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building wood bows for a living
Muskyman:
I also agree with Del and Eric on this. My experience with this comes from making musky fishing lures and not bows though. I use to fish for them a lot and lures for muskies are not cheap. Custom lures can cost $100 bucks and up. I thought to myself, I could make them, so I did. Before long people started asking me to make them one. Of course before long I was making way more than I wanted to and finally decided to quit because it took all the fun out of it for me. Like Eric and his ducks I rarely made a lure anymore. When I do make one it’s a gift for that person and I make sure that’s understood and that I don’t sell them. For anyone that wants to do that for a living and can make money at it, that’s great. Just not for me.
SLIMBOB:
I love making art. That outlet has come in different forms over my life with bow making being the longest lasting. I made my first bow in the early-mid 90’s. I have sold a number of bows over those decades, and given away and traded others. Only a few were “custom orders”. All the fun was sucked completely out of it for me, on those few, and I can’t foresee doing any others that way. I have a room full of bows. Come over and see if you like one. If so, we can figure out a price. I’m happy with that arrangement.
superdav95:
I’m also more of a 40hr guy. I love details. So for me building bows and putting my energy and creativity into them is an outlet that checks a lot of boxes for me. I sell bows too but only word of mouth. I haven’t had any warranty issues yet fingers crossed but when it happens I’ll take the approach that Eric does. I can rough out a bow and brace in a solid full day depending on the style but its far from done and all the finish work in the details are what take the time. I do much like kidder in that I’ll stare at them to be inspired as to what to do to finish them up. It’s funny I’ll have like 5-6 bows on the go all floor tillered and some fully tillered for quite some time and crap one and start on finishing it as I got an idea on how to finish it up. My ordered are all custom bows and all different. This is where I find joy in the labour of bow building. To make it a full time business for me would take that away for me and make this a chore. I learned my lesson too with making knives for 11 years. I got so into it and at first loved it even obsessed over it. I got so many orders though that it killed it and now I only make the occasional knife. The last blade I made was a custom proper chefs blade with feather Damascus. It took me a week to build this knife and although I enjoyed aspects of the build I was glad when it was done. It was a $1000 knife that I let go for $750. The only reason I agreed to the build was for a work buddy of mine spouse birthday gift. If I absolutely had to I could make a decent living making knives. Even just custom chef blades. The same for bows I believe. I’m fortunate in that I don’t need to and for me it’s more then just the money I can get for my bows. I like doing word of mouth sales for friends of family or the like. What I get from building bows is priceless.
Selfbowman:
Ok for me it’s a hobby that sometimes help pay its way. I only spend about 25-30 hrs on one normally. Is that why I only charge $900. 🤠🤠 The guys like Weylin earns there money. It’s hard running any business but these guys hopefully are living there dream while making a living for their families. Good bows don’t come cheap.
bassman211:
I sold a sinew backed plains Osage native horse bow with a red fox quiver, and knapped heads with home made shafts, and turkey feathers. I hung it in a bow shop, and it sold in 3 days. A women bought it for her husband's man cave. I made less than 5 bucks an hour with that bow. Sold it for 400 bucks, and 30% of the money went to the shop I sold it out of. To much energy building bows at the time, and dumber than a sled track.
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