After a break spanning a few years, I’ve been experimenting with snake skins again recently. I love snake skins as a backing material as, in my opinion, they look amazing and are fairly simple to apply if you know what you’re doing. Admittedly my first couple of attempts to apply snake skins to a bow where less than perfect. But I’ve got a system in place now which is simple and effective and seems to work very well for me. At some point in the future I’ll do an article on my own quick and simple way of applying snakes skins.
The only trouble I find with snake skins is trying to source them here in the UK. I once paid an absolute arm and a leg to import a pair of Western Diamondback skins from the USA. As beautiful as those skins were, I simply can’t justify the cost of getting skins from traditional species of North American snakes into the UK these days. So I’ve started to use skins from Asiatic snake species instead.
The skins shown in the pics below are imported from Asia and are from a very common species of snake loosely referred to as the Asian King Ratsnake – Elaphe carinata. In terms of their conservation status these snakes are currently ranked (LC-least Concern) by the IUCN- See here: Elaphe carinata – Wikipedia. Whilst there is no doubt that these skins are not as pretty as skins from something like a North American rattle snake or even a Boa, I still think they look pretty amazing! And these Asian skins cost a mere fraction of the price of a pair of rattler or Boa skins!!
The bow featured in this post is one of my older sinew backed Yew recurves. A friend of mine asked me a while back if I had a hunting weight primitive bow which a mate of his could buy from me to hunt deer with. (Not here I hasten to add!!) This particular bow was one of my favourite stumping bows. It’s compact enough to be woven through the scrub and it certainly packs plenty enough punch to deliver appropriately weighted arrows for a lethal shot on a deer sized target.
Since this particular bow has seen many hundreds, if not thousands of arrows through it I can reliably say with certainty that this bow will withstand a lot of use and abuse, so I offered this bow to the avid hunter after re finishing it for the guy with the addition of a snake skin backing to provide an aesthetic upgrade, as well as a modest camo effect.
I also replaced the fairly battered old leather handle with my new favourite cover material – home processed and prepared deer rawhide. What an amazing handle cover material deer rawhide is! Not only does it look great after staining (note the marbled like effect from using a dark leather stain wiped off with pure isopropyl alcohol), but it’s also an incredibly hard wearing material. Deer rawhide must be sealed though else it will absorb water, but that’s no problem as raw hide will also take an oil finish like Truoil or Tung oil really well so you can oil finish/waterproof the handle at the same time as you oil finish/waterproof the bow wood.
Here are a few photos of the re-finished bow. Hope you like!:
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 is one of the many “lockdown bows” which I made through 2020/21. Having been furloughed for a couple of months I took the opportunity to tinker with a pile of difficult staves which I’d had kicking about for years. A good time to try and sort the potential staves from the firewood!
This bow came from one such stave. It was nothing more than a branch to be honest but was still one of the better potential staves in terms of its overall shape. That said, It was still flawed to some extent with masses of pin knots on what would be the back side of the stave. It also had quite a lot of deflex across the entire length of the back. Especially in what would be the bottom limb.
Despite the imperfections I committed to making a bow from this stave and had long since promised to build a mate of mine a yew recurve. So I made it my mission to honour my promise using this far from optimal Yew branch. The basic plan was to build a 66″ nock to nock” 50-55lb recurve flatbow.
The stave had nice tight growth rings of between 1-2mm thickness but unfortunately carried little heartwood. The sapwood on what would be the back was too thick at around 12mm thick, but due to all the tiny raised pin knots, it would be impossible to properly chase a ring down to a better sapwood thickness without violating the back around all the tiny raised knots.
A trick which I have used many times before in this situation is simply to accept the violation of rings on the back but mitigate against limb failure by sinew backing. So that’s what I decided to do with this bow.
The stave was only 3″ wide so the crown was moderate. Rather than try and reduce the sapwood thickness in a rounded fashion as would be necessary to mimic the natural crown, I decided to just flatten the whole back with a rasp. In doing this I was able to work down to approximately one sapwood growth ring right down the centre line of the bows back and follow that from one end to the other maintaining a totally flat back profile.
Now that I had nearly 50% of the limb represented by heart wood, I roughed out the general limb thicknesses and finalised the face profile. In order to counter the significant deflex I recurved the tips with steam and performed a small amount of dry heat correction to line up the tips and correct some small string alignment issues. Then it was on with 3oz of deer leg sinew, glued on with my own home made sinew glue.
After the backing was completed I wrapped the whole thing up for a few days in cloth strips to keep the sinew from peeling away from inside the recurves and around the handle.
Once I could see that the sinew was dry I unpeeled the wrapping so I could take a peek. To my disappointment some of the sinew had dried out to form some small fissures. I put this down to one reason. Taking way too long to apply the sinew!
I’d timed the sinew application with the kids getting home which invariably led to a pile of requests, Dad jobs and other frivolous distractions all when I’m trying to slap on my glue soaked sinew bundles. Lesson learnt!!
Anyone who has done any amount of sinew backing will tell you that the best sinew jobs are done quickly and smoothly whilst the glue is still warm and not allowed to set up in between bundle applications. Each fresh bundle of sinew wants to be laid down alongside its neighbour before the neighbouring bundle has started to “Gel”. That’s where I’d gone wrong.
All the distractions had led to me applying bundles as and when I got chance as opposed to in one fast fluid operation. This meant that by the time my next sinew bundle got applied it’s neighbour has gelled up reducing the ability of the fresh sinew bundle sticking to it’s neighbouring bundle.
The result is bundles of sinew separating apart from one another when the bundles start to shrink during the drying process. I should add however that the adhesion between the glue soaked sinew and the bow’s back is not affected by this phenomena.
As disappointing as the end result was, the imperfections that I was seeing in the dried backing were only aesthetic. The functionality of the bow’s backing was completely unaffected.
So onwards we went. After the cloth wrappings had been removed and re-tightened several times over the initial drying period (a week), the wrappings came off and the stave was set aside for nearly a year to cure thoroughly.
I’d kept the limbs asymmetric to try and mitigate for the lower limb deflex which was now substantially less than it was. This was due to the sinew backing pulling the stave back about 1 & 1/2″. Now the deflex was only about 3/4″ in total which was a massive improvement as before backing the natural deflex was about 2 “. After coming out of hibernation, deer antler tip overlays were fitted over the top of the sinew and the tillering began.
In order to preserve as much heart wood on the belly as possible I opted to create a slightly rounded albeit mainly flat belly. An arrow shelf was added in the form of a scrap piece of deer antler.
The bow was quick and easy to tiller and looked nice pulled down to 28″. At this point the weight was 58lb which was about right for the guy who would be getting this bow.
Before finishing the bow I shot stumps with it for a couple of weeks then re adjusted the tiller slightly to weaken the top limb just a tad bit more then called her done at 55lb at 28″ with a neutral tiller. (The owner of this bow shoots three under.) To finish I coated the sinew with a good covering of Titebond III so seal and smooth out the sinew. After sanding it was on with 8 coats of Truoil to finish.
The handle was covered with a piece of scrap leather and the same leather in reverse was used to protect the arrow pass.
I really like this bow. It’s a bit heavy in the hand (630Grams) due to the extra weight from the sinew but isn’t really noticeable once you get in the swing of shooting her. The limbs are an even tapper from 1″ 3/8ths at the fades down to 1/2″ at the tips.
This bow made for a snappy shooter which I really enjoyed shooting. I shot her over the chrono to see if she was quicker than usual and, whilst hardly getting blown away by the speed, I was quite happy with the 162ft/sec average that I got with a 500 grain arrow. That’s not bad for a stick and string bow!
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.
I built this bow from a totally green 4” diameter English Elm log which came my way back in the spring of 2022. The bark slipped off perfectly which was good in that it was easy to remove, but meant that the bow finished out lacking the wonderful cambium camo effect which I absolutely love to see on white wood selfbows.
As with most Elm logs above 3” in diameter, this log had some beetle damage which resulted in this log only producing one stave in the end. This was a shame as the log was clean, straight and carrying little twist. If it wasn’t for the beetle damage then I’d have got two nice staves from this log.
The damage free stave was slightly reflexed in the handle area but had a nice straight face profile with tips almost in alignment with the handle centre. After recurving I chose the top limb so that the string would favour the left side of the riser section since I’m a righty. I laid out the staves with symmetrical limbs and a handle section which would accommodate a 4” grip with 3” fades.
Both limb sections had a tiny amount of deflex mid limb so I could see the potential for a deflex reflex riser/limb profile. Since the stave was 66”, long I laid out the bow to finish 64” nock to nock. This is ample length to safely accommodate light recurves on a nice and wide limbed Elm flatbow.
I planned to finish with a solid and safe selfbow around 50lb at 26”. Flicking the tips on a bow this length shouldn’t stress the limbs, but as a back up against chrysling the belly, I kept the limbs around 1” 7/8ths wide for the first 2 thirds tapering rapidly down to ½” wide static flicked tips in the final thirds of the limb.
This staves back had some crowning to it but not really enough to warrant hollowing out the belly although in hind sight I probably should have. That said the flat belly/low crown cross section profile appears to have retained adequate compression strength and has withstood any fretting, even after much shooting with a held anchor. The deflex/reflex profile probably helped here too and certainly made the tillering process easy. The draw of this bow is also very smooth with very little stack.
This stave was simple and quick to tiller given the very even natural profile and in no time I was left with a snappy, low volume, low mass flatbow (570 grams) which is very pointable and is an absolute pleasure to shoot. Brace height is 5 1/2” and the tiller is 1/8” positive. This is one of those bows which when braced plays a note with one of those wonderful high frequency resonances when the string is plucked. Dinnnnnnnnnng!
I could have produced a heavier draw weight from this stave but I like bows around the 50lb mark at my draw length of 26” so I aimed for that and got it. There is no hand shock since the tips are low in mass and the grip is very comfortable to hold with a loose grip. The bow shoots hard at 26” and shooting a 9gn/lb arrow (450gn) over the chronograph produced average speeds around 156ft/sec.
The stave was fairly plain with no wiggle to speak of. Nor were there many significant quirks like knots etc so I decided to stain the bow so as to draw out the main feature which was the beautiful grain on the belly. A contoured grip and arrow shelf made a bit more of a feature out of the handle section and antler tip overlays helped to pimp up the limb tips a bit.
The arrow rest is not cut to centre but the paradox isn’t a problem anyway. An arrow in the 45-50lb spine range shoots well in this bow.
The handle received a light tan leather covering which was also used in reverse to serve the arrow pass. The stain is an oil based Dark Oak colour finished with many coats of truoil.
The stave for this bow came from a 4” diameter Ash tree which produced two staves. One stave was pretty straight and featureless and I used that stave to make a plain but functional rawhide backed recurved flatbow for a friend of mine. The other stave had a nice bit of wiggle in one half and a few other little features so I decided to use it to make this unbacked character flatbow.
The tree was felled back in the late summer of 2022 so it had a bit of cambium left on after taking the bark off. I roughed the stave out whilst totally green and force dried it on a slightly reflexed form in order to fix some slight tip/handle misalignment. The form also evened out some slight but uneven and mixed deflex/reflex in both limbs and corrected the very small amount of limb twist which was apparent in the bottom limb.
After a month of drying whilst clamped to the form positioned indoors on my sun baked windowsill, I was left with a nicely aligned stave with an inch of evenly distributed reflex and just the right amount of wiggle left to make this flatbow worthy of the title “character bow”.
The small to moderate crown on this stave was worth considering. I find that a higher than average crown on tension strong woods like ash can sometimes be advantageous. As I’m sure many bowyers will attest to, Ash wood bows are quite susceptible to compression fractures on the belly. This is because Ash is far stronger in tension than in compression.
The small to moderate crown on this stave could allow most of the back of this bow to work in tension. Too much tension could chrysal the belly if not considered carefully in the design process. A high crown would allow less of the backs width to work in tension therefore reducing the crushing force imposed on the fairly flat belly.
Bearing in mind that the growth rings on this stave were a bit on the thin side, and that the early wood in the growth rings made up a reasonable amount of the bows volume, I decided to round the corners on the back quite heavily in order to create an artificial high crown and reduce the tension strength of the bows back.
I’ve used this little trick many times before to help protect the bellies of bows made from compression weak woods such as Ash, Hazel and Elm which are all very strong in tension. The result is a D shaped limb cross section with the curved portion of the D representing the bows back and the flat portion of the D representing the bows belly. The complete opposite to a classic English Longbow design which works very well with high quality Yew.
The down side to this approach is that much of the edge wood is taken out of commission. The up side however is that the full width of the flat belly is still able to function by providing compression resistance which will oppose the crushing forces of the tension strong back as the belly relates to the now tension weakened artificial high crown.
The artificial high crown imposed in the design of this bow worked well at preventing fretting on the belly, as did additional mitigation measures such as forgoing recurves, minimising the length of the stiff handle section, and maintaining adequate limb length and width. For this reason the bow was kept long at 66” nock to nock and has 1″ 15/16 wide limbs for the first two thirds of the working sections. The riser section is approx 10” long including 3″ fades and is stiff.
Previous experience of Ash staves from this particular area have reinforced the idea that extra precautions need to be taken to avoid excessive tension forces on staves like these which clearly have limited compression strength. For this reason I opted to keep the weight down to 50lb at 26″ or less which is around my favourite draw weight anyway. Much heavier than this and fretting might occur without increasing limb width or length, which I couldn’t really do with this stave anyway given the dimensions I had to work with.
The bow was very easy to tiller, even with the wiggle in the first third of the top limb. The tiller is elliptical ¼” positive and shoots well with split fingers with both limbs timing together very well. When unstrung after shooting a few rounds this bow shows about half an inch of sett which quickly returns to dead straight after resting.
Since the bow was for me to use I opted for simple but small self nocks. If I’d built it for someone else then I’d probably have put overlays on it. The arrow shelf was a last minute addition whilst contemplating the final handle design.
I like to shoot of the knuckle personally but figured my wife might shoot it so I used the significant width of the staves handle section to produce an arrow shelf which is certainly not cut to centre, but is not far from being in perfect alignment with the string which clearly favours the left side of the riser. This bow isn’t very arrow fussy but definitely favours an arrow in the 45-55# range.
The lightly fluted 3” fades were an afterthought and were an attempt to create a little more feature to the otherwise plain bottom limb. In hind sight this was a risky manoeuvre on a timber like Ash which is very prone to delaminating between the growth rings at the fades. That said, so far so good. No sign of any splitting yet and I’ve been shooting this bow quite a lot.
The finish on this bow is an oil based dark oak stain followed by many coats of Trueoil. The small amount of cambium left on the back picked up the stain differently to the exposed wood on the back which created a nice camo effect. This particular stain really grabs hold of the grain on Ash and produces a beautiful high definition wood grain on the belly.
The handle is contoured to my favourite grip pattern and is covered with a scrap of leather from an old jacket which I rubbed some earth pigments into in order to produce a more mat/antique appearance. The arrow pass is covered in the same leather only rough side up.
This bow shoots well. Not the fastest longbow by any stretch (450gn arrow at 27” 148ft/sec) but nice and comfortable to hold back at full draw without stacking much if at all. No hand shock due to the balanced tiller, comfortable grip and moderate tip mass.
I really like this bow and it has been my favourite stump shooting bow throughout the autumn of 2022. That said I have loads more just like it and might have to find a new home for it since I’m fast running out of space for more bows. Well, at least that’s what the wife keeps telling me! If you like the look of this bow then keep an eye out on Ebay as it might end up being listed there some time after Christmas. If I do list it then I’ll edit in a link to the listing at the top of this post.
Here are the pics:
Drawn to 26″Immediately after unstringing. About half an inch of set which recovers back to straight after 10 mins.
This little project was initially just intended to explore how much twist and malformation could be corrected through drying a badly mishappen green field ma[le stave whilst clamped to a form. The stave came out so well that I decided to persevere with it and the project ended up turning into a full bow build. The end result is a nice sweet shooting deflex reflex selfbow. The full build can be seen here: https://southmoorbows.com/build-along-field-maple-deflex-reflex-character-longbow/
As is typical of Field Maple, this stave lacked much in the way of colour or grain so I decided to stain it. Antler tip overlays and a simple black leather handle/arrow pass compliment the natural character of the bow. The limb cross section ranges from crowned/convexed to almost rectangular with some mild valleys, troughs and hills around the few small knots and naturally wavy grain.
Measurements are as follows:
Length Nock to nock: 66″
Limb width at widest point – Top: 2 1/8″ Bottom:2 1/8″
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.
