing significantly weaker than the bottom limb on the tiller tree. So by straightening out as much of the deflex in this weaker top limb, I’d hopefully enhance the look of the top limb whilst simultaneously added some strength to it.

I couldn’t be bothered with trying and steam bend out the deflexed fade, so I simply clamped the deflexed fade over one of my reflex forms and gave it a good heating up with the heat gun. After a couple of attempts I was much happier with the small amount of deflex which remained. The heating process had also added significant strength to the top limb too and now had the bow presenting a ¼” positive tiller.

Conscious that some of the newly applied heat adjustment might pull out, I opted to reduce the bottom limb a tad in a couple of very slightly stiff spots. Brace height was achieved quickly thereafter and in no time I was pulling down to 22”.

A quick check with the scale showed around 40# at 22” which wasn’t too bad considering the amount of belly wood which had come off in order to lose the initial cracked section. I figured 28” would be pushing 50# by the time the tillering was finished so was quite happy with where she was at this point.

A few more tweaks with the scraper and 26” was reached quite quickly. Time to check tiller, string alignment (which was pretty good all along), and also check to see if any twist had returned. The tiller was holding firm at ¼” positive and the string alignment looked to be dead centre. A very small amount of twist had returned to the last 10” of the bottom limb tip. So a quick session with the heat gun took the twist out again and all was looking quite good.

The pith wood cracks in the handle section were not going to fall off this bow since I had already narrowed the handle thickness as much as I could. Any more wood removal from the handle and fades would see them start bending too much. In my experience, too much bend in the handle ends up robbing a bow of significant cast. I wasn’t going to take this risk just to lose a few pith wood cracks which were never going to compromise anything other than aesthetics.

So instead, I opted to pump all the handle/fade cracks and belly knots full of good old nice thin super glue, so that they would stay shut up forever and would sand nice and smooth for finishing. In no way would any of these features ever compromise the structural integrity of this bow.

The scale was reading around 49 ish# at 26” and everything was looking quite good so I called it done for now, opting as usual to shoot in the last 2“ of tiller. A couple of weeks of stump shooting with this bow was great fun and I was pleased to see that the tiller still felt very well balanced for split fingered shooting and had only reduced by a fraction.

After a lot of shooting she had settled into a tiller of 3/8” positive. Limbs felt and sounded like they were timing well which is likely why no hand shock was apparent when shooting this bow, even with the limb tips left wide for temporary tillering nocks.

Happy with the tiller and having proven that the bow was a survivor, I cracked on with finishing her. I gave her a pair of buffalo horn tip overlays and a good sanding and polishing before sealing her up with a bunch of coats of oil. The handle was begging to be kept simple and since she was always destined to be shot off the knuckle, I opted to wrap the handle primitive style with a nice strip of deer rawhide which I stained black with an application of bark tannin solution followed up with some home made iron chloride. The black rawhide wrapping matched the buffolo horn tips which I thought was both fitting and functional.

With the bow finished I put another hundred or so arrows through her to see what she felt like now the handle was wrapped up and the tips had been refined. She was now more comfortable to hold and a fair bit quieter to shoot too. The beaver fur string silencers were helping in this regard but I always notice a reduction in vibration when a bow has mass reduced from the tips. And since the tips on this bow were reduced by quite a bit after the initial shooting in phase, I felt sure that the final fine tips not only quietened the bow significantly but they also sped her up a fair bit too. A final check on the scale was reading 52# at 28”. A good weight for most flatty fanatics (myself included). I really like this bow. I think she looks great and is a real character. She’s a pleasure to shoot being quiet, smooth to draw and pretty fast. She was sending 550 grain arrows whistling along to their destination with ease and I was quietly entertained by the noticeable slap that those stump heads were being delivered with.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story of her build and like the look of her. This bow is now listed for sale in my Etsy shop and is available for purchase here: Primitive Character Yew Longbow 5228 – Etsy UK

Here are her stats and a bunch of pics. Enjoy!

Mass: 664 grams

Length NTN: 61.5”

Width: 2” at widest

Tips: 4” static 3/8” wide at tips

Back: Marginally crowned with undulations. Face profile pyramidal.

Belly Profile: Working limb sections undulating to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to D shaped then triangular cross sections.

Tiller: Elliptical 1/8” positive.

Brace Height 5 1/2″

Draw Weight: 52lbs at 28”

Yew snake skin and rawhide backed Deflex/Reflex Longbow. 56#@26” (Bow No. 13)

This bow was built out of one of a bunch of yew branches which all came from a group of yew trees which produce some really beautiful orange heartwood. In my experience, no two yew trees produce the same quality of timber, however all of the branch staves which came from these particular trees have a good ratio of heartwood to sapwood and they all have this wonderful bright orange heartwood.

This fortunately means that none of the branch stave cut from these trees are likely to need much, if any sapwood removal in order to optimise limb composition. This is really helpful as the growth rings on these particular branches are nice and tight which is definitely what I prefer in terms of optimal yew bow wood. But tight rings on yew staves with undulating backs makes chasing a ring quite a challenge! Particularly if the stave has lots of additional character – which is kind of what I like, and is oftenwhy I chose to use a particular stave in the first place!

This particular branch stave was pretty clean across one obvious potential face, however I have to admit that the glaringly obvious deflex was not an immediately attractive quality. Fortunately the deflex was evenly distributed through both limbs and the handle section. This deflex amounted to about 3” worth so was going to require a bit of thought and consideration.

Whilst thinking about how I’d work around all this deflex, I remembered seeing a couple of beautifully made primitive osage bows made by a well know and accomplished bowyer in the US call Mike Yancey. Mike owns and runs Pine Hollow Longbows out of Arkansas. If you haven’t seen any of Mikes work, then go check out his stuff. He’s done a few really interesting podcasts and has a few youtube videos which you might find interesting. His website is here: Traditional Archery – Pine Hollow Longbows and his youtube channel is here: Pine Hollow longbows – YouTube

A couple of Mikes signature bows have quite a bit of deflex deliberately built into their design. This has always intrigued me as I’d always assumed that lots of deflex would cost a bow significant cast. Mike seems unfazed by this though and counters it to some extent by flicking the tips. But even with the tips flicked, some of his shorter bows still carry a good couple of inches of deflex overall.

Despite all that deflex, Mike and his customers report that those same bows shoot fast, hard, smooth and quietly. So with this particular branch stave already carrying a lot of natural deflex, I decided to have a go at producing a bow with a similar side profile to the shorter bows which Mike makes. That way I could encompass as much of the natural deflex into the design of this bow as possible.

My plan was to produce a medium length (56-58” N to N) flatty with an elegant pyramidal front profile. I planned to flick the tips since they were relatively knot free, and I planned to keep the last 4” of the tips static. Mike uses Osage almost exclusively so I couldn’t be sure that his basic design profile would work for our English yew. So with this in mind I opted to keep reflexing down to a minimum with a view to offsetting some of the deflex but definitely not all of it. The flicked tips would also avoid excessive stack too given that this shorter than average bow was going to get tillered to 26”

The handle section on this stave was full of beautiful orange heartwood which I wanted to maximise the potential of as a feature, so I opted to keep the handle thick enough to show off all that wood. As a result of keeping the handle so thick, the handle would obviously end up rigid. This would result in the 4” handle section plus 3” fades taking 10 inches of the bow out of action. The 4” static tips would take a further 8” out of play too. This would leave only 20” of each limb available to work. That’s not a lot of moving wood to accommodate for a full 28” draw length so I opted to keep this bow to a 26″ draw length. Since 26″ matches my own draw length, that suited me just fine! So all of that natural deflex would now act as a bit of a buffer and would mitigate the risk of building a bow that was starting to resemble quite a high stress design. Maybe that’s why Mike deliberately builds in so much deflex on his high performance short osage bows.

This particular stave was fairly easy to rough out as the grain was quite uniform for the most part. I often find that our local yew wants to tear out, even when away from knots and other typical features. I have come to think that this isn’t necessarily due to propeller twist, but is more to do with our generally higher wind speeds stressing the limbs of our local yew into growing with an uneven cross section in order to brace itself against our stronger than average prevailing winds. In fact propeller twist is something that I seldom experience with our local yew. I wish the same could be said of our white woods!!

The face of this branch stave which I’d planned using as the back of the bow had previously acted as the top of this branch as it grew on the tree. As a result of this, the growth rings were tighter in this section of the limb when compared to the underside of the branch. The result of this growth is often that the pith of the branch ends up running closer to the face that acts as the top of the branch. This was the case with this particular branch. As such, the pith would need digging out of both limbs in order to optimise for limb compression strength and minimise the risk of bucked heartwood on the belly.

By the time all of the pith was out it was clear that this bow would end up incorporating a shallow hollow limb type appearance in the inner thirds of both limbs. This was just fine in my eyes as I find that a HLD cross section limb profile looks nice and enhances performance. So out came the gouge and the swan neck scrapper and soon I had both limbs free from pith and down to a nice even thickness of between 14 and 12mm distributed evenly between all the humps and bumps and twists and turns.

With the face profile and limb thickness roughed out, I got on with flicking the tips with a simple jig and some dry heat from a heat gun. I decided to keep the flicked section to a long gentle sweep rather than the usual 6” of more aggressive curve. This would allow half of the flicked section to do some work whilst keeping the last 4” completely static.

Next a small amount of dry heat was applied to the top limb fade in order to correct a small amount of string misalignment. Then it was time to cut some tillering nocks. I was quite happy with the side profile of the bow at this early point and was keen to see what the stave looked like during the first few pulls on the tiller tree. Other than an obviously stronger bottom limb, the first pulls looked nice. A bit of re balancing of the limbs to improve the elliptical tiller I wanted brought my eye back in so I could see that there were a couple of spots on both limbs which needed to be let off a bit. After that the rest of the tiller came together pretty quick.

The natural deflex and added reflex had created a shape which looked very nice once reaching full brace. Since this bow was symmetrical, I wanted to try and maintain a ¼ positive tiller throughout the tree tillering process knowing that the bottom limb on a bow this length would likely take on a fair bit of stress and a little set if shot split fingers.

Brace to 22” went smoothly but it was clear by now that a fair bit of weight removal would be necessary before pushing out to 26” as she was currently very heavy at 22”. I was aiming for a bow around 55-58 at 26” so stopped when I got to 55 at 24”. I’d shoot in the last 2” of tiller then adjust accordingly. So with the temporary nocks serving to let me shoot her in, I gave her a couple of weeks worth of stump shooting to settle in properly.

After a lot of shooting, all looked good and the positive tiller had held up well albeit reducing down to about 3/16″. It was clear by now that this design of bow was very efficient. In fact I was really impressed with the power and speed this bow was demonstrating. I shot stumps with her using some old battered 30″ 500# Gold Tip Traditional Classics which are as close to bomb proof an arrow as you’ll ever find and subsequently an excellent choice for blasting stumps with. They are also a very heavy arrow. Tipped with insert, ballistic collar and 150 grain stump heads, these things are coming in at 575 grains so I was expecting this bow to respond to them like it was being asked it to throw logs! But she was sending them on their way like my 50# Satori sends them. I was impressed!

Back at the workshop after all the shooting in the tiller still looked great and the finishing process could begin in earnest. I wasn’t intending to put this bow up for sale in my shop as this bow was intended to be a gift for a mentor of mine but I still wanted to enhance the durability of the bow’s back. So on went a couple of premium quality wild red deer rawhide strips to bomb proof her back. You can buy them here: One Matching Pair of Wild Deer Rawhide Strips – Etsy UK Then on went a couple of buffalo horn tip overlays. Last but not least, I wanted to use this bows rawhide covered back as a canvass so that the back could earn the right to sit next to all that gorgeous orange belly wood. So on went a whole King Rat Snake skin from tip to tip.

This bow had an arrow shelf cut into it to increase functionality. The shelf is cut pretty close to centre which has reduced arrow fussiness considerably. I refrained from wrapping the handle so the handle wood could shine. Covering up that gorgeous bright orange handle wood would have been criminal in my opinion!

After a very quick and easy re-tiller to account for the addition of the backings, I was ready to sand and polish her up. Then a little black and white artwork was employed along the boundary between the wood and the backing to make the contrast between front and back really pop.

To seal her up I gave her a few baths in Tung Oil to give her a wonderful satin finish which really suits yew in my opinion. Finally I built her a 12 strand B55 flemish twist string with nice small loops to keep everything in line whilst hanging onto those tiny nocks. Two Wild beaver fur silencers dampened down the tiny amount of sound that remained on this already whisper quiet bow. Fur silencers also look pretty cool and in keeping with the overall primitive theme in my opinion. You can buy them here: 1 X Pair of Beaver Fur Bow String Silencers beaver – Etsy UK

I have to say that I’m really impressed with this bow. And even though the wood that this stave provided was a major contribution to the efficiency and performance of this bow, I simply can’t help but think that this deflex reflex profile enhanced the smoothness of the draw and the retention of power which might have been lost through set born from a straight or reflexed starting point.

I’m going to continue to experiment with this profile further. I want to confirm whether or not the performance of this bow can be readily replicated in other bows of similar stature. I’m also now curious to see how bows of other woods would perform when designed this way. I will keep you posted on my findings!

Here are the stats and the photos. I hope you like her:

Mass: 566 grams

Length NTN: 56 3/4”

Width: 1 3/4” at widest

Tips: 4” static 3/8” wide at tips

Back: Marginally crowned with undulations. Face profile pyramidal.

Belly Profile: Working limb sections concaved to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to D shapes then triangular cross sections.

Tiller: Elliptical 1/8” positive.

Brace Height 5 1/2″

Draw Weight: 56lbs at 26”

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!