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″
Since gaining a bit of a reputation locally for being the guy who makes “Character bows”, I’ve been “gifted” rather a lot of “character staves”! And not wanting to appear ungrateful, I’ve become prone to accepting these staves, rather than politely declining the “generous” offer of yet more firewood!
Actually, once in a while, some of these typically low diameter branch staves don’t look too bad, (at least upon initial inspection) and the bow featured in this post was built from one such branch stave which was donated to me in 2022.
Despite the low diameter and general knottiness of this particular branch stave, there was one face which looked quite nice and could make for a sound back. So other than a couple of branch whirls to deal with on the belly side, I could easily envisage making a simple but effective primitive bow from this stave. So in the spring of 2024 I set to work on it.
Roughing out was straight forward enough and I was pleased to get past all the pith without running low on heart wood material. I decided to keep the face profile fairly narrow so as to minimise the amount of sapwood which was curling around the edges towards the belly due to the low diameter and high crown on the back.
The stave was fairly straight other than a tiny amount of deflex right in the middle where I’d lay out a stiff handle with fades. I decided to leave this deflex alone since I only had 62″ of overall length to work with, and really hoped to get 27″ of draw length out of this bow. I figured that lightly flicked tips could possibly work since the deflex in the handle would help cushion the extra strain that any reflex might place on the relatively short working sections of the limbs. Flicking the tips would help reduce any stack experienced which might result from the short length.
A stiff 4″ handle with 3″ fades, and 5″ stiff tips would reduce the overall working sections of both limbs down to around 20″, which isn’t a great deal to support the load that a 27″ draw would place on a bow as short as this one. So after roughing out and steaming the tips into a light reflex, I decided to sinew back this stave and leave her to cure out over the summer of 2024.
By early autumn the sinew backing appeared to be thoroughly cured and a little bit of overall reflex had been drawn into the stave as the sinew had shrunk down tight. This often happens when enough sinew is used, which is why I typically apply my sinew backings by weight to ensure enough (but not too much) sinew is applied.
I find that a total of 3 ounces of sinew (an ounce and a half of dry processed sinew per limb) is the perfect amount for a bow in the 58 – 64″ range. 3 oz is plenty enough sinew to add significant extra power and resistance to set, but not so much sinew that the added weight of the sinew starts to add power robbing mass to the limbs.
I find that more than 3oz of sinew on a bow this length crosses the point of diminishing returns, and the extra weight the additional sinew gives to the limbs can actually start to decrease arrow speed and create a fair bit of limb vibration too. This vibration post string release is typically felt as an uncomfortable form of hand shock. So when it comes to sinew backing a bow, more is not necessarily better!
So 3oz of dry sinew is about perfect, so long as the bulk of its distribution is along the working sections of the limbs, as opposed to the handle section or the last 6″ of the tips, which will not be improved one bit by the added weight of a full thickness layer of sinew. In fact the tips really only want as thin a layer of sinew as is possible. Just enough to cover the visible surface of the back. Enough to add structural integrity but not weight.
The stave was brought into shape and a rounded D shaped belly was chosen so as to get as much sap wood off the belly corners as possible. This allowed for the retention of as much heart wood as possible and resulted in an overall ratio of around 50/50 sapwood/heartwood. Which was pretty good for a low diameter branch stave.
Three of the small knots presenting on the belly were a bit weak looking so I opted to dig them out and fill them with a mixture of epoxy and yew dust so as to add back some strength whilst retaining as best a natural look as possible.
Before putting the long string on for the first few pulls the stave held about 2″ of overall reflex, but I new that a fair bit of that overall reflex would disappear once the tillering got well underway. And as expected, by the time 26″ had been reached the overall reflex had reduced to about an inch. My expectation was for it to drop another inch by the time full draw was reached and the bow had been properly shot in, and my expectation was spot on.
So after a thorough shooting in period, the overall reflex/deflex reduce to about neutral, which was ideal for a bow which was going to end up only 60″ nock to nock. The light reflex in the tips had held it’s shape, even with their relatively low diameter, and the 1/4″ positive tiller had stayed true throughout the shooting in period.
46# at 27″ was about right for a stave of this nature and she was pleasant to shoot too. So to finish her up I fitted her up with a pair of red deer antler tip overlays. To decorate the back I fitted a nice King Rat snake skin which I had squirreled away. As well as looking quite cool, I also like that snake skins are pretty water resistant and afford a sinew backing quite a bit of extra protection from water/humidity ingress, which is always a bonus in a humid country like ours!
This snake skin wasn’t long enough to run tip to tip so I left the tips bare to show off the sinew backing. The transition from the snake skin to the sinew at the tips was wrapped with deer back strap sinew to tidy up the termination of the snake skin. The snake skin and the sinew wrappings were then edged with a black paint made from my local black earth pigment (Bideblack) mixed with hide glue. And the cream coloured dots added to the black painted boarder were made from mixing hide glue with deer bone dust.
The bow was finish and sealed thoroughly with 8 coats of danish oil made satin in appearance through a final pumice polish buffed down with wax paste. I opted to cover the slightly contoured handle with a nice piece of my home bark tanned red deer leather in a nice natural red tan colour, laced up with some leather lace cut from a roe deer hide I bark tanned last year.
The arrow pass is a piece of red deer shin leather which I tanned with some of the hair still on. It’s a bit like a rustic primitive version of the calves hair leather pieces you can buy from archery shops, only cooler!
I really enjoyed building this bow and found her to be really pleasurable to shoot. The chrono consistently recorded speeds of around 150ft/sec from a 400 grain arrow which is quite reasonable for a character branch stave.
The balanced tiller and flicked low mass tips helped mitigate any hand shock and the slightly contoured handle made for a nice comfortable grip. I can imagine this bow giving someone many years of enjoyable and reliable shooting so will be offering this bow for sale in my Southmoor Bows Etsy shop, the listing can be found here:
Specifics are as follows: Draw Weight: 46lbs at 27” Mass: 725 grams Length NTN: 60” Width: 1 3/8” at widest part Tips: 5” working 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: Elliptical. 1/8” 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!!
After a break spanning a few years, I’ve been experimenting with snake skins again recently. I love snake skins as a backing material as, in my opinion, they look amazing and are fairly simple to apply if you know what you’re doing. Admittedly my first couple of attempts to apply snake skins to a bow where less than perfect. But I’ve got a system in place now which is simple and effective and seems to work very well for me. At some point in the future I’ll do an article on my own quick and simple way of applying snakes skins.
The only trouble I find with snake skins is trying to source them here in the UK. I once paid an absolute arm and a leg to import a pair of Western Diamondback skins from the USA. As beautiful as those skins were, I simply can’t justify the cost of getting skins from traditional species of North American snakes into the UK these days. So I’ve started to use skins from Asiatic snake species instead.
The skins shown in the pics below are imported from Asia and are from a very common species of snake loosely referred to as the Asian King Ratsnake – Elaphe carinata. In terms of their conservation status these snakes are currently ranked (LC-least Concern) by the IUCN- See here: Elaphe carinata – Wikipedia. Whilst there is no doubt that these skins are not as pretty as skins from something like a North American rattle snake or even a Boa, I still think they look pretty amazing! And these Asian skins cost a mere fraction of the price of a pair of rattler or Boa skins!!
The bow featured in this post is one of my older sinew backed Yew recurves. A friend of mine asked me a while back if I had a hunting weight primitive bow which a mate of his could buy from me to hunt deer with. (Not here I hasten to add!!) This particular bow was one of my favourite stumping bows. It’s compact enough to be woven through the scrub and it certainly packs plenty enough punch to deliver appropriately weighted arrows for a lethal shot on a deer sized target.
Since this particular bow has seen many hundreds, if not thousands of arrows through it I can reliably say with certainty that this bow will withstand a lot of use and abuse, so I offered this bow to the avid hunter after re finishing it for the guy with the addition of a snake skin backing to provide an aesthetic upgrade, as well as a modest camo effect.
I also replaced the fairly battered old leather handle with my new favourite cover material – home processed and prepared deer rawhide. What an amazing handle cover material deer rawhide is! Not only does it look great after staining (note the marbled like effect from using a dark leather stain wiped off with pure isopropyl alcohol), but it’s also an incredibly hard wearing material. Deer rawhide must be sealed though else it will absorb water, but that’s no problem as raw hide will also take an oil finish like Truoil or Tung oil really well so you can oil finish/waterproof the handle at the same time as you oil finish/waterproof the bow wood.
Here are a few photos of the re-finished bow. Hope you like!:
This 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!
I built this bow about this time last year after coming across a knarley 2 1/2″ thick yew branch which had been kicking around in my yew stash for a few years. It was one of those branch wood staves which no conventional bowyer would have used for anything other than firewood. And I must admit, I nearly added it to my own firewood stack!
The branch was relatively straight across the cleanest face but had several bumps, knots and wiggles distributed between 8 sections of reflex and 7 sections of opposing deflex. The sap wood to heartwood ratio was about 2-1 with sapwood clearly forming the majority of the branches volume.
I decided to give it a chop about with the axe to see what the belly would look like with most of the waste wood chopped away. To be honest, it looked like it might just about make a bow.
My main concern was that the pith centre looked like it might not come out without reducing the thickness to a point where the bow would end up very light. But after long string tillering it looked like the limb thickness would be clear of the pith whilst leaving behind enough wood to make a light to moderate weight bow. But the pith would run through the handle along with a drying check which looked unsightly.
My original plan was to produce a stiff handled flat bow with a high crowned D section cross section. But I just couldn’t put up with leaving that horrible crack running right along the length of the handle and fades. So I decided to gouge all that split wood out from the handle and the fades leaving me with just enough wood to function as a handle albeit a bendy character handle!
I made the limbs symmetrical and a max width of 1″ 5/8ths. Tiller was 1/4″ positive. Fades about 2″. Antler tip overlays were fitted after sinew backing so that the overlays could sit on top of the sinew. Nock to nock the finished bow measures 64″.
The single layer of deer leg sinew backing was a hedge against the knots but in hind sight was completely unnecessary. That said the sinew has kept the set to absolute zero. In fact before I sinew backed the bow I tillered it as a self bow to 28″ and was content with the 44lbs draw weight and the 1″ of permanent set after shooting in over a hundred arrows.
But I had a small pile of sinew to do something with so decided to stick it on the back of this bow to see what effect it would have on such an undulating and knarly high crowned back. The results were better than expected!
After sticking 2oz of sinew on with sinew glue the bow was wrapped up and shelved until Nov 2022 so it had about 10 months of curing time. During this time the bow had straightened out and the permanent set had disappeared and didn’t reappear even after retillering and significant shooting in. The weight had jumped up too so I ended up with 50lbs at 28″ with no set at all.
With no skins to cover up the sinew I decided to just leave it bare. I gave the whole back a coat of Titebond III to help smooth down the rough sinew before finishing the whole bow with Trueoil. I refrained from wrapping the handle so that the gouged out handle could feature as part of the overall character of the bow.
An attractive knot is in just the right spot to function as an arrow pass so I didn’t bother with an inlay. The final look is certainly rustic but to be honest, I quite like it!
The handle contours naturally in such a way that the crook acts as a locator dish which feels quite comfortable in the hand, even with the handle bending upon drawing. That said, unless I hold this bow lightly I do notice a bit of hand shock. I think that this is down to the mass of the tips which is probably not helped by the presence of the sinew. In fact, this bow is a little bit on the heavy side thanks to the backing. The total weight of this bow is 760grams! Yikes!
I actually like shooting this bow and it gets quite a bit of attention from others who often see it and comment with questions like “What the heck is that!?” Once they’ve shot it though they usually ask if I can make one for them!
