Tag Archives: Yew

Primitive Character Yew Flat bow 52#@28” (Bow no. 14)

I wanted a yew branch stave to start thinking about beginning work on, so I set about rummaging through the pile of yew branch staves I have in storage. There I came across an interesting and character laden stave which was cut several years ago. I know this because I write the date that all of my staves were cut on one end after the end grain sealer has dried.

This particular branch stave caught my eye because it had a nice bit of wiggle and a few small knots which would add character without compromising strength. This stave was pretty long but one end kicked out massively and also held a dodgy looking bulge/knot. I decided to lop this 8” section off and just try and work with whatever length I was left.

Even with the end missing, I was still left with 63” ish to play with. So now that this stave had been significantly reduced in length, the shorter than ideal overall length would definitely influence the design of this bow, as bows this length and with this much character typically need a bit of thought in order to mitigate stress if intended to be drawn to 28” or more.

Before committing to a build though, I always like to give a stave a bit of axe time in order to get a bit of a feel for the stave, plus to try and identify any major problems I might encounter once work commences properly. 10 mins with the axe and I’d uncovered a potential problem. Hidden under the bark on the belly side of this stave was a drying check, and it looked like it might run deep.

Much of the bark on the face which I’d chosen as the back was very loose. I managed to pop a fair bit of this bark off by hand. I’d managed to uncover the section of sapwood under the crack, and fortunately, I could see no sign of the crack emerging on the surface of the back. Phew!

So I pushed on working down the belly, hoping that the crack would fall out at some point. And to some extent it did but the belly side of the handle section was never going to lose that crack completely, unless I reduced the handle thickness down to proportions which would make it bend slightly. And even then there was a good chance that some of the cracked pith wood would remain within the bow.

I wasn’t averse to this though, as the bow was going to end up fairly short by longbow standards, and a bendy handle would spread the work load by adding an extra 8” (4” handle + 4” fades) of bow to the total length of “working” bow.

After roughing out the belly a bit more to give me some feel for where the bow would best sit, I set about marking out the handle. The best spot for the handle given the crack and the other features was actually about 2″ away from dead centre between the limbs, so I decided to make this bow asymmetrical.

Next I wanted to rough out the face profile so that I could see what the sapwood/heartwood ratios were like, so after popping off as much bark from the limb sections as possible, I took the draw knife to the sides. This stave was only moderately crowned and was always destined to be a flatty, so I worked the edges down to a vague pyramidal profile to see if I could work around the major features without compromising strength.

There were four knots which were large enough to need to be kept away from the edges, two in each limb. Fortunately, all four of these knots could be kept off the edges without having to divert the natural flow of the lateral grain which could potentially compromise the integrity of the bow through excessive grain run out. I always like to follow the grain!

A few pin knots would present on the edges but none of these looked like they would cause me any trouble. The only other issue that the knottiness of this stave would create would be in preventing the application of significant heat bending. Recurving the tips was definitely out of the question as the top tip section was carrying enough knots to cause it to bust off if significant heat bending pressure was applied.

A lack of recurve was actually a good thing as I could now simply reflex the outer thirds slightly leaving both tips static for the last 4” therefore minimising stress to this fairly short stave. Since the handle section plus all but 4” of the tips would be working to some extent, there was now a real likelihood that this bow might even draw to 28”, despite being as short as it was plus having lots of potential weak points, AKA “character”!.

I should probably mention here that after getting all the bark off, I was struck by the beauty of the back of this bow. The sapwood was infected by that gorgeous bluey grey staining which yew sapwood often gets, This gave the back some wonderful colour variation which I know from past experience looks great when finished with a quality hardening oil such as Tung or linseed oil . In addition to the wonderful colour, the back of this stave had quite a bit of nice wiggle and undulation too, all of which was orientating around and over a multitude of pins and knots on both limbs. It reminded me of a piece of driftwood art, only with a tangerine belly!

The ratio of sapwood to heartwood was around 60/40 but there was absolutely no way I was going to attempt to reduce the sapwood on a stave like this one with such a striking and character laden back. So the ratios would have to remain. Not that this was going to be an issue anyway as the heartwood on this bow was that wonderful deep and dense orange stuff with the nice tight growth rings. Yummy!

Once the face profile was established and the handle and fades roughed out, I took a bit of time to study the small amount of twist in both limbs. This would come out easily with dry heat, as would much of the excessive deflex and reflex which was apparent at several points between the fades and the tips of both limbs.

So before going any further, I decided to spend a bit of time getting all the twist out, as well as easing off some of the unsightly deflex and reflex. A total of six sessions with the heat gun spread across a couple of day finally resulted in a stave which now looked completely free from twist and had a fairly even distribution of about 2” of overall reflex.

At this stage I’d left the limbs a bit on the thick side so that I could dig out the belly to mirror the crown and its generally undulating topography. There was no way this bow would have an even distribution of thickness (and therefore stress) unless I followed the back as a guide to dictate the profile of the belly.

So once the final thickness of the sides was established with the drawknife and the rasps, I began to dig out all the dips and valleys with the gouge and curved scraper. As is usually the case, this wasn’t a five minute job, but a job well worth doing all the same – in my opinion. And once I felt that I’d created an even thickness throughout, I set about floor tillering both limbs.

Once both limbs felt and looked like they were bending evenly on the floor, I cut in some tillering nocks and popped her up onto the tiller tree for a few first pulls with the long string. “Pretty good” was my first thought, although I was now made a little more aware of a bit of rather ugly looking deflex which was presenting itself in the top fade and also at a point about one third up the top limb. At this point I should probably say that I’d chosen the top limb to be the limb which had a rather nice wiggly tip section. I could imagine this tip looking great once refined and augmented with a nice elegant overlay.

This delfex in the fade just would not do however. It would not be possible to remove it completely but I felt confident that much of it could be reduced. I should also say that the top limb which contained this 4” deflexed fade was showing significantly weaker than the bottom limb on the tiller tree. So by straightening out as much of the deflex in this weaker top limb, I’d hopefully enhance the look of the top limb whilst simultaneously added some strength to it.

I couldn’t be bothered with trying and steam bend out the deflexed fade, so I simply clamped the deflexed fade over one of my reflex forms and gave it a good heating up with the heat gun. After a couple of attempts I was much happier with the small amount of deflex which remained. The heating process had also added significant strength to the top limb too and now had the bow presenting a ¼” positive tiller.

Conscious that some of the newly applied heat adjustment might pull out, I opted to reduce the bottom limb a tad in a couple of very slightly stiff spots. Brace height was achieved quickly thereafter and in no time I was pulling down to 22”.

A quick check with the scale showed around 40# at 22” which wasn’t too bad considering the amount of belly wood which had come off in order to lose the initial cracked section. I figured 28” would be pushing 50# by the time the tillering was finished so was quite happy with where she was at this point.

A few more tweaks with the scraper and 26” was reached quite quickly. Time to check tiller, string alignment (which was pretty good all along), and also check to see if any twist had returned. The tiller was holding firm at ¼” positive and the string alignment looked to be dead centre. A very small amount of twist had returned to the last 10” of the bottom limb tip. So a quick session with the heat gun took the twist out again and all was looking quite good.

The pith wood cracks in the handle section were not going to fall off this bow since I had already narrowed the handle thickness as much as I could. Any more wood removal from the handle and fades would see them start bending too much. In my experience, too much bend in the handle ends up robbing a bow of significant cast. I wasn’t going to take this risk just to lose a few pith wood cracks which were never going to compromise anything other than aesthetics.

So instead, I opted to pump all the handle/fade cracks and belly knots full of good old nice thin super glue, so that they would stay shut up forever and would sand nice and smooth for finishing. In no way would any of these features ever compromise the structural integrity of this bow.

The scale was reading around 49 ish# at 26” and everything was looking quite good so I called it done for now, opting as usual to shoot in the last 2“ of tiller. A couple of weeks of stump shooting with this bow was great fun and I was pleased to see that the tiller still felt very well balanced for split fingered shooting and had only reduced by a fraction.

After a lot of shooting she had settled into a tiller of 3/8” positive. Limbs felt and sounded like they were timing well which is likely why no hand shock was apparent when shooting this bow, even with the limb tips left wide for temporary tillering nocks.

Happy with the tiller and having proven that the bow was a survivor, I cracked on with finishing her. I gave her a pair of buffalo horn tip overlays and a good sanding and polishing before sealing her up with a bunch of coats of oil. The handle was begging to be kept simple and since she was always destined to be shot off the knuckle, I opted to wrap the handle primitive style with a nice strip of deer rawhide which I stained black with an application of bark tannin solution followed up with some home made iron chloride. The black rawhide wrapping matched the buffolo horn tips which I thought was both fitting and functional.

With the bow finished I put another hundred or so arrows through her to see what she felt like now the handle was wrapped up and the tips had been refined. She was now more comfortable to hold and a fair bit quieter to shoot too. The beaver fur string silencers were helping in this regard but I always notice a reduction in vibration when a bow has mass reduced from the tips. And since the tips on this bow were reduced by quite a bit after the initial shooting in phase, I felt sure that the final fine tips not only quietened the bow significantly but they also sped her up a fair bit too. A final check on the scale was reading 52# at 28”. A good weight for most flatty fanatics (myself included). I really like this bow. I think she looks great and is a real character. She’s a pleasure to shoot being quiet, smooth to draw and pretty fast. She was sending 550 grain arrows whistling along to their destination with ease and I was quietly entertained by the noticeable slap that those stump heads were being delivered with.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the story of her build and like the look of her. This bow is now listed for sale in my Etsy shop and is available for purchase here: Primitive Character Yew Longbow 5228 – Etsy UK

Here are her stats and a bunch of pics. Enjoy!

Mass: 664 grams

Length NTN: 61.5”

Width: 2” at widest

Tips: 4” static 3/8” wide at tips

Back: Marginally crowned with undulations. Face profile pyramidal.

Belly Profile: Working limb sections undulating to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to D shaped then triangular cross sections.

Tiller: Elliptical 1/8” positive.

Brace Height 5 1/2″

Draw Weight: 52lbs at 28”

Yew snake skin and rawhide backed Deflex/Reflex Longbow. 56#@26” (Bow No. 13)

This bow was built out of one of a bunch of yew branches which all came from a group of yew trees which produce some really beautiful orange heartwood. In my experience, no two yew trees produce the same quality of timber, however all of the branch staves which came from these particular trees have a good ratio of heartwood to sapwood and they all have this wonderful bright orange heartwood.

This fortunately means that none of the branch stave cut from these trees are likely to need much, if any sapwood removal in order to optimise limb composition. This is really helpful as the growth rings on these particular branches are nice and tight which is definitely what I prefer in terms of optimal yew bow wood. But tight rings on yew staves with undulating backs makes chasing a ring quite a challenge! Particularly if the stave has lots of additional character – which is kind of what I like, and is oftenwhy I chose to use a particular stave in the first place!

This particular branch stave was pretty clean across one obvious potential face, however I have to admit that the glaringly obvious deflex was not an immediately attractive quality. Fortunately the deflex was evenly distributed through both limbs and the handle section. This deflex amounted to about 3” worth so was going to require a bit of thought and consideration.

Whilst thinking about how I’d work around all this deflex, I remembered seeing a couple of beautifully made primitive osage bows made by a well know and accomplished bowyer in the US call Mike Yancey. Mike owns and runs Pine Hollow Longbows out of Arkansas. If you haven’t seen any of Mikes work, then go check out his stuff. He’s done a few really interesting podcasts and has a few youtube videos which you might find interesting. His website is here: Traditional Archery – Pine Hollow Longbows and his youtube channel is here: Pine Hollow longbows – YouTube

A couple of Mikes signature bows have quite a bit of deflex deliberately built into their design. This has always intrigued me as I’d always assumed that lots of deflex would cost a bow significant cast. Mike seems unfazed by this though and counters it to some extent by flicking the tips. But even with the tips flicked, some of his shorter bows still carry a good couple of inches of deflex overall.

Despite all that deflex, Mike and his customers report that those same bows shoot fast, hard, smooth and quietly. So with this particular branch stave already carrying a lot of natural deflex, I decided to have a go at producing a bow with a similar side profile to the shorter bows which Mike makes. That way I could encompass as much of the natural deflex into the design of this bow as possible.

My plan was to produce a medium length (56-58” N to N) flatty with an elegant pyramidal front profile. I planned to flick the tips since they were relatively knot free, and I planned to keep the last 4” of the tips static. Mike uses Osage almost exclusively so I couldn’t be sure that his basic design profile would work for our English yew. So with this in mind I opted to keep reflexing down to a minimum with a view to offsetting some of the deflex but definitely not all of it. The flicked tips would also avoid excessive stack too given that this shorter than average bow was going to get tillered to 26”

The handle section on this stave was full of beautiful orange heartwood which I wanted to maximise the potential of as a feature, so I opted to keep the handle thick enough to show off all that wood. As a result of keeping the handle so thick, the handle would obviously end up rigid. This would result in the 4” handle section plus 3” fades taking 10 inches of the bow out of action. The 4” static tips would take a further 8” out of play too. This would leave only 20” of each limb available to work. That’s not a lot of moving wood to accommodate for a full 28” draw length so I opted to keep this bow to a 26″ draw length. Since 26″ matches my own draw length, that suited me just fine! So all of that natural deflex would now act as a bit of a buffer and would mitigate the risk of building a bow that was starting to resemble quite a high stress design. Maybe that’s why Mike deliberately builds in so much deflex on his high performance short osage bows.

This particular stave was fairly easy to rough out as the grain was quite uniform for the most part. I often find that our local yew wants to tear out, even when away from knots and other typical features. I have come to think that this isn’t necessarily due to propeller twist, but is more to do with our generally higher wind speeds stressing the limbs of our local yew into growing with an uneven cross section in order to brace itself against our stronger than average prevailing winds. In fact propeller twist is something that I seldom experience with our local yew. I wish the same could be said of our white woods!!

The face of this branch stave which I’d planned using as the back of the bow had previously acted as the top of this branch as it grew on the tree. As a result of this, the growth rings were tighter in this section of the limb when compared to the underside of the branch. The result of this growth is often that the pith of the branch ends up running closer to the face that acts as the top of the branch. This was the case with this particular branch. As such, the pith would need digging out of both limbs in order to optimise for limb compression strength and minimise the risk of bucked heartwood on the belly.

By the time all of the pith was out it was clear that this bow would end up incorporating a shallow hollow limb type appearance in the inner thirds of both limbs. This was just fine in my eyes as I find that a HLD cross section limb profile looks nice and enhances performance. So out came the gouge and the swan neck scrapper and soon I had both limbs free from pith and down to a nice even thickness of between 14 and 12mm distributed evenly between all the humps and bumps and twists and turns.

With the face profile and limb thickness roughed out, I got on with flicking the tips with a simple jig and some dry heat from a heat gun. I decided to keep the flicked section to a long gentle sweep rather than the usual 6” of more aggressive curve. This would allow half of the flicked section to do some work whilst keeping the last 4” completely static.

Next a small amount of dry heat was applied to the top limb fade in order to correct a small amount of string misalignment. Then it was time to cut some tillering nocks. I was quite happy with the side profile of the bow at this early point and was keen to see what the stave looked like during the first few pulls on the tiller tree. Other than an obviously stronger bottom limb, the first pulls looked nice. A bit of re balancing of the limbs to improve the elliptical tiller I wanted brought my eye back in so I could see that there were a couple of spots on both limbs which needed to be let off a bit. After that the rest of the tiller came together pretty quick.

The natural deflex and added reflex had created a shape which looked very nice once reaching full brace. Since this bow was symmetrical, I wanted to try and maintain a ¼ positive tiller throughout the tree tillering process knowing that the bottom limb on a bow this length would likely take on a fair bit of stress and a little set if shot split fingers.

Brace to 22” went smoothly but it was clear by now that a fair bit of weight removal would be necessary before pushing out to 26” as she was currently very heavy at 22”. I was aiming for a bow around 55-58 at 26” so stopped when I got to 55 at 24”. I’d shoot in the last 2” of tiller then adjust accordingly. So with the temporary nocks serving to let me shoot her in, I gave her a couple of weeks worth of stump shooting to settle in properly.

After a lot of shooting, all looked good and the positive tiller had held up well albeit reducing down to about 3/16″. It was clear by now that this design of bow was very efficient. In fact I was really impressed with the power and speed this bow was demonstrating. I shot stumps with her using some old battered 30″ 500# Gold Tip Traditional Classics which are as close to bomb proof an arrow as you’ll ever find and subsequently an excellent choice for blasting stumps with. They are also a very heavy arrow. Tipped with insert, ballistic collar and 150 grain stump heads, these things are coming in at 575 grains so I was expecting this bow to respond to them like it was being asked it to throw logs! But she was sending them on their way like my 50# Satori sends them. I was impressed!

Back at the workshop after all the shooting in the tiller still looked great and the finishing process could begin in earnest. I wasn’t intending to put this bow up for sale in my shop as this bow was intended to be a gift for a mentor of mine but I still wanted to enhance the durability of the bow’s back. So on went a couple of premium quality wild red deer rawhide strips to bomb proof her back. You can buy them here: One Matching Pair of Wild Deer Rawhide Strips – Etsy UK Then on went a couple of buffalo horn tip overlays. Last but not least, I wanted to use this bows rawhide covered back as a canvass so that the back could earn the right to sit next to all that gorgeous orange belly wood. So on went a whole King Rat Snake skin from tip to tip.

This bow had an arrow shelf cut into it to increase functionality. The shelf is cut pretty close to centre which has reduced arrow fussiness considerably. I refrained from wrapping the handle so the handle wood could shine. Covering up that gorgeous bright orange handle wood would have been criminal in my opinion!

After a very quick and easy re-tiller to account for the addition of the backings, I was ready to sand and polish her up. Then a little black and white artwork was employed along the boundary between the wood and the backing to make the contrast between front and back really pop.

To seal her up I gave her a few baths in Tung Oil to give her a wonderful satin finish which really suits yew in my opinion. Finally I built her a 12 strand B55 flemish twist string with nice small loops to keep everything in line whilst hanging onto those tiny nocks. Two Wild beaver fur silencers dampened down the tiny amount of sound that remained on this already whisper quiet bow. Fur silencers also look pretty cool and in keeping with the overall primitive theme in my opinion. You can buy them here: 1 X Pair of Beaver Fur Bow String Silencers beaver – Etsy UK

I have to say that I’m really impressed with this bow. And even though the wood that this stave provided was a major contribution to the efficiency and performance of this bow, I simply can’t help but think that this deflex reflex profile enhanced the smoothness of the draw and the retention of power which might have been lost through set born from a straight or reflexed starting point.

I’m going to continue to experiment with this profile further. I want to confirm whether or not the performance of this bow can be readily replicated in other bows of similar stature. I’m also now curious to see how bows of other woods would perform when designed this way. I will keep you posted on my findings!

Here are the stats and the photos. I hope you like her:

Mass: 566 grams

Length NTN: 56 3/4”

Width: 1 3/4” at widest

Tips: 4” static 3/8” wide at tips

Back: Marginally crowned with undulations. Face profile pyramidal.

Belly Profile: Working limb sections concaved to mirror back, transitioning at the tips to D shapes then triangular cross sections.

Tiller: Elliptical 1/8” positive.

Brace Height 5 1/2″

Draw Weight: 56lbs at 26”

Snake Skin Rawhide Backed Yew Character Longbow 48#@28″ (Bow No. 12)

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.

Tiller: Elliptical 1/8” positive.

Draw Weight: 48lbs at 28”

Sinew and Snake Skin Backed Yew Recurve 50# @ 28″

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!:

Yew Heartwood Tip Overlays

I’ve often thought about using yew as a material for tip overlays. As attractive as the idea is though, I’ve always been conscious of the idea that yew heartwood is a little bit on the soft side to prevent string wear over time. Well at least on a heavy bow. I’m not convinced that a 50lb bow would suffer from too much trouble in this regard, and expect that the old adage that yew self nocks will cut through is only really applicable to bows with a war bow like weight.

With all that said, up until now I’ve avoided using yew heartwood as tip overlays, just in case they do fail. And also because I’ve never been short of alternative overlay materials such as buffalo horn, bone, antler, bog oak etc. And since these other materials look amazing on just about any bow, I’ve never really had the need to explore using yew. Well up until now that is!

The other day I chanced across the large mature yew pictured bellow. After admiring the size and beauty of this magnificent tree I couldn’t help but notice that it had a short section of very dead and blackened limb protruding from near the base of the tree.

In this photo the dark dead limb can be seen right in the middle of the base of the tree. To give you some scale its about 1 metres long.

This dead branch was so blackened on the outside that it drew me in for further investigation. Upon closer inspection this dead limb had clearly died off many years ago and had seen all of its white wood rot away leaving behind nothing but pure heartwood. I was curious to discover to what extent this black outer coating penetrated down into the underlying heartwood, so I sliced away at a small section with my pocket knife to expose the underlying material.

In the pictures above you can see where I sliced into the branch. The blackening was only surface level but directly below this blackened surface was a really nice, dark layer of heartwood. The first thing I noticed about this underlying dark layer of heart wood was how very hard it was. My pocket knife is pretty sharp but was struggling to make headway as I tried to dig down through this layer.

At this point my interest in this dead branch peaked. Unlike normal soft yew heart wood, this outer layer of rock hard yew heartwood would surely make for a very functional, not to mention beautiful, tip overlay material.

After further investigation of this exposed layer I could see that the reason for this hardening was a common process which many conifers perform when parts of their structure die off. In order to protect its self from pathogen ingress, conifers seal off dead parts by pumping sap bourn resins into the areas which form boundaries between dead and living parts. These resins fill the cells of the trees dying tissues and they eventually set hard like a super glue does once soaked into the pores of wood. The protective outer layer that this process provides protects the living parts of the tree from being colonised by pathogens which might otherwise colonise dead and dying part of the tree in close proximity to living parts.

All the bush crafters out there will have seen this process manifest as the “fatwood” phenomena which leads to the production of resin saturated dead branches on many species of conifer. Bush crafters will remove these “fatwood” branches from dead pine, spruce and fir trees to facilitate fire lighting, as these dead resin saturated branches are highly flammable and aid significantly in fire lighting processes.

I’ve never witnessed resin deposits in yew before however, so this was a learning opportunity for me. The resin deposit I was seeing here in this dead yew limb was nowhere near as extensive as occurs in many other conifer species but was clearly sufficient enough to have created a 3-4mm thick layer of very hard wood. This would be more than enough material to position against the back of a bows limb tip preventing the likelihood of a string cutting through a string grove cut across an overlay made from this particular yew heartwood.

Given that this limb was not affording this magnificent tree any benefit, I decided to “borrow” it for some experimentation. So making sure to leave several inches of dead resin filled wood at the base of the branch to offer protection to the living tree, I cut the dead limb off.

Initially I was a bit concerned with all the splitting which can clearly be seen in the photo above. But after closer inspection I could easily envisage finding plenty of spaces in between the myriad cracks to wrestle out plenty of overlays.

First split exposes some lovely looking wood.

I followed the existing cracks to split out wedges to be worked down further. No difficulty splitting these rounds, especially as they were still quite wet at this point.

Here you can really see the colour difference between the harder, darker, resin saturated portion as it contrasts against the lighter softer parts.

Two rounds split down into workable sized pieces. Enough to last me quite a while!

The wood was initially quite wet so after cleaving the rounds down into more manageable sizes I brought them indoors and sat them on top of the fireplace to dry out thoroughly. Splitting was minimal and they were a joy to work down to a suitable profile.

Below are a couple of photos of my first attempt at making overlays from this log. I think they look pretty cool. The string groves are cut right down through the lighter, softer heartwood up to the darker, harder resin impregnated section. This arrangement means that the colour contract between a white wood bow and the yew overlay is maximised, whilst also ensuring that the string only makes full contact with the hardest part of the overlay.

This top limb overlay was deliberately skewed to follow the contour of the limb tip.

A slightly lighter piece but with more pronounced grain. The bow is Elm.

I’m currently toying with the idea of trying holy as an overlay material since it is pretty hard and a beautiful bright white. I imagine it would contrast sharply against something like a dark stained white wood. (Watch this space!)

If you found this article interesting then keep an eye out in your own local area for some resinous yew so you can give yew heartwood overlays a go. I think there is now a place for yew in my selection of tip overlay materials. What do you think? Please let me know in the comment section below!

Until next time!

Sinew Backed Yew Recurve Flatbow 55# @ 28″ Bow No.6

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!

Anyway, I hope you like the pics!

Bow No.4 – Sinew Backed Character Yew Flatbow 50lb at 28″

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!

Anyway, here are the pics. Hope you like!