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.
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″
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” wideat 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.
A mate of mine gave me this stave ages ago and said ” I bet you cant make a bow out of that!” To be honest, on first inspections I agreed with him!! But on closer examination, in principle, this 4-5″ diameter yew branch had plenty of potential. For a start, the best face (which had been the top of the branch as it grew of the tree) was fairly clean of knots, bar a few wispy bits of epicormic growth. With this face showing promise I inspected the cut ends of this 74″ branch. The sapwood/heartwood ratio looked good with about 8mm of sapwood showing. The heartwood was a beautiful dark orange and densely ringed. The pith was clearly biased towards the face I could use, which was to be expected given that the top of a branch typically has the thinner growth rings, and this was certainly the case with this particular branch.
The thinner end of the branch had a big drying split extending several inches into the usable part of the branch so it was obvious that this section would end up as an offcut. That would leave me with around 65″ of decent stave to work with. The branch was certainly undulating along it’s entire length and very slightly reflexed along what would be both limb sections, however the section which would make for the handle had a significant roll in it due to a massive knot on the belly side. This knot was going to require some thought to deal with. The large roll that this knot had produced was also presenting some deflex in what would be one of the handle fade areas, but only on one side. This would need to be either excepted as character and incorporated into the bow design, or possibly heated out to some extent.
This knot was presenting another problem too as it was causing a significant side bend which would throw the string alignment out of centre by a good couple of inches. The likely hood of this misalignment being removed completely was low since I could see that this large knotted section would only bend through substantial steam heating. To over cook an already cracked knot like this would invariable result in a massive crack right in the lower fade/handle so I was forced to except that the best I could hope for in relation to fixing the string mis-alignment was to end up with a bow with the string slightly favouring the side which it naturally wanted to. This was a shame as I’d sooner the branch was bent the opposite way as the limb which would have to be the lower limb was nice and snakey, and therefore the limb which was carrying the most character. I’d much sooner that this limb had made the top limb since it’s always better to have the most characterful limb as the top limb, or at least in my opinion!
Despite the branch being 4″ wide at the thin end (closer to 5″ at the fat end) the face which was usable was quite crowned. In my mind a bow made from a branch like this one would benefit from having hollowed out limbs. Digging the limbs out would also ensure that all of the pith was removed since the pith was running close to the back of the stave in the thinner end.
So after getting the bark of so i could see exactly what i had to work with, I cut the branch back to 65″. I then began reducing the belly material with the axe. Once an approximate limb orientation and thickness had been established I set about working down the edges to create and approximate face profile. The branch was starting to look something like a roughed out bow now so I set about working out exactly where the handle and fades would sit. My idea was to turn this stick into a 50lb ish, asymmetrical, pyramidal longbow with a four inch handle and 3-4″ fades. I also liked the idea of flicking the tips very slightly, and on a yew HLD this long, the tips could easily be static.
I decided to go for a contoured handle with a shelf. The large knot was going to be located in the bottom of the handle where the fade transition was going to be. This unfortunately put the large roll which was previously mentioned right in the bottom fade too. due to the shape of this roll, it was becoming apparent that I was going to have to except a thicker bottom fade. Had I tried to keep the fade thickness the same for both the top and the bottom, I’d have ended up with a handle which would have been shaped in a way which was uncomfortable to hold. So I decided to accept the thicker lower fade and use it as an opportunity to act as a canvas for the rather beautiful, albeit inconvinient knot.
With everything now roughed out I got the handle over a pan of boiling water and set the timer for 45 mins. Whilst she was steaming away, I said a quiet prayer the the bow gods and asked that they would see that the knot did not split through the handle and fade. My prayers where obviously heard as the thin seasoning check which was there already did not get any worse. So with the handle and fade nice and hot I put the stave into my bending jig and gently eased the string alignment back to centre. After cooling for several hours the clamps came off and further inspection confirmed that the string alignment was now just a tad off centre and favouring the correct side for a righty. Hopefully it would stick!
Next I flicked the tips with the heat gun whilst the limb thickness was still excessive. At least that way, if one of the small pin knots popped during bending I might have some extra material I could remove to take out the cracked pin. I didn’t go mad with the recurve jig so the tips survived the modest amount of flick. At this point I was thinking back to a post I’d seen on PA years ago where a seasoned bowyer had used antler main beam to reinforce and make static recurves on a beautiful osage primitive. I’d put aside a few bits of Red Deer main beam with the intention of trying this strategy for my self some time. So I decided that now was the time to give antler reinforced static tips a go!
After matching the antler pieces to the shape of the recurved tips, I glued and clamped them in situ with TBIII. This would now mean that the tips were set in place so if the tips needed alignment work later on then I would have to apply heat and bend from within the working section of the limbs, fades or the handle. Since the tips actually lined up reasonably well already, I didn’t envisage having to do much tweaking except maybe for some very minor twist. This small amount of twist came out quite easily with some dry heat later on.
Now the tips were set up I proceeded to hollow out both limbs. First with the gouge and then the goose neck scraper I mirrored the various undulations found on the back and projected those same contours onto the belly in reverse. Where there was a hump on the back, the belly would get dug out deep. Where there was a flatter spot on the back, I would shallow out the digging. By aiming for any even 14mm thickness at every spot between the handle fades and the fades of the static tips, it was pretty easy to get a good floor tiller.
Temporary nocks were cut into the tips which, at this point, were still oversized in terms of width. Then onto the tillering tree she went for some first pulls with the long string. The bottom limb looked very stiff so that was dealt with first. Next the inner third of the top limb was let off a touch until the elliptical tiller I was gunning for was achieved. With both limbs bending evenly, albeit with a slightly stronger bottom limb, I got her braced. At this point she was still very heavy so after working down to 50lbs at 22″ I decided to stop and get a rawhide backing on her.
After hide gluing on a couple of nice, thin, strong, home produced red deer rawhide strips, I considered decorating the rawhide with artwork, or maybe a stain. But then I remembered that I had a really beautiful full length cobra rawhide begging to be used somewhere in the workshop. On the cobra skin went along with a pair of red deer antler tip overlays and some deer back strap sinew to secure the antler static tip reinforcements. This sinew wrapping would also double as a means to cover the transition between the end of the cobra skins and the underlying rawhide.
After a week of drying she went back on the tillering tree for the last part of the journey. She was in need of a bit of rebalancing since the backings had moved the tiller a bit but in pretty short time she was back to an nice elliptical 1/8″ positive, pulling around 48# at 26″. I took her our stump shooting for a week to shoot in the last couple of inches as I always do. Final assessment (post shooting in) was that the tips needed just a fraction of twisting in opposite directions to get some better string alignment. Other than that she was holding the positive tiller and after a couple of hundred arrows had settled into 48lb at 28″.
Final touches where a nice thick piece of red stag neck rawhide for a handle covering, and a touch of black stain on the section of exposed rawhide visible at the tip sections. This stain was then wire wool scrubbed to create an aged look. I deliberately left the tips unbacked with the cobra skin as in my experience, snake skin will often end up getting very worn and tatty towards the tip of the upper limb due to the constant rubbing brought about by stringing the bow.
I painted the edges of the snake skin with a thin black boarder line overlayed with white dots to make the contrast between the tan snake skin and the yew sapwood really pop. And the whole bow including the rawhide handle was finished with 6 coats of tung oil applied over a couple of weeks to let it really soak in. I find that this type of satin oil finish really draws out the grain of yew heartwood really well.
I really like how this bow came out even though she is a big heavy girl. I think she’s a real looker with lots of character. And she can sling an arrow too! The obvious advantage of having a bow like this one with string alignment which clearly favours the left side, is that arrow fussiness is not an issue. I shot 40#, 50# and even 60# arrows through this bow and they were all achieving acceptable arrow flight. I was a bit concerned that the weight of the antler reinforcements in the static tips would create a bit of hand shock but by keeping the mass down to a minimum, hand shock is not an issue.
As much as I love the look and performance of this bow, I’ve not got the space for her and would love to see her end up getting shot with the degree of regularity which she desires, so this bow will be made available to buy through my shop. If you would like to become her proud owner then please visit my Esty shop here: Snake Skin Rawhide Backed Primitive Yew Longbow 4828 – Etsy UK
Here are the stats:
Mass: 858 grams with string
Length NTN: 64”
Width: 1 7/8” at widest
Tips: 8” static 7/16” wide
Back: Marginally crowned with undulations. Face profile pyramidal.
Belly Profile: Working limb sections concaved to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to D shapes cross section.
This bow came from a nice clean, straight, undamaged English Elm stave which I cut back in the winter. I roughed it out green and clamped it to a slightly reflexed form to force dry it over the wood burner for a week. I then took the roughed out stave off the form and left it hanging up in the ceiling above the wood burner for a month to dry to the point of no further weight loss.
Once the stave was good and dry I chose a shape and profile (HLD pyramidal longbow with static tips) which suited the length and width of the stave (6ft X 3”). I then cleaned it up close to final dimensions and then floor tillered it. The shape looked good so I continued to tiller to brace then carried on down to 22”. I was gunning for a nice positive elliptical tiller and a final draw weight in the upper 50s as this bow was for someone who wanted a nice clean, simple, hunting weight primitive longbow.
All looked good except for a little bit of propeller twist which was making its presence known, so I opted to straighten that out whilst heat treating the slightly dug out belly. So after fixing the stave to the form again and using clamps to pull out the propeller twist I set to cooking the belly.
Half an hour with the blow torch got the belly nice and dark but without any cracks. I’ve learned over the years that properly dried whitewood staves wont check as easily when heat treated as those which are still holding 10% or more moisture. This stave was down to about 6% moisture content so I could get away with using the heavy heat application which comes with using a blow torch to heat treat the belly of a bow. Give it a try and you’ll see what I mean.
After a day to cool and reacclimatise, I checked the tiller again. The heat treating had banged on some weight and gotten rid of the propeller twist nicely. The stave was now holding about an inch and a half of reflex too. After tillering down to 26” I was getting 63ish lbs so I decided to shoot in the last 2 inches and see if the positive tiller would stick.
A few days slinging stump heads in the woods gave me chance to really shoot her in. All looked good however the tiller was now looking a bit too neutral and since this bow is symmetrical and the guy this bow is going to shoots split fingers, I opted to take some more wood off the top limb to regain that positive tiller.
With everything looking nice, I set about rawhide backing this bow to add some extra durability. As much as I love self bows, the simple reality is that one ding in the wrong place, (especially on the back and sides, or worse still back corners) and a bow could easily be compromised. I like the protection that properly made and fitted deer rawhide gives to the back of a stave bow.
I back many of the bows which are going to end up in the hands of other people as I know how rough others can be with bows. On this particular bow I opted to use some really nice thin wild red deer rawhide which I produce from deer that I’ve hunted over the winter. I process this rawhide the traditional way which ensures that it remains good and thin but incredibly strong. I sell this rawhide for a very reasonable price in my ETSY shop: Southmoorbows – Etsy UK. You can buy it here: One Matching Pair of Wild Deer Rawhide Strips – Etsy UK
After a couple of days for the titebond III and rawhide to dry thoroughly, I set about trimming the rawhide and fitting some really nice Red Deer antler tip overlay (which you can buy here: Wild English Red Deer Antler Whole Coronets 3.5 Long – Etsy UK)
After sanding the whole bow down and polishing her up with wire wool, I stained the wood with an alcohol based black wood stain. The rawhide got treated to a coat of leather dye which once dry was wire wool scrubbed in the mid limb section to give it an aged and worn appearance.
All the final scrapping and sanding to finish brought the weigh down to 59lbs at 28”. A further few shooting in sessions saw the weight settle in to 58lb at 28”. This was about perfect.
On went a piece of my own home produced, lovely, thick wild red deer neck rawhide for a handle covering (which you can buy here: 5 X 6 Wild Red Deer Rawhide Piece 0.4 1mm Thick – Etsy UK). This rawhide handle covering got a coat of leather stain too. The handle and the bow itself were then both treated to half a dozen coats of tung oil over the next couple of weeks to seal her up good and tight.
Whilst this bow is a bit on the heavy side for me personally, the guy who received this bow loved it. It is indeed a punchy bow with no noticeable hand shock, and very quiet too. It would make a really great hunting bow.
Here are the stats and pics. Hope you like!
Mass: 678 grams
Length NTN: 67”
Width: 1 7/8” at widest
Tips: 5” static 3/8” wide
Back: Marginally crowned with minimal undulation. Face profile pyramidal.
Belly Profile: Working limb sections concaved to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to triangular cross section.
I was given a 3” elm pole by a mate of mine who coppiced a butch of the stuff in one of his hedgerows last year. Many of the poles/logs were around the 3-5” mark so I asked him to save the better stems in his barn so I could pick through them at some point. Many of the stems had been attacked by the beetle and were unusable, which was a real shame because some of the stems would have been perfectly good bow staves had it not been for all the damage below the bark.
In this part of the world we are cursed with Dutch elm disease. It really is quite rare to find an elm stave which doesn’t have any damage at all. I have tried making character elm bows out of badly beetle damaged elm before, but have concluded that the weakness induced by the fungal pathogen will invariably lead to a broken bow at some point in the future.
One or two small spots of black rot tends to be ok though, so the stave which made this bow was given a chance to prove itself, as I really liked the slight wiggle and snake this stave reflected after roughing out. In addition to the tiny bit of beetle damage, I had to negotiate a few other features too, such as knots, drying checks and some propeller twist which came out pretty easily witha little dry heat.
Given the undulating back of this stave I decided to try and mimic the topography of the back on the belly, but in reverse of corse. This created a slightly hollow and varied contour to the bulk of the bows belly. I also opted for a slightly hollow belly in order to maximise the potential for removing some of the beetle damage which was apparent on the belly of the bottom limb.
In order to get the worst of the beetle damage out of the stave I ended up with quite thin limbs, both in terms of width and thickness. As a consequence I ended up with a bow which is a bit on the light side, finishing out at about 42lbs after the initial shooting in phase. Since sanding and finishing the bow, plus a lot more shooting in, she has now settled into about 40# @ 28”. Not too bad for a pretty gnarly elm stick!
I know a lot of trad archery folk hate arrow shelves but I’m not one of them. I like an arrow shelf simple because I can shoot arrows with feathers without having to wrap the fronts of the fletching in order to prevent a quill winding up embedded in my hand.
As much as I like shooting my own primitive arrows with feather fletchings wrapped with sinew, I do find that the raised sinew wrapping can sometimes cause a bit of deflection when it makes contact with the arrow pass or arrow shelf. I often see this deflexion manifest as a false nock left. Or if shooting of a shelf, a false nock high and left.
In addition to an arrow shelf I went to the effort of putting tip overlays on her. If you read my previous post you will have seen that I have recently come across a really nice and very old yew log which has been exposed to the elements in a dead state whilst still being attached to a huge and very old yew tree.
This exposure to the elements has resulted in the sap wood completely rotting off the log leaving pure yew heartwood behind. On closer inspection this heartwood was encapsulated in a 1/8th inch thick layer of dark, hard and perfectly preserved resin saturated timber. This resinous outer coating is hard like oak. It is impossible to mark it with a finger nail (unlike normal yew heart wood) so I decided to try making tip overlays with it, with a view to making sure that the overlay was situated so that this really hard and wear resistance outer layer would be the surface which the bow string would contact with. My idea worked very well and the overlays look lovely contrasting sharply against the light coloured elm sapwood. I’ll certainly use this petrified yew log to produce other overlays in the future.
The handle wound up being a deeply contoured grip style which would have made it quite difficult to wrap a piece of tanned leather around so I opted for a piece of roe deer raw hide which I made myself recently. (Article to come shortly.) I stained it with some leather stain since it was quite bland looking. It looks all right and almost kinda marbled. And despite it being paper thin, it feels really nice and durable. I expect it will outlive the bow by a mile!
This bow was finished with 8 coats of truoil and has stood up well to a fair bit of shooting. I’ve matched it up to a set of handmade 35# 400 grain bamboo arrows, fletched with turkey wing feathers and tipped with modified empty bullet cases for stump heads. These arrows shoot very well and over the chrono I got an average speed of 142ft/sec.
It never ceases to amaze me how tough bamboo arrows are. Despite being shot dozens of times at all sorts of stuff all three arrows are still going strong!! I intend to do a detailed arrow build at some point so keep an eye out for that article coming at some point this year. I’m also working on a pile of new bows which I hope to show off soon.
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 1/8th 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!
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!
Top nock
Top nock
Top nock
Top nock
Top nock
Bottom nock
Bottom nock
Bottom nock
Drawn to 26″
Drawn to 26″
About 3/4″ of set immediately after unstringing. Returns to almost straight after resting.
This bow started out life as a very simple 60lb flatbow which was made from a stave which had been given to me by my neighbour who was grubbing out a patch of wasteland on his farm. Whilst the log was fairly straight (for Elder) the twist was the best part of 80 degrees!
I almost binned the log but thought that I’d use it to test how well a roughed out green Elder stave could be trained to conform to a better shape by using a form and clamps throughout the initial air drying phase.
After a few weeks on the drying form the clamps were removed to reveal a nice straight and twist free stave which I moved indoors to hang above the wood burner to speed dry for another couple of weeks.
A one inch long drying check behind one of the larger knot clusters was the only fault which I was a bit surprise by since Elder can check quite badly when force dried too hard.
Elder is strong in compression so I felt safe in keeping the limb width down to around 1″ 3/8ths. I’d never do this for a wood like Ash or Hazel but Elder is a fantastically springy wood which can cope with way more of a narrow limb profile so long as the length is not compromised too much.
I kept the length long at 66″ nock to nock and opted for a straight rigid handle and simple self nocks. I tillered the bow to 60lbs at 28″ and shot this bow like that for about a year. She performed well and was a powerful fast and efficient bow but 60lbs was too heavy for my likings so back in the late autumn of last year I decided to either get rid of this bow or drop the weight.
At around the same time my brother’s eldest son was asking if I could make him a bow. Whilst happy to oblige, (great excuse to make another bow) the reality was that I was short of time so instead of making him a bow from scratch I opted to re-tiller this Elder bow for him.
Long story short, I dropped the weight down to a more comfortable draw weight for my nephew at his draw length which is 26″. And instead of just removing wood from the previously flat belly I decided to hollow out the limbs to match the crown on the back by using the curved scrapper to re-tiller.
The bow had taken about an inch of set whilst in its previous 60lb straight limbed flat bellied form, so after reducing the weight I decided to see if I could reduce that set a little by heat treating the belly whilst fixed to a slightly reflexed form.
But before heat treating the limbs I also decided to lightly flick the tips to try and reduce the stack which it had suffered a little from previously. The recurved tips where steamed in, then once they had settled, I heated the recurves a bit more thoroughly with the stove top in order to ensure that they would never pull out.
After heat treating the flicked tips and the hollowed out limbs I finished the re-tillering and quit at 42lb at 26″ with a 1/8″ inch positive tiller. Shooting in and re-sanding shaved off another couple of pounds so I finally ended up at 40lbs at 26″.
The previous finish on this bow had been urethane varnish which I was keen to strip of so I could stain the revamped bow a darker colour. After stripping I hit the bare wood with a dark Jacobean oil based stain then sealed her up with 8 coats of Truoil.
A simple leather handle cover and piece of leather as the arrow pass finished the job. The bow is now a light in the hand (460grams) snappy and pointable bow and my nephew was delighted the the end result. I’ve paired this bow up with some 35-40 spine arrows and she is sending a 400 grain arrow over the chronograph at an average of 141ft sec which isn’t anything special but sure is fun to point at stumps!
Here are the pics. Hope you like!
Top nock.
Draw to 26″
1/2″ of set immediately after unstringing. Returns to 1/8th inch after resting.
This project started out as a simple short term experiment. I’d had my eye on a clean but crooked and twisted Field Maple limb for quite a while. Trying to envisage where within the limb I could salvage a stave from was difficult. The limb was about 4.5” thick and had a section about 80” long which was relatively clean. In general the limb was sound and free from large knots, pins and other major imperfections.
The 80” section that showed most potential for making a bow stave did have other issues to consider however. This most usable section was badly twisted and had a significant sideways bend in one half of the stave. There was also a very large amount of natural reflex in what would be the middle/handle section.
To start with, I just wondered if it would be possible to improve the shape, twist and alignment of such a misshapen stave whilst it was still green. I’ve performed many shape corrections on green staves before, using forms and clamps, but I’d never before tried to correct asymmetries in a stave which were as server as this without using fully seasoned staves manipulated with steam bending.
I’ve worked with clean Field Maple on many occasions before so understand the potential this wood has for making a very good white wood bow. In the past I’ve used dry heat to correct minor twist and alignment issues on fully seasoned Field Maple staves. I’ve also used steam heat bending on Field Maple staves for more significant bending such as recurving tips or bending handles for alignment issues etc.
The amount of twist and reflex in this Field Maple stave however was way more than I’ve dealt with before. My expectations for this stave were not great. I envisaged the stave resisting the significant forces necessary to bend and twist this green stave into a better shape.
I also expected cracking or delamination to occur in the mid section due to the shear amount of force than would be necessary to pull the twist out using clamps and a drying form. But my expectations were proven wrong!
The green Field Maple stave roughed out and clamped to a reflexed form to try and produce a more workable shape. Note how the tips have been left full width for extra sideways leverage from the clamps. this really helps to pull twist out.
Side view of the green stave being force dried in the mid day sun on an especially hot late summer day. Note the remaining reflex in the handle section.
The reflex in the handle section was going to remain no matter what I did but this was fine as I could imagine this stave potentially turning into a reflex/deflex longbow. By leaving the limbs full width out to the tips I was able to get significant leverage from the clamps positioned on the edges of limbs. This leverage enabled me to crush down on the side of the limb that was pulling away from the form due to the limb twist. This worked really well and the twist between the fades and the limb tips came out beautifully.
The overall shape was made much more even by using the reflexed form too. By forcing the tips to line up with the handle centre I was also able to correct most of the significant string misalignment. Throughout the end of August I left the clamped stave outside in the sun on hot days.
The stave came indoors for a week once the temps dropped and was left on one of my window sills which catches all of the mid day sun. This window sill is like a green house and serves to quickly force dry staves very well. After the stave had been allowed to dry on the form for about a month I removed the clamps to inspect the results.
Plenty of character left but a much more workable shape overall
side view immediately after removing the clamps and form.
The overall twist was reduced from nearly 70 degrees to about 5 degrees. The massive reflex was tamed to something much more manageable and the string alignment was now only a little off to one side. The stave now actually looked perfectly workable with plenty of character remaining, so instead of calling the project done I decided to see what I could do to turn this stave into an actual finished bow.
My next job was to get this stave down to some realistic dimensions. It would be unlikely that this stave was totally dry so by getting close to final dimensions I’d soon get this stave fully dried and ready for tillering.
Marking out the limb tips. I’d decided to plan for fine antler tip overlays on this bow so initially I laid the rough tip design out to 20mm tapering out to full width at mid limb.
Marking out the rough outer limb shape using my steel ruler to follow the natural curves of this stave. The final shape however will be dictated by the grain itself rather than by lines.
Working down to my lines with the draw knife. Field Maple is a wonderful wood to use cutting tools on.
The approximate shape of the bottom limb. I decided to go for a classic willow leaf shape and carry the tapper from mid limb out to the tips. This stave was initially roughed out to 2 ¼” wide which is what the stave measures in this picture. I may reduce this width to 2” before tillering though.
Top limb roughed out to the same approximate dimensions as the bottom limb. The top limb will be the straighter of the two limbs.
The string alignment appears to be favouring the left side of this picture which suits the decision to make the nearest limb the top limb. This will result in the arrow favouring the left hand side of the bow which suits me as a right handed archer.
Now to reduce the limb thickness to something more like ready for tillering.
Field Maple is a dense wood so these 14+mm thick limbs will need quite a bit of reducing in order to get them to a point where the tillering process can begin. I’m going to aim for 14mm fade end thickness tapering down to 10mm side thickness at the tips. I want the tips to do a very small amount of work on this bow so I will reduce them down to 10 mm but keep away from them when tillering. This should Keep the last 6” of the tips stiffer than the working section of the limb, but without leaving the tips carrying unnecessary mass which would be the consequence of keeping the tips thick enough to ensure that they are completely static.
Working down to my lines with the draw knife.One edge worked down to the line.
Same on the other side.
Bringing both sides together to make the limb initially flat on the belly.
There are only a couple of knots on this stave which look like they will fall of the bow as more material gets removed.
This limb is now approximately 14mm thick as it leaves the fades tappering down to 10mm thick at the tips.
5 minutes with the Shinto rasp makes sure everything is nice and flat with an even thickness taper. I like the Shinto rasp for this job because it is easy to keep flat. Whilst it’s great for working down flat sections, it won’t get into dips etc very well.
Following the dips and humps on the belly to make sure the edge thickness is even. The half round rasp comes in handy here.
A quick scrap with the card scrapper and the basic limb thickness is ready for finer scrutiny.
A nice bit of wiggle to work with.
When I work the face down to rough dimensions on any bow, I always let the grain dictate the limb shape. This avoids creating grain run out which in my experience is a fast way to limb failure.
Next I needed to get the cambium off the back of the stave.
Until the cambium has been thinned right down I can’t get a true handle on the real thickness of all parts of the limb. I tend to leave quite a lot of cambium on a stave right through to the limb thickness reduction phase as the cambium layer acts as a good layer of protection to the back of the bow. A cushion against scrapes and scratches is a good idea whenever the back of a bow will be seen on the finished bow. Since this bow will not be backed the natural appearance of the first layer of wood below the cambium will be displayed on the finished bow so taking care to protect the back of this stave is important.
The valleys and troughs on the back require the use of a gouge to get down through the cambium to wood.The curved scrapper is used to expose the first layer of wood.
Personally I like the appearance of self bows which have a little bit of cambium left on the back of the bow. This little bit of cambium adds to the beauty of the finished bow and confirms to the observer that the back of the bow is in actual fact the very wood which once grew directly beneath the bark. No ring chasing necessary. This remaining cambium also creates a beautiful camouflaged effect on the back of the bow.
The curved scrapper can get into most of the valleys and troughs and can be useful for working around raised spots like knots too.
As tempting as it often is to hog at the cambium with a draw knife it is too easy to nick the underlying wood and compromise the back of the bow so I always proceed with caution using a scraper for raised spots in particular.
A small gouge comes in handy at times.
The back of this stave has an undulating topography which presents as hills, valleys and troughs. If I were to leave the belly completely flat in cross section then the hills on the back would act as stiff points and the valleys and troughs would act as weak spots. To counter this potential problem I contour the bellies on my wide limb bows so that the belly topography matches that of the back but in reverse. To achieve this I use a mixture of gouges and curved scrapers to remove material from the belly directly opposite the hilly thicker spots on the back. This enables me to leave material behind over the thinner valley and trough areas of the back. This affords them extra protection and creates a truly even thickness across the entire width of the limb.
Here is an example of where there is a hill on the back creating a thick spot. I’ll counter for this by scraping away material on the belly which is directly opposite the high point on the back.
I use my fingers to feel the thickness across the whole limb. If I find a thick spot I’ll remove material from the belly until the thickness is the same as everywhere else nearby. I’m aiming to end up with limbs which are an even taper of 14mm – 10mm thick along the entire length and width of the bow. This means that areas of the back which present as high crowned will have a corresponding belly section which is effectively hollowed out to counter for the crowned back. This stave has a mixture of high crown plus flatter sections with hills, valleys and troughs so the belly will end up being far from flat.
I use my fingers and thumbs to feel for differences in thickness. Once I’ve found a thick spot then the curved scraper gets called into action.Constantly checking for even thickness.Trying to mirror the back on the belly.
Here you can see than I’ve dug out a trough on one side of the limbs belly to replicate what is happening to the surface wood directly opposite on the back of the stave.
Here the limb has a notable crown so the whole width of the belly is hollowed out to compensate.
This limb has a 12” section which has a high crown so the belly here will have a correspondingly hollow profile. Maple is a wonderful wood to work with a scrapper.
Countering the excessive reflex in the handle with some deflex in the limbs.
The next job was to put some deflex into the limbs to counter for the reflex in the handle section. I do this with the flat back of a form and some padded blocks and a clamp to create the right shape. I’m aiming to create most of the deflex around the first third of the limb about 6 – 12” out from the ends of the fades.
Here I’m using a heat gun to gently heat up the belly. I make sure I heat both sides of the clamp to make sure the deflex is evenly distributed throughout the first two thirds of the limb.
After about 10 minutes of heating the belly and the sides I then leave it to cool for an hour.
After both limbs have totally cooled I check both limbs for twist. Both limbs could do with a little bit of a correction so I fit a scrap piece of wood to each limb so that I can lever the limbs into a better position.
Once again the heat gun is used to heat the sections of the limbs which I want to correct
I’m carful where I choose to heat as I want to flick the tips on this stave and realise that if I make an early heat correction to a limb near the tips then the steaming of the tips which takes place later will pull the previous heat correction back out when the heat from the steaming travels down to where the twist correction was made.
Now that the limb twist has been dealt with I steam the tips for half an hour so than I can put a small amount of reflex into them.
I’m a fan of longbows but enjoy the lack of stack which a recurve benefits from. Whilst not wanting to go for a full recurve design on this bow I did like the idea of balancing the deflex and reducing stack a little by flicking the tips on what is aimed at finishing up a longbow.
After half an hour over the pan I fit my steel ruler to the belly of the stave using a small G clamp and a packing block to protect the back from clamping pressure. I frequently do this as it really helps prevent the belly tips from delaminating when being bent over the recurve form. The extra support of the flexible steel ruler simply stops a splinter lifting on the belly which is the kiss of death to many would be bows. This trick is especially important if your stave tip belly is not presenting as one growth ring, which is the case here. On this particular stave, both tips span two growth rings so delamination is a high probability without the ruler acting as a brace.
Into the recurve form she goes. My oven door handles act as the perfect brace to hold the stave in position whilst left to cool for half an hour.The flat wooden spatula which you can see stuffed into the tip acts as a wedge to hold both the limb tip and the steel ruler in place. The old tea towel just prevents the back of the limb tip getting marked by the form. This is how I do most of my recurves/flicked tips.Both tips flicked.After a rest overnight to cool and re aclimatise the stave is now looking quite nice and even from the side profile.
The tips are both kicking out in opposite directions which will call for a little more heat twisting in order to get them lined up.
I’m keeping any further adjustments away from the tips so as not to cause the recurves to fall out. I will give both limbs a bit of a twist with the heat gun then recheck for tip alignment and string alignment overall.
By griping the upper third of the limb in the padded jaws of my vice and fitting the other limb with a wooden paddle I can lever a significant amount of counter twist into the mid limb section.
I have to be careful at this point to make sure that the deflex that has already been put in is not lost. I make sure to protect the deflex by setting up the paddle so that the leverage is the direction that promotes flexion to the limb rather than extension. This trick will ensure that the deflex is preserved.
Now would be a good time to roughly shape the handle.
I thought about including an arrow shelf on this bow and certainly had plenty of wood left with which to do that, but I fancied going old school and figured a simple handle for off the knuckle shooting would complement the natural lines of this stave best.
Working down to my lines with the draw knife first.Hitting my lines accurately and achieving handle symmetry with the Shinto rasp.
Three inch fades rounded into a classic willow leaf shape.
Rounding the corners on the back. I sometimes like a spokeshave for this job.Cleaning up the corners and the sides and making sure the face profile is finalised before tillering starts. Next job – tip overlays!
Bottom nock with string groove cut. Both overlays are left wide for now and will be thinned down quite a bit before the bow is finished. I like quite fine tips on willow leaf shaped limbs.
I’m heat treating both flicked tips here in order to prevent the bend pulling out once tillering begins. I also quite like the dark coloured tips which results from only targeting the last 6” of the limb. The dark colour contrasts nicely with the lighter untreated belly wood.Now that the overlays are functional I can eyeball the tips and handle for alignment. The string biased towards the left side of the bow appears a little too strong so I decide to heat the handle area for a correction.The handle is quite thick so I opt for setting the stave over the wood burner top whilst fitted to a bending jig.
The depth of heat penetration that you get with this method is significantly greater than can be achieved with a heat gun. After 45 minutes the handle section is scolding hot so the stave is manipulated into alignments and then comes off the heat and is allowed to cool for an hour. After the jig comes off I check for alignment and am happy to see that the correction has brought string alignment back to just favouring the left side which is perfect for a right handed archer such as me.
Roughly shaping the handle before starting the tillering process.Deflex reflex staves are always easier to tiller as the even shape has already been achieved through the various heat bending processes.
This stave is heavy but almost braceable right out the gate. After about 15 mins of long string tillering on the tiller tree the bow can be strung at a 6” brace height.
The left limb in the picture above is the bottom limb and is slightly weaker than the right limb which the top limb. I shoot split fingers so want this bow to finish out with an 1/8″ – 1/4 ” positive tiller. This was opposite to what the bow was doing at brace so I needed to reduce to top limb to swing the balance the other way. This is fine though as at this point, the bow is still quite heavy. I’m a short drawer so I’m aiming for 50lbs at 26”. At the minute I’m still getting 50lb at 22” so I spend an hour carefully reducing the weight of the top limb and tickling away at any stiff spots overall.
Bow unstrung after tillering to 53lb @ 26″
I’ve now got the stave down to 53lb at 26″ on the tillering tree. The extra 3lbs will likely come off as the bow is fine tillered and sanded after being shot in. both strung and unstrung I’ve got a really nice even balance of reflex in the handle and tips combined with a nice bit of mid limb deflex. The flicked tips haven’t pulled out and the string alignment is still just slightly biased towards the left side of the bow which for me as a right handed shooter is perfect. No signs of chrysaling anywhere on the belly and no splinters to be seen on the back. Time to get a handle wrap on and shoot her in.
A scrap piece of buckskin leather will do for now.
I always shoot a couple of hundred arrows through all of my unfinished bows before sanding and finishing. I’ve learnt that a bow which has been meticulously tillered on the tillering tree will move considerably through actual shooting. After two hundred shot you know what you have. I then recheck my tiller and adjust accordingly.
Happy with the final tiller it’s time to finish this bow. I start with 120 grit followed by 200 grit followed by 000 wire wool.Next I wet the whole bow down with plain water to raise the grain.After a day to dry thoroughly the grain gets hit back down with 000 wire wool.Then its on with an oil based stain and many coats of Truoil to finish.
