This bow was built from a Yew stave which I salvaged from a pile of yew logs cut down by tree surgeons a few years ago. If I’d know in advance that this particular yew tree was scheduled for felling, then I’d have kindly asked the tree surgeons to have left the better logs long and scar free. But unfortunately I got there too late and they had butchered most of the nice clean limbs.
After wiping away the tears and a bit of searching through the carnage I was able to recover was the one stave that was used in this build. Thankfully this one stave was pretty decent. It was almost clean across one face and fairly straight viewed face on. Side on however was a bit less straight.
The stave measured 70″ long and viewed from the side, right smack in the middle was some deflex to the tune of around about an inch and a half overall negative tip to tip. There was a good chance that steam bending could pull that deflex out of the handle but I figured it would be fine left alone so long as the outer thirds of the limbs were flicked a little to compensate for the natural deflex positioned in what would be the handle in the finished bow.
So after taking the bark off and chasing off a few rings of sapwood, I reduced the edges and the belly material enough so that I could heat some reflex into the last 10 inches of the limbs outer thirds. This added reflex was able to bring the overall deflex to reflex ration back to a level playing field. Which is always where I prefer to start from.
After a good bit of cooling off time I roughed out the face profile so I could inspect the string alignment and was pleased to see that there was no need for any other heat corrections. And after a bit of whitling here and there I was happy with the overall shape and size of the bow.
Given the shear amount of material I had to work with on this stave, I felt confident in being able to produce a bow which would be a bit heavier than what I usually aim for. And given that I intended to sell this bow, I wanted to maximise it’s longevity, durability and performance by sinew backing it thus increasing its potential draw weight even further.
After sinew backing and a 6 month curing process I finished this bow and shot it in over a couple of weeks. The 1/4″ positive tiller held good and she performed with great power and cast. Over the chrono she consistently recorded arrow speeds of around 165 fps with a 550 grain arrow. And with no noticeable hand shock or kick, she was a pleaser to shoot in, despite the heavier than personally preferred draw weight of 65lbs.
To finish and decorate I covered the bland sinew backing with two King Rat Snake skins embellished with some earth pigment edge work to make the transition from wood to snake skin pop. Tip overlays of red deer antler were fitted and the top nock was cut to receive a stringer since this bow was a little too heavy to safely string via push pull or step through method.
The handle covering/arrow pass is all wild red deer bark tanned leather and the finish is Danish oil buffed and polished with paste wax. For a string she was fitted with a custom built 12 strand B50 flemish twist string fitted with wild fox fur silencers to make this already quiet bow whisper quiet.
This bow is now available for sale and can be purchased in our Southmoor Bows Etsy shop found here:
Here are the details.
Draw Weight: 68lbs at 28” Mass: 925 grams Length NTN: 67” (asymmetrical limb layout) Width: 1 11/16″” at widest part Tips: last 6” semi static reflexed, 1/2” wide Back: Crowned with undulations. : Pyramidal face profile Belly Profile: Working limb sections rounded D shaped, transitioning at the tips to a ridged cross section. Tiller: Eliptical. 1/4” positive Brace height: 6″
Hope you enjoy the photos and video below. Please feel free to comment or contact me with any questions!
Trying to get your hands on osage staves in the UK is hard these days, which is a real shame as osage is one of my favourite bow woods, second only to yew (due to sentimental value mainly). I bought this particular osage stave from Anthony Hickman over in Texas who has an Etsy shop which can be found here: HickmanCreationsShop – Etsy UK
Anthony sometimes has some nice osage staves in his shop for a reasonable price (by todays standards anyway!) And the stave which this bow was built from caught my eye as being worth the near $100 price tag. I could see from the photos from this staves shop listing that the growth ring thickness (and the composition of late wood to early wood) was very good, and that this stave carried no propeller twist or potentially problematic knots/splits etc.
At 62″ long, this stave was a little shorter than I’d ideally have liked, however I would struggle to get a longer stave shipped out to the UK without incurring a massive increase in shipping costs. So after a bit of consultation with Anthony, he managed to secure a not too absurd shipping price, so I decided to pull the trigger on this stave feeling pretty sure it would make for a very nice bow. And I’m glad I did!
So total cost including shipping, this stave came in just a whisker under $200, which is an awful lot of money for a hunk of timber, but unfortunately this is just the going rate nowadays for osage shipped to the UK!
The stave arrived on my door step in only 12 days which was bloody good these days. And after a thorough inspection of it, I was happy with what I’d received. Since the stave had the felling date written on the end grain, I knew that this stave was still fairly green. So I was a little worried that drying checks might have formed during transit from the states.
But I couldn’t see any signs of drying checks, other than what was obviously already present on the sapwood. And Anthony had made me aware of these sapwood cracks before I bought it. Since all the sap was destined to come off, the sapwood checking didn’t concern me at all, as more often than not, the cracks rarely ever continues deep into the heartwood.
Osage heartwood can check quite badly if dried too fast though, so I immediately painted the staves ends and the sapwood surface with TBiii, before putting it aside in my spare room to dry out for another 6 months. I kept weighing it each week so I could see when the weight loss would plateau and finally cease altogether. That way I would know when the stave was dry enough to start working on.
And by the early part of the summer of 2024, the weight lost had completely stopped, and I finally felt confident that I could begin sapwood removal and general roughing out, without running the risk of incurring drying checks from the rapid loss of any remaining moisture.
The sapwood came off nice and easy and chasing a decent latewood ring on the back was made simple by the fact that the first ring directly under the sapwood was perfect in it’s composition by being nice and thick, so I chased this faultless first ring and made that ring the back of the bow.
Now I had to think about design. This bow was destined to finish out at 60″ nock to nock, so being a bit on the short side, I needed to consider incorporating some design features to maximise draw length potential, without over stressing the limbs. Ideally this bow would go back to 27″, but I’d have to wait and see.
A 60″ bow drawn beyond 24″ will experience some “stacking” towards the end of the draw cycle unless some reflex is incorporated into the tips. So I planned to flick the tips on this stave, but not enough to be able to call it a recurve.
But flicking the tips alone would add at least 3-4″ of overall back set to this stave since the back of this stave was essentially dead straight. That much overall back set would definitely create the potential for overstressing the limbs of a bow this short, since the working sections of the limbs would only incorporate a max of 20-22″ of each limb.
So to counter the back set created by flicking the tips, I decided to deflex the 3″ fades either side of the 4″ stiff handle. Ordinarily I would have steamed the desired deflex into the centre of the handle, but I could see a couple of tiny drying checks on the belly side of the roughed out handle section, which would most likely have opened out considerably if I had attempted to steam bend the deflex into the handle.
The fades however appeared free of drying checks, so with the help of the heat gun, a shaping form, and a pile of G clamps, I pulled enough deflex into both fades to cancel out most (but not all) of the reflex, which I had now steamed into the last 8″ of the tips. After subtracting the deflex in the fades from the reflex in the tips, I was now left with around 1-2″ of overall back set. Much more realistic!
I opted for a simple slender pyramidal face profile on this bow, as this design works very well for woods like osage and yew. Since osage (like yew) is so strong in compression, I didn’t feel the need to go super wide with the limbs, so opted for limbs around 1 1/2″ wide at the widest section just outside of the fades, tapering down to 1/2″ tips (which I would leave static for the last 4″ in order to resist the reflex being pulled out of the tips over time with heavy use).
The handle section in the roughed out state was nice and deep, even once the bulk of the splintery rubbish had been removed from the belly side. So at 2″ thick, I decided to keep the handle a little deeper than I normally do. This would also enable me to retain nice deep fades too, so I fancied shaping them up to a nice crisp sharp ridge to create a nice aesthetic leading into the handle section.
In terms of character, this stave had one simple clean and featureless limb, and one limb featuring a small hollow knot (which I pegged), plus four small pin knots aranged in pairs in two different locations. This limb also had a small amount of lateral wave to the grain, which presented some nice edge contour to the face profile of this particular limb.
This limb also had the remnants of an old impact scar which must have occurred whilst the tree was still living. This old scar presented throughout the entire width and thickness of the stave, including the sapwood, and appeared as a pretty cool looking lighter coloured diagonal line of grain about 4mm wide running across and through the entire width and thickness of the outer third of the top limb.
This kind of impact injury to a living tree is usually as a result of another tree falling, or being felled into it. The tree heals rapidly by reinforcing the cells within the injured section with additional lignin and other strengthening compounds.
This healing process creates dense and interesting grain changes, which not only look nice, but are also denser and therefore stronger in both compression and tension than when compared to the surrounding uninjured wood. As such, these healed wound scars can be left within the working sections of a bow limb without any fear of weakness. In fact these sections are stronger than the rest of the limb.
As this limb clearly held all the character, I opted to make it the top limb which places most of the character closer to eye level. And since this bow was going to be asymmetrical, this more characterful limb was going to be 2″ longer than the more plain (but likely stronger overall) bottom limb. Since bottom limbs tend to take more stress over the years of shooting and stringing, they benefit from any additional design decisions which ensure optimal strength in this limb.
Since this bow was a little shorter than I’d have preferred, I decided to sinew back it. This would add significant durability to the bow, and it would also significantly reduce the amount of set which such a short bow would ordinarily take when being drawn back beyond 26″. I also consistently find that sinew backed bows retain their zip much better as the years roll by too, (so long as they are stored and cared for properly!)
So once the shape was roughed out and the back was suitably prepared, roughed up and sized ready for sinew backing, I added 3oz of processed wild English Red deer leg tendon sinew to the back of the stave with my own home produced hide glue made from cooked down red deer rawhide and sinew scraps. After sinew backing was complete, I then wrapping the stave up with bandages and put it away in a cool dry spot to cure for another 6 months.
By the beginning of this year (2025) the stave was dug out of hibernation for an inspection and I was pleased to see that the sinew was now fully cured. An additional 1″ of backset had been drawn into the stave as the sinew had shrunk down, so the overall backset was now almost back to where it was before I deflexed the fades.
This is very normal for sinew backed staves and I felt confident that after tillering, this extra 1″ of back set would likely fall out leaving something close to a more suitable1-2″ backset. And sure enough, after tillering to 27″, the stave was now back to around 2″ overall backset. Perfect!
After a good bit of early shooting in and a little fine tuning of the tiller, the bow seemed to settle into and hold the 1/8″ positive tiller really well. She was turning out to be a nice quiet snappy shooter, and a very enjoyable bow to accompany me about the woods stump shooting for a few weeks. not only did she not kick at all, but pound for pound, I recon this bow is possibly one of the fastest shooting bows I’d ever made.
Now to finish her up I decided to cut an arrow shelf into the handle as I personally love an arrow shelf and knew it would enhance the pointability of this bow significantly. And for the tips I went for wild red deer antler overlays.
Whilst the sinew backing on this bow provided great functionality, it did look a bit plain, so I decided to cover up the rather bland looking sinew with a couple of nice dark brown/purple cobra skins I’d had lying around for ages. The edges of the skins where then sealed and decorated with white dots made from ground deer bone dust mixed with glue and applied with a sharpened stick. I find that this edge work really helps to make the skins pop.
For the handle I ended up contouring the back of the grip to create a very slight pistol grip with the dip pulled up nice and tight to the arrow shelf so as to keep the arrow as close as possible to the top of the index finger of the bow hand. I really find that this little detail allows me to shoot a bow instinctively with considerably more accuracy through enhanced pointability.
After sanding I sealed her up with 8 coats of danish oil. Then the final extra fine sand and pumice polish was finished off with my favourite home constructed linseed oil/bees wax paste wax polish, setting her up for a nice deep satin look to compliment those snake skins and the wonderful golden yellow of the osage heartwood.
For the grip I found a nice rustic piece of home produced bark tanned red deer leather laced up with some roe deer leather thong. And for the arrow pass/shelf I fitted a couple of nice pieces of natural coloured hair on bark tanned red deer shin leather. Which is a better looking wild and rustic version of the commercially available “calf hair” leather the archery suppliers sell!
Fitted with a custom built ultra low diameter fast flight sting, I put a dozen or so 50# 550grain doug fir arrows over the chrono to see how she performed. The chrono recorded an average arrow speed of 168 FPS, which is about what I’d expected given how spicy she felt when first shooting her it. Easily capable of being classified as a “hunting bow” and very accurate and enjoyable to shoot split fingers and instinctive.
This bow is now available to purchase through the Southmoor Bows Etsy Shop, listing available here:
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me either here, or through the shop!
Here are her stats, hope you like the photos and video!
Draw Weight: 52lbs at 27” Mass: 650 grams Length NTN: 60” (asymmetrical limb layout) Width: 1 7/16″” at widest part Tips: last 4” static reflexed, 1/2” wide Back: Crowned with undulations. : Pyramidal face profile Belly Profile: Working limb sections rounded D shaped, transitioning at the tips to a ridged cross section. Tiller: Eliptical. 1/8” positive Brace height: 5.5″
About a year ago I came across a short piece of round yew log which I’d kept with the intention of using as a billet. It measured 52″ long and about 3″ in diameter and was really nice and clean. After a bit of contemplation I wondered if I could get away with splitting it straight down the middle and getting two short staves out of it. So I thought I’d give splitting it in half a go.
For once it worked! Normally yew never plays ball when trying to split it, so ordinarily I would have taken it to the table saw, but in this instance I couldn’t be bothered, so I just set to it with an axe and wedges instead! Well low and behold it split just perfect! And no propeller twist evident either!
So now I had two nice clean straight, short and relatively thin staves. Should I splice them together and make a light weight full sized bow? Or, should I finally get around to making my kids a pair of proper character primitives, like I’d been promising them for ages. Of course, the kids won!! So this bow is the first of two bows which I made back in 2024. This one in particular is for my 10 year old son, and the other bow (which also came out great) I’ll blog about another time.
My son Ben has been wanting a heavier bow for some time. He’s really grown out of his first bow, a junior recurve which I bought for him when he was only 5. At 15#@ 20″, his recurve is now quite under weight for him and he’s probably drawing more like 22″ now anyway. So in the interest of keeping him excited about archery, I planned on making him something primitive and characterful, with enough punch to get him enthusiastic about flinging arrows again. And hopefully, if it didnt come out too light, it would be a bow that he can properly grow into over the next few years.
I wanted this bow to be a surprise for him, but at the same time, I also wanted to be sure that I built him something which he’d like the appearance and feel of. So in the interests of getting it right first time, I asked him to go through my collection of primitive bows and point out which style of primitive bow he liked the most. He chose the R&D sinew backed elm bow which I blogged about here:
He told me that he liked the shape (R&D pyramidal) and that he loved the rustic sinew backing effect that I’d created with that particular bow. He also made it clear that he wanted antler tip overlays, an arrow shelf cutting into a static handle, and a rustic leather grip. So now I knew what he liked, I set to work on one of the two yew staves with a plan to build a similar looking bow to the one he’d picked out of my collection, only made from yew and way more suited to a small, but rapidly growing young man!
After roughing the stave out to something close to final dimensions, I spent a bit of time heating a nice even Reflex/Deflex side profile into it using a mixture of steam and dry heat applied whilst using a shaping form I built a while back specifically for kids bows.
The sapwood was only about 1/4 – 5/16″ in thickness so I just left the back of the stave as it was directly under the bark. Ben had already made it clear that he wanted his bow to be sinew backed “like the Indians did”, so after I had the bows shape and profile locked in, I sinew backed it with red deer leg tendon sinew applied with TBIII, and parked it in a dry, cool place to cure for 6 months.
After waiting through the entire summer and autumn of 2024, the stave was finally ready to dig out of slumber so I cut some temporary nocks into and got it on the tillering tree. Within a couple of hours I had the tiller pretty much done but was a little concerned the weight was still too heavy. And at 40lbs at 18″, I was right!
By reducing the limb width a bit I managed to shift about 5lbs of draw weight without moving the tiller off, but I still had at least another 8lbs to get rid of before I could close the gap on the target draw weight of around 30Lbs at 22″. So I carefully scraped away at both limbs checking constantly for tiller change until I reached around 30lbs at 20″
Happy that the rest would probably fall off through shooting in and final sanding, I shaped the handle, cut in an arrow shelf and took it out for a spin in the woods with a hand full of 350 grain 35# stumping arrows which I’d built to accompany the bow when I gift it to Ben. They were a little stiff so I ended up keeping them a tad longer than I normally would so as Ben’s draw length increased with his age, his arrows should still be safe for him to use. Hopefully I’d just reduce the point weight as his draw length increased to keep them flying true.
I had a wail of a time over the next few day trying to shoot a 22″ draw without an anchor, and have to say, I actually got half decent at snap shooting from the hip like the Comanche did in the archery videos Ben’s been watching lately on YouTube ! After a couple hundred arrow and a good bit of fun the tiller seemed to be holding just fine, well for split fingers at least, (pinch grip not really being my thing!) So I decided to move on to finishing touches.
Tip overlays from red deer antler went on easy enough and once I had them shaped up, I could envisage going really fine with the tips so as to create a really sharp but elegant look to what is after all a rather petite bow. And of course by minimising the mass in the tips, I would also help to ensure that this little bow was maximising energy transfer to those nice light arrows.
Whilst I had the rasp out thinning down the tip tappers, I also saw fit to do a bit more handle shaping which brought the grip into a nice comfortable shape. Ben is a bit finicky about bow grips and hates bulky handles! This handle now had a slim profile and a slightly dished out belly side to it, which felt really natural in the hand. I figured he’d like that. I certainly did!
Ben had said that he wanted the same textured sinew effect on his bow that I’d done with the Elm primitive he’d selected from my bow collection. So Instead of filling and smoothing out the rough sinew on the back like I often do before adding snake skins etc, I simply gave it a light sand to knock off the snaggy raised ends of of the sinew stands. Then after sanding the whole bow, I masked off the belly and edges of the bow, and painted the whole sinew backing jet black with a paint made up of shelac and my local Bideblack earth pigment.
As a bit of a edge decoration I painted a row of red earth pigment dots along both edges of the sinew backing to give a buffer to where the black met the light coloured sapwood along the edge. And after writing on the draw weight/length and adding my bowyer’s motive, I sealed her up with Danish oil, topped off after polishing with my favourite paste wax.
For the grip I fitted a nice rustic natural bark tanned piece of roe deer leather sticked up with a thinner piece of the same material cut into thin leather lace. The cut leather edges of the grip and lace where then “aged” with Iron chloride to create that natural patina look that old worn leather gets on its edges. A coat of the same paste wax I used on the wood was applied to the leather grip and polished up to give a nice low gloss/satin water proof finish. The arrow shelf/pass was then treated to a couple of pieces of bark tanned “hair on” red deer shin leather to add a nice rustic, primitive look whilst maintaining functionality and durability.
Ben was absolutely over the moon when I presented the bow to him. Of course he wanted to take it out right away and shoot it, but since it was dark outside, I managed to get him to wait until the next day! He had a great time zipping his arrows off at stumps situated off in the next county, and proceeded to loose two of his new arrows in the process! Doh!! But never the less he had a blast, and has shot his new bow many times since with a newly rejuvenated enthusiasm for archery!
Despite Ben not quite yet being able to get the bow all the way back to his normal 22″ draw length, he is definitely getting it back to around 19-20″ now more often than not. So he’s probably drawing something like 25 ish lbs from his new bow at the moment. Which is still a lot more than his usual 15lbs! And he could immediately see how much more speed and power his new bow had in comparison to his little old recurve.
Anyway, I hope you like the photos below. If you like the look of this bow and think that your child might like something similar built for them, feel free to get in touch as I will consider commissions for unique pieces of work like Ben’s bow. Either message me through the contact page on this website or contact me through the Southmoor Bows Etsy shop and we can discuss designs/materials/prices etc.
Here are the stats for Ben’s bow. Keep an eye out for the sister bow to this one, which I’ll post about very shortly! Until then, may your arrows fly true!!
It’s been ages since I made myself a bow. So when I uncovered a forgotten Elm stave which I’d had up in the barn rafters for a couple of years, I rather fancied turning it into my next favourite stumping primitive.
Whilst the stave was fairly clean, it did have a knarly looking end section which looked more trouble than worth the effort to work around. So I opted to cut this end off. This only left me with 61″ to play with. That’s not much for a white wood bow.
A white wood bow this short, intended to be drawn back to my 26″ draw length, would stack unless the tips were flicked. But flicking the tips on an otherwise short and straight stave would probably overstress the limbs.
As the added reflex was only to reduce stack, not add speed, I opted to deflex the handle section/fades so that it would cancel out the added stress from the recurve induced throughout both outer thirds. This is something that I tend to do routinely now, as even just a whisper of R&D makes for a much smoother, less stacky draw.
And as this white wood bow was always going to be a tad on the short side of ideal, to make sure that there would be no risk of his bow blowing up on me in a few years time, I decided to sinew back it with 3oz of Red Deer leg tendon sinew. Whilst it’s always a hassle and a massive faff to sinew back a bow, in addition to the extra durability sinew backing brings, it don’t half add some resistance to set, not to mention a fair bit of extra zip!
The stain on the wood is iron chloride, and the light dark effect on the sinew was achieved by painting the rough sinew backing jet black using my local “bideblack” earth pigment mixed with TBIII, which was then sanded along all the high spots to reveal the underlying natural sinew colour standing proud above the black sinew valley bottoms.
Edge work was done with the same black paint and the white dots are deer leg bone dust mixed with glue. I personally really like this kind of edging as it really makes the face profile pop.
Tip overlays are wild Red deer antler, and the handle/ arrow pass is covered with my home produced traditional spruce bark tanned wild roe deer leather. The wood was finished and sealed with shellac.
Given the sinew component, this bow took a full year to build from start to finish, but I’m really happy with how she came out. She is fast and light in the hand, and produces zero hand shock. Quiet as a feather and very pointable too. Whilst I’ve yet to put more than a couple of hundred arrows through her, she is already rapidly becoming one of my favourite woodland bows.
Here are the stats:
Draw Weight: 48lbs at 26” Mass: 660 grams Length NTN: 59.5” Width: 1 3/4” at widest part Tips: 5” semi static 3/8” wide at the nocks. Back: Moderately crowned with a pyramidal face profile. Belly Profile: Working limb sections flat with rounded corners, transitioning at the tips to ridged shaped cross section. Tiller: Elliptical. 1/4” positive Brace height: 5 1/2″
This bow was built from a short, thin but nice straight English yew stave which had been propped up in the corner of the barn for at least three years. It was too short to make a bow fit for a 28″ draw, and it was also a bit too narrow to produce a draw weight much above 30lbs.
After a bit of thought I decided to see if I could turn it into a short ladies or teens bow. The stave was pretty straight and without much wiggle. The sapwood was about 10mm thick so I reduced it down to about 6mm. The growth rings were a couple of mm thick so staying true to one growth ring on the back was quite easy.
Since the stave was so short, I wanted to reflex the outer thirds of both limbs in order to reduce any stack experienced at full draw. In an attempt to avoid over stressing the bow with too much overall reflex, I also wanted to deflex the handle as a means to minimise the risk of the limbs taking on excessive set. This was a fairly short stave after all.
After roughing out, the R&D shape was achieved by using a mixture of both steam and the heat gun to persuade the stave to conform to the shape of one of my wooden R&D forms. After the desired shape was achieved, the stave was sinew backed using wild Red Deer leg sinew and hide glue.
After being put away to cure out for 6 months, I finally got around to digging the stave back out for tillering. As is often the case with pre shaped staves, this one tillered out very quick and came off the tillering tree roughed out at around 42# at 26″.
After a good bit of shooting in, and a quick retiller to let off the top limb a bit more, she was finally pulling around 38# at full draw. And after a bit more shooting in and with the tiller now holding fast, I was ready to think about decorations, overlays and general finishing.
For tip overlays I laminated a couple of pieces of deer leg bone onto some buffalo horn. As a decorative backing, I chose to use a couple of nice wild sea bass skins which came from a cracking lure caught open reef fish which I’d been very fortunate to catch on the north Devon coast last summer (photo of the fish at the bottom). The reef bass often take on a nice dark colour around this part of the world and I’d been itching to use some as bow backing material for ages, so was keen to make this my first attempt.
The skins were fitted with TBiii and were edged with a black paint made from a mixture of hide glue and a locally produced earth pigment called “Bideblack”, which I’d collected from the cliffs directly behind the reef beach where the bass was caught. The white dots where made from mixing deer bone dust with hide glue and were applied with a pointed stick.
The handle cover is my own home made spruce bark tanned wild red deer leather, died with some Iron Chloride which I’d earlier made from wire wool mixed with vinegar. The Iron chloride reacts with the tannins bound within bark tanned leather, turning the leather dark black.
The lacing is done with my own bark tanned roe deer hide, and the arrow shelf/pass is bark tanned red deer shin leather cut from an edge piece which still had some hair on it. After staining the leather black I thought the natural golden brown colour of the hair stood out great, giving a pretty cool unique look. Deer shin leather makes for great arrow pass/shelf material as it is very dense. This makes it super tough and durable whilst still being nice and thin.
As you’ll see from the photos, there were three knots in this stave, I wanted to incorporate all three knots into the bow’s character so I deliberately left them nice and thick and wide to avoid any likelihood of them producing a weakness, or an unsightly pinch.
Two of the knots were unsound and needed to be dug out and refilled, so rather than dowel them like most do, I decided to improve their aesthetic appeal by filling them both full of with a mixture or epoxy and natural/stained yew dust. This gave both knots significant extra strength, as well as a much more natural knot like appearance. I think they look far better that the customary heartwood dowel and glue approach which most bowyers use to fill knot voids.
After sanding buffing and burnishing she was treated to 8 coats of danish oil and a buffing down with fine pumice and oil. Then a final application of paste wax to leave a nice satin finish.
I was really pleased with how this one turned out. She’s a smooth drawing, whisper quite little thing and the sinew helps send a 380 grain arrow out there at an impressive 145ft/sec. Not bad for a R&D primitive with only a 26″ draw!
This bow is currently available to purchase and can be found in the Southmoor Bows Etsy shop listed here:
Specifics are as follows: Draw Weight: 38lbs at 26” Mass: 532 grams Length NTN: 55” Width: 1 1/4” at widest part Tips: 5” static 3/8” wide at the nocks. Back: Moderately crowned with undulations with a pyramidal face profile. Belly Profile: Working limb sections D shaped, transitioning at the tips to ridged shaped cross section. Tiller: Eliptical. 1/8” positive Brace height: 5″
Hope you like her!
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This was the Bass from which I used the skins in the build. The black sooty looking pigment on the shale rocks behind is what I used mixed with hide glue to make the black paint which edged the skins.
Back in the spring I was contacted by Ross, a friend of Matt who had purchased the character yew flatty I blogged about here: Primitive Character Yew Flat bow 52#@28” (Bow no. 14) – Southmoor Bows which Matt had bought through the Southmoor Bows ETSY shop. Ross really liked Matt’s bow, so he got in touch with me to ask if I could build him something with a primitive vibe, but a bit heavier. Ross came from a ELB background and was accustomed to shooting bows in the 65lb plus bracket.
After a bit of discussion we settled on a plan. I had in my possession a rather nice and character laden Yew branch sucker stave, which I could easily envisage being turned into a Holmegaard type longbow. This stave measured 71″ so was both long/wide and clean enough to produce a heavier draw weight bow built in a classic Holmegaard/pyramidal/flatbow type design, as opposed to something more like an ELB, which is a widely accepted design, recognised as being well suited to bows intended for higher draw weights.
Ross and I had settled on a target draw weight of somewhere around the 65-75lb mark, so I had to now figure out how I could optimise the bows design and features to encompass the heavier than average draw weight, as well as all the wonderful characteristics of this particular stave.
Rather than go full on Holmegaard and get all anal about precise authentic dimensions, I decided to let the stave dictate the overal profile. And to ensure long term durability I opted to incorporate a robust application of sinew backing to minimise both potential set, and vulnerability to wear and tear over time.
So my plan was to build a straight limbed pyramidal profiled long bow with semi lever like needles for tips, and a completely static handle section. The bow would end up 70″ nock to nock and have 8″ static tips. These none bending tips, combined with a 4.5″ stiff handle with 3″ long flowing fades, would leave me with just about 43.5″ of working limbs. Since this wasn’t a massive amount of moving wood, I decided to lay the bow out asymmetrically so as to give the bottom limb a bit more support over the long term.
The intention was to maintain the original crowned shape of the back, whilst adopting a rounded D shaped belly cross section throughout the fades and working sections of the limbs. The tips would transition in cross section from D shaped to ridged to reduce mass whilst remaining static. The handle would remain deep and relatively straight with no shelf as the chap who asked me to build this bow was a fan of shooting off the knuckle.
The stave had no overall natural reflex or deflex, but the 6 sets of branch whirls which were evenly distributed between both limbs did have some contour, thus giving the false impression of deflex where the grain flowed around the knot whirls. These flowing lines would need to be incorporated into the final profile of the bow as my intension was not to interfere with the natural shape of the staves side profile. Fortunately, this particular stave was completely absent of any twist or snake, so other than working around the knotty branch whirls, laying out the intended profile was, for once, a doddle!
The Heartwood/sapwood ration was about right too, with this stave having no more than 1/4″ of sapwood under the bark. Subsequently, I only had to get the bark off in order to expose what would end up being the back of the bow directly below the sinew. This meant that the final composition of heartwood/sapwood would end up being around a 70/30 ratio. Perfect!
So after roughing out the face profile and reducing the belly to facilitate better drying, I set about the arduous process of applying 3.5 oz of wild red deer leg sinew, applied to the back of the stave with my own home made sinew glue cooked up from a bunch of sinew scraps and tendon sheathing material. After applying all the sinew and given the glue plenty of time to set up, I wrapped her in gauze and left her to dry and cure out completely for 6 months. And what a long wait that was!!
The sinew backing came out great, so after what felt like an eternity, I fitted a pair of stag horn tip overlays and got a long string on her for a few short pulls. All looked good and after a bit of tweaking here and there, she was soon at brace and being pulled to 26″
As usual, I like to spend a fair bit of time shooting in a bow before attempting to get the last couple of inches of tiller finalised. So I spent a week putting her through her paces so that she could settle in and reveal any tiller correction that might be necessary before calling the job done. For once this bow didn’t budge off tiller, and had settled in to a nice 1/4″ positive tiller, which felt very well ballanced at full draw.
Final touches included a stag horn inlay for an arrow pass, and a gorgeous piece of my home produced bark tanned red deer leather as a handle cover, all sewn up with lace cut from some flank leather from the same hide. To seal her up I saturated the gorgeous grain of the wood with several applications of raw tung oil, caped off with half a dozen coats of Danish oil to fully protect her from dirt and moisture. Last but not least, the glossy Danish oil finish was sanded smooth and polished with fine pumice powder to leave her with a beautiful satin finish which sheds water and really shows off the grain.
I really enjoyed building this bow and will definitely build another “Holmegaard” like this one just as soon as I get my hands on another suitable stave. She’s a little on the heavy side for me personally, but I did enjoy the speed and power that was greater than what I’m used to. The loud whack she delivered when sending my stumping arrows on their way never got boring! She turned out to be quite nippy across the chrono too by consistently sending 550 grain arrows over the sensors at between165-175Fps, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, isn’t too shabby for a simple English yew branch stave!
Specifics are as follows: Draw Weight: 70lbs at 28” Mass: 850 grams Length NTN: 70” Width: 1 7/8″ at widest part Tips: 8” static 1/2” wide Back: Crowned with undulations. : Pyramidal face profile Belly Profile: Working limb sections D shaped, transitioning at the tips from semi circular, into ridge shaped cross section. Tiller: Eliptical. 1/4” positive Brace height: 6″
Anyway, here she is. Hope you like her!
Spring 2025 Edit: Ross has kindly sent me a couple of video clips of him shooting his bow which I’ve added at the end. So far he’s been sending his roving arrows out to 200yards! Phew!!
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 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!
In this article I’d like to share with you my 11 secret tricks and tips for making a high quality, functional and beautiful primitive sinew bow string.
For this project you will need about 1-1.5oz of fully processed and prepared sinew, although most of my sub 68″ sinew strings usually finish around 1oz in weight.
I have already covered the acquisition, preparation and processing of sinew ready for use in bow string making in two previous articles. You will find these articles here:
Something to act as a weight which you can tie your finished string to (bucket of water/kettle bell etc.
A strong hook/nail/screw etc, fixed aprox 7-8ft off the ground.
A couple of G clamps.
A sink or medium sized bowl full of water.
Regarding your work environment, you will want to build your sinew bow strings in a dry place which has a reasonably clean floor to prevent your sinew from getting wet and dirty during the building phase.
Tip One:
Build your string from dry sinew. Some primitive bowyers like to build their sinew strings from wet sinew. Personally I find it much harder to get the right sort of tension into the twist required to produce a good strong reverse twist string when the sinew is wet. Dry sinew is so much easier to grip between your index finger and thumb when applying twisting pressure, so nowadays I build all my sinew strings with dry sinew. We will discuss the soaking of the finished string later in this article.
1-1.5oz of dried deer leg sinew should be plenty to make a bow string long enough to fit a 66″ bow.
Tip Two:
Initially build your top loop one third smaller than you would like it to be once fully stretched and dried. Once you have finished building your string, you must stretch it. Stretching is done after soaking the string and by adding a weight to the end of the string. The string will then be hung from a hook until it is completely dry. The wet string will be under load from the added weight and the whole string including the loop will stretch considerably during the drying process so if you make your loop the required size before soaking and stretching, you will end up with a loop which is much larger than you would like.
Soak you string in warm water for a couple of hours before stretching.This top loop initially looks small but will stretch out by up to a third in size so start out by building your top loops slightly smaller than you would like them to finish out.
Tip Three:
Build your dry pre stretched string to be one third thicker than your desired final thickness. I aim for a finished sinew string thickness of no less than 4-5mm (3/16”). A 4-5mm thick fully stretched and dried sinew string will cope adequately with bows weighing up to 70lb draw weight. Once you are up above this weight then a minimum thickness of 5mm would be your target. Since most of my bows are sub 60lb draw weight, I aim for a finished string width of 4.5mm which means starting out with a string 6-7mm before soaking and stretching. A 6mm dry unstretched/unsoaked string should finish out about 4.5mm after a good soak and stretch and plenty of time to dry thoroughly.
This finished Sinew bow string measures 4.4mm thick and has served a 50lb bow well for many years without showing any signs of failing.
Tip Four:
Splice in fresh strands of sinew by placing the new strands across both halves of the string as illustrated in the picture sequence below. Aim to add in a fresh piece of sinew after every two twists. By splitting an equal amount of sinew across both halves of the string before twisting it in you will splice in an equal amount of sinew into both halves of the bow string. This will maintain an equal thickness between both halves of the string throughout the entire build. This method of one fresh piece of sinew laid equally across both halves of the string every two twists produces a very uniform thickness of string along the entire length.
Place a fresh strand of sinew across both halves of the string.Now twist each halve of the new piece of sinew into whichever half of the bow string it lies across.Then use a normal reverse twist rotation to bring both halves of the string together. Every two twists, add another piece of fresh sinew. Continue like this through the entire build.
Tip Five:
Do not let any thin spots develop. If you follow the splicing method detailed in tip 4 then you should not end up with any thin spots however if you do things differently and notice a thin spot then stop building your string and back up. A bow string is only as strong as the weakest point. If you have a noticeable thin spot then that spot will be significantly weaker than the rest of the string. Even if it means undoing a substantial section of your string to get back to your thin spot you must fix it before you proceed any further. Take the time and effort to fix thin spots with extra splices of sinew as soon as you notice it. You will never have confidence in a sinew bow string with a thin spot. A broken sinew string is scrap. Given the time and effort required to build a good sinew string, go the extra length and fix thin spots before they fix your string to the bin!
Tip Six:
Perform your reverse twist from a hook or some other means to secure you top loop. I secure a bolt in the jaws of my vice and hook my string loop over the bolt. This enables me to use both hands to twist both halves of the string at the same time (see pic below). Many good sinew strings are made with a reverse twist performed with one hand pinching the built section of string and the other hand performing the twists. Personally however, I find that by hanging my loop from a hook I can now twist my string up with both hands. This allows me to apply significant and equal twisting pressure to each half of the string. This produces a very tightly twisted string which has a very equal appearance. Because the string is hanging, I also find that I can pull hard of the string at the same time as applying the twists which also aids in keeping the twisting tension equally distributed across both halves of the string.
Performing a reverse twist with both hands allows the creation of great tension and twist in your bow string.Splicing in a new piece of sinew. Notice how the new piece is laid equally across both halves of the string.
Tip seven:
Initially build your dry string no longer than the approximate length of your bow nock to nock. Your dry string will stretch by as much as 6 inches after it has been soaked and weighted. If you make your string longer than the bow you intend to use it with then you will end up with a string much longer than is required to produce a bowline/bowyers knot suitably positioned to brace your bow appropriately. This excess length ends up getting cut off or wrapped around the bow bottom nock which is wasteful and unsightly. 6 inches of surplus sinew string can also add enough weight to your bows bottom limb tip to throw out the timing of you bows limbs.
A Bowline knot works well with a sinew string. Note the minimal tag end length.
Tip eight:
Stretch you soaked string with as much as 10kg of weight. Make sure your weight stays off the floor so that it is hanging freely throughout the entire drying process. Keep an eye on you weighted setup as your string slowly stretches out. You will likely find that your sinew string weight slowly drops to the floor, especially during the first couple of hours of stretching. If you start out with 3 inches of clearance between the ground and your weight then after 2 hours of stretching you weight will likely be on the ground. Keep the weight clear of the ground by raising the height of your hanging point as necessary throughout the entire stretching and drying process. Your weight should still be well clear of the floor 24 hours later by which time your string should be fully dry if left in the right air-drying conditions.
I stretch my soaked sinew strings with a 10kg kettle bell attached to the tail of my string via a couple of G clamps.I use a hook over a door frame to hang a short string from for stretching and drying a string post soaking. A longer string might need a higher hanging point in order to keep your weight well clear of the floor.
Tip Nine:
Spin you wet string up with 30 twists before weighing it for stretching and drying. By inducing extra twist into your string during the stretching phase, when you sinew string is still wet, you will maintain a nice tight even pattern of twist throughout the entire length of your string. Remember that your soaked and weighted string will stretch in length considerably whilst drying. This addition of extra length has the effect of diluting the initial twist you created when building your string with the reverse twist method previously shown. The extra twists now spun to your hanging string will compensate for the loss of twist which results from the stretching phase. If you notice that the coils of twist in your string are still pulling out during the stretching phase, then simple keep twisting up your string via spinning your weight until your string coils look nice and tight again. Continue to monitor the twist as the stretching and drying phase continues through to completion.
Tip Ten:
Brace your weight so that the twist does not spin back out. You will notice very quickly that after spinning your chosen weight 30 times, the newly applied string twist will want to spin your weight back the other way to undo not only the twist which you have just spun in, but also the initial twist that was achieved through the reverse twist building phase. Prevent any spin back by bracing you freely hanging weight so that it physically cannot spin back on itself.
Tip Eleven:
Leave your string to fully dry before removing from the stretching hook and weight. If you become impatent and remove you sinew string from the drying/stretching hook before your string is completely dry then you will have a string which will continue to skrink in length not thickness. You will end up with a plump string which might end up drying out too short for your bow. In adition to these issues you will also notice that your string will have lost much of the twist that you put in because, as the string continues to dry, it will uncoil without any mechanical means to prevent the string from untwisting. The resultant string will retain a great deal more elasticity than a properly stretched and dried string. this increased elasticity will dramatically reduce arrow speed when you finally come to shoot the bow which has been fitted with your new string. I’ve seen bows suddenly lose 10+ ft/sec when shot with poorly stretched sinew strings. This is invariably the result of increased mass and elasticity brought about by a string that has been allowed to shrink up in length as opposed to thickness.
This string is now fully dry after 24 hours of indoor air drying. Note the amber colour of a completely dry string.Trimming tag ends off after the drying and stretching phase has been completed.
Tip Twelve:
Once your string is fully dry and all the tag ends have been trimmed off, Keep your string dry at all times. If you are intending to use your sinew bow string outdoors in a climate like ours then, keeping your string dry is not quite as simple as some might think! The best mitigation measure for a sinew string getting wet is to treat your finished string with a water proofing agent. I achieve this result best by treating all of my sinew bow strings to a good rubbing down with a bow string wax. Whilst this could be done with a modern string wax made from bees wax plus additives, I personally prefer to use a homemade string treatment composed of the same natural materials that our ancestors would have used. vigorous rubbing helps to melt the wax into the string improving the water proofing effect of the wax.
In a future article I will detail how you can make your own string wax which doubles well as a natural wood sealer too.
In the previous two Sinew Series articles we went through the various processes of sourcing, extracting, drying and processing deer leg tendon into usable sinew material which you can use for your next primitive archery project. If you haven’t yet read these previous two articles, then you can find them here:
If you have followed along through these first two articles, then by now you will have a nice pile of perfectly prepared sinew material which will be pleading with you to find a permanent home for it!
If your intention was to use your sinew for making cordage/bow strings etc then you might need to wait until the next article where I will cover making strings from leg sinew. If, however, your intended use for your carefully processed sinew is to back a bow then you will next need some hide glue, or better still, sinew glue.
In this article I will show you how I make my own sinew glue.
I’ve messed about with “animal glues” for several years only to conclude that simple sinew glue is strong enough, flexible enough and easy enough to make for it to be my go-to adhesive for many primitive crafting projects. It’s a good all-round glue for sticking things to wood, including sinew.
Sinew glue is also great for sticking down leather, rawhide, fletchings, wrappings, points etc although I think that pitch is a better option for arrow construction for reasons which we will discuss in a moment.
I’ve personally never tried to use sinew glue for bone/horn/antler tip overlays etc so I don’t know how well it would bond to these semi porous materials however I’m sure it would probably work well enough, as long as the glue joint was kept dry and away from high humidity.
On the subject of moisture, we should discuss the weaknesses of sinew glue before trying to use it for everything. Moister is the enemy of all animal glues, including sinew glue. I can’t imagine sinew glue, or any other type of animal glue, having much application in a very wet or humid climate unless the exposed sinew glue has been very well sealed from moisture.
The downside to sinew glue, and all animal glues for that matter, is that they are very water soluble. Unlike pitch, without some kind of water proofing, all animal glues will begin to dissolve if exposed to water or even just high humidity.
Making any animal glue also requires a bit of time and effort, however it is not at all difficult to make, and the time factor is mostly as a consequence of the cooking process which requires minimal input once cooking commences.
Nowadays I only really use sinew glue for sinew backing and for that purpose it is excellent. I seal all of my backed bows and keep my bows in an indoor environment which has very consistent temperature and humidity so I never have to worry about moister ingress damaging any bonding achieved through the use of sinew glue.
Many primitive bowyers report better shrinking and subsequent reflexing of sinew backed bows when sinew is bound to the back of a bow with sinew glue rather than hide glue. Personally, I haven’t experienced much difference between hide glue and sinew glue in this regard.
The main reason I tend to use sinew glue over hide glue is that I’ve always had a surplus of sinew scraps and sinew rich tendon sheaths at my disposal. Since after processing out all my sinew I end up with all this scrap material anyway, I might as well make use of it and make it into sinew glue.
One thing I will say is that the purest, cleanest and possibly strongest sinew glue is made from pure clean sinew minus all the chaff and connective tissues which often ends up in the pile of sinew scraps. All this none sinew chaff gets created when the pounding and splitting of dried tendons take place.
Tendon sheaths also contain a lot of fasciae and other none sinew connective tissues too. Some of this none sinew material contains little to no collagen so will provide no real benefit to your glue. It is the collagen content that makes sinew and hide glue a strong, flexible adhesive.
As with hide glue, the less fascia/connective tissue/muscle tissue that ends up in the sinew glue the better the purity and corresponding quality of the final glue product. All that said though, for our purposes, small amounts of contamination don’t appear to reduce the strength of the final product by much. So don’t be afraid to cook up your scrap tendon sheaths whole. I’ve never noticed any measurable reduction in a glues performance even when I’ve known the glue to be full of impurities.
Dried deer leg tendon sheaths make great sinew glue.
Hide glue is a great alternative to sinew glue and the making process is essentially the same. The only thing to consider is that the raw hide which is required to make hide glue requires processing first. Making rawhide is a lot of work, whereas sinew glue can be made from all the sinew scraps and tendon sheaths.
If I’ve been processing a pile of sinew to back a bow, then I will have already created a bunch of tendon sheaths and sinew scraps as a by-product of all the tendon processing. Which I’m going to be doing anyway hence the need for a backing glue in the first place!
So on with the program, let’s make some sinew glue. First you will need the following materials/equipment:
2 0z of dry sinew scraps or a dozen dry/raw tendon sheaths (see sinew part 1 article).
A slow cooker/crock pot with a low setting (approx. 85- 90℃)
One litre of water.
Tubs/jars for glue storage.
A dehydrator (optional).
A blender/coffee grinder (optional).
Step one:
Place your dry or raw sinew scraps/tendon sheaths and the water into your slow cooker/crock-pot. Make sure that the temperature which you set your slow cooker to is less than a simmer. If the sinew is boiled, then the collagen proteins, which give sinew glue its strength, will break down reducing the strength of the glue considerably.
A small amount of very gentle bubbling around the edges of you cooking pot is fine but a simmer is definitely not. A rolling boil will completely destroy your glue so be warned!
Approx 12 deer feet produced this much tendon sheath.
Step two:
Let the sinew slowly and gently stew for at least 12 hours. I don’t time mine, but I do leave it cooking at least overnight. I leave my slow cooker out in the garage as the smell of slow cooked sinews are not to everyone’s liking!
I use a small slow cooker. The low setting keeps the contents below a simmer which is perfect.
Step three:
First thing in the morning, lift the lid on your sinew stew and check the water isn’t simmering. If all looks good take a pair of scissors and snip your sinew scraps/tendon sheaths up as small as you can manage. This should be easy now that the sinew has had chance to cook the tendon sheaths down to a tender state. Cutting your sinew up will expose even more of the sinew’s surface area to the hot water further extracting the sinew’s collagen out into the cooking water.
Once you’ve snipped up your sinew nice and fine replace the lid and continue cooking for another three or four hours. Longer will be fine if you accidently forget about it!
Tendon sheaths all snipped up ready for a bit more cooking time.
Step Four:
Once your tendon sheaths/sinew scraps have had at least 12 hours of cooking, turn the cooker off and allow the sinew stew to cool for half an hour with the lid on. Your sinew stew should stay warm enough to move on to the next step but if you’ve left it too long and the mixture has gelled then simply warm it up enough to turn the mixture back into a liquid form. (Careful not to let it reach a simmer or worse still a boil!)
Step Five:
Your sinew stew should have a viscosity which is something like warm syrup. If it is very watery then it will likely need reducing a bit. This can be done by continuing with the cooking process with the cooker lid removed. It can also be done by drying the gelled liquid at a later stage. We will cover this later.
Place a metal sieve/colander over the top of a bowl and place both items in you sink. Pour the sinew stew into the sieve/colander and let the stew juice pour through into the bowl below. Remove the sieve/colander and dispose of all the bits which the sieve/colander has caught.
Pouring the juice through a colander to separate out the tendon sheaths.I find a good squashing with a potato masher helps force some of the juice out.
Step six:
Now you will have a bowl full of relatively clean translucent light brown liquid. If it looks clouded up with tiny particles, then you could pass the liquid through a fine sieve or a muslin cloth to remove the last few bits of gunk.
Still looks a bit bitty!I would typically expect one of these takeaway type tubes to be more than enough glue for a complete sinew backing project.
Step Seven:
Now test the gelling quality of your glue. If your glue gels well then it will make a good, strong and flexible glue. To test the gelling quality of you glue, take a teaspoon full of your glue and drip it onto a cold clean plate to form a small puddle of glue. Leave it at room temperature for ten minutes. After ten minutes, test how well your glue has gelled by pushing your fingertip into the edge of the glue puddle you made. If the viscosity of your glue has stayed the same then, ask yourself if the room temperature might be a little too warm to let the glue gel up.
If you feel that the ambient temperature is perhaps too hot to allow the glue to gel up, then place the plate into your refrigerator for another ten minutes then try the same procedure again. If your glue has now started to set up into a gel and can be pushed up into a ridge of jelly, then your glue is good.
Test the gelling quality of your sinew glue. Pour a spoon full of your glue onto a cold plate and leave for ten minutes.After 10 mins try pushing up the edges of your glue puddle. If it has gelled up all is good.
Step Eight:
If your glue is gelling up fine, then the next job is to arrange your glue for storage. Pour your still warm liquid glue into a large enough tub, bowl or tray and leave to set into a gel. You may place it in your refrigerator if it is a hot day.
Once your glue has set up into a gel you can either freeze it if you’re planning on using it soon or you can dry it down to a solid form which can be rehydrated when needed at a later date.
This batch of glue has gelled up completely after leaving for an hour at a room temperature of 20℃
Step nine:
If you wish you dry your glue into a solid form for long term storage then take one of your trays of gelled glue and cut all the gel up into small cubes.
Spread the cubes out on a large tray and allow to air dry in a clean and airy location. This can take a few days depending on drying conditions however if you have access to a dehydrator then you can speed the process up by placing the gel cubes into shallow impermeable trays and drying them in a dehydrator set to the very lowest temperature setting.
Remember that heat will revert gelled glue back to a liquid so make sure that the tray which the gel is placed into is not likely to leak your liquid glue out into the inside of your dehydrator. With my dehydrator set at 38℃/100℉ I can get my gelled glue down to a thin sheet of solid glue in about 12-16 hours.
Step Ten:
Once your glue is in a solid form then you can store it like this, or you can take it one step further and break the sheet of dry glue up into pieces which you can then grind down into a powder using a blender or a coffee grinder.
I store my glue powder in glass jars kept in a cool dark place. Keeping the glue powder in glass jars keeps the contents from being eaten by rodents and insects, both of which will dine on your hard work with glee!
Be warned, rodents will also make a meal of your sinew and raw hide too so always keep these materials away from hungry critters. And by critters I also mean dogs!
Step Eleven:
To rehydrate your glue simply add enough glue powder to half a litre of hot water to re-create a viscosity which is akin to that of warm syrup. By “hot water” I mean at about the temperature which you can just about put your fingers into without getting burnt. Hot but not too hot!
Simply place two or three dessert spoons of your glue powder into your hot water and mix thoroughly.
Remember, you’re aiming for a consistency of warm syrup before application. If your glue is still too thick and you’re sure that your water is hot enough, then add more hot water. If your glue is too thin, then add more glue powder. If you do not have more glue powder, then you will have to slowly reduce the water content by warming your glue over a low heat until the viscosity looks right.
Just a quick note on working with all animal glues including sinew glue. If you are embarking on a gluing up project which might take a fair while to complete such as sinew backing a bow, you will need to keep your glue at a temperature of around 40-50℃ throughout the whole process. If you don’t keep your glue warm, then it will start to set up into a gel again. I keep my glue in a liquid state by placing my liquid glue in a shallow metal tray which I place on top of my oven’s plate warmer. This keeps my glue at the perfect temperature for application.
So there you are. Go and give sinew glue a try. If you only have raw hide at your disposal then follow the exact same procedure with good clean rawhide instead of sinew and you will produce very high quality glue fit for many of the purposes useful to a primitive archer.
Alternatively, if you can’t be bothered with making glue but want to get your hands on some ready-made glue then I do sell jars of dehydrated sinew glue powder. Give me a shout via the contact page if you’d like to buy some. I also sell by weight, dried red deer leg tendons which you can be processed into sinew. I also sell dried leg tendon sheaths for glue making if you wish to give glue making a go from scratch.
Keep your eyes open for one of my next articles where I will go into detail and explain how to go about taking your dried, processed sinew and your glue and backing a bow to produce the original primitive composite bow!
