Tag Archives: Self Nocks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elder Character Longbow Hollow Limb Design. 40# 28″ Bow No.5

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!

1/2″ of set immediately after unstringing. Returns to 1/8th inch after resting.

Bow No.2 – Character Primitive Ash Selfbow 48#@27”

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: