Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: DC on December 12, 2018, 04:34:34 pm
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This is a collection of suggestions and advice for the beginner. Reading and using this will save you a lot of time and heartache.
1. You don't have to chase a ring on all wood. As a matter of fact I believe Osage Orange and Black Locust are the only ones you "have to" chase a ring on.
2. Wood has to be dry. Dry means a MC(moisture content)of 10% or less. Wet wood will take set or at least cause poor performance. Check here for more info http://www.csgnetwork.com/emctablecalc.html
3. Unless you are chasing a ring(see no 1) the back has to be as flawless as you can get it. No chips, dings, scrapes or such. If you harvest the wood in the spring/early summer most bark will just peel off and leave you with a pristine back. Guard it with your life :D
4. After the stave is split coat the ends and back with shellac, watered down glue or such. Depending on your local climate you can get away with more or less. I live on the coast and one coat on the back and a couple on the ends is enough. If you live in Arizona I have no idea how many coats to use. Many would be a start.
5. The wood should dry for a least six months. Again this will vary depending on you local climate. Longer is better. Spend this six months gathering better wood. By the time the first is dry you should have enough to keep you going.
Can others post anything they can think of so maybe we can get a thorough coverage of things you should know before you start.
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It's best to start with a nice clean stave (straight and free of knots) and a simple design (pyramid works well). :)
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Tim Baker’s “List of Potential Bow Wood” is an excellent reference. I’m still confused about what’s allowed and not allowed as far as links so I’ll just tell you to google it.
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Make a bow. Choose a low stress no frills bare bones design and go slow at it till you have a bow in hand. There are literal works of art on this site, but crawl before you walk and get a shooting bow under your belt and you’re more likely to stick it ou than if you shoot for the moon with a stressed out intricate design and fail multiple times.
Books are good, but this site is the absolute best knowledge base for wood bows I believe. Books can’t give feedback.
Listen to advice both freely given and asked for. There are lots of ways to skin a cat, and you’ll find your own way, but learn from others experience and respect that while it may not be gospel, it comes from learned experience that you do not yet have.
Make and use a tillering gizmo!
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Ring porous woods like maple,paper birch,red cedar tend to off like bombs,were as diffuse porous like elm,hickory,Osage,oak will sometimes give a tick warning,but not always!
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Patience, Grasshopper! Read TTB, Vol 1-4, Comstock's "Bent Stick", Al Herrin, Prof "Reg" and Gladys Laubin, Jm Hamm, all of the references in the TBB series, find a local bowyer, read al, the post on PA, then get the best stave you can afford in whatever wood you want. Then read everything again before you screw up your stave! (Wish some one had told me that)! Ask lots of questions, post lots of pictures, if you don't feel good before you start, go for a long run! Patience, Grasshopper!! Remember, too; the only dumb question is the one you don't ask! Hopefully your first bow will be a shooter! I hope to post pics of my first bow this week! Took about 10 months to get it tillered and shooting, got about 250 arrows down range, some good shots, most of the not so good shots are operator error! Take care and good luck!
Hawkdancer
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Some really good advice here already.
I think some of the best is to start with a good straight clean stave or board. Try a low stress simple design. You can learn a lot from either your success or your failures. I think you will however find it much more rewarding shooting your plain Jane overbuilt longbow, than breaking that fancy short bow with the flipped tips or syihas. You will be amazed how beautiful that overbuilt long bow looks and feels to you after you fling a few arrows through her. There will be lots of time to experiment and learn from your failures later.
Keep harvesting and prepping staves. It is amazing to me how much wood I can go through. It really does get better as it cures to. As long as it's properly prepared. Don't just start cutting down every tree that has a good bow in it. Start out small. It's a lot of work to prepare staves and if you have a overwhelming pile of logs, your chances of preparing them properly goes way down. Better to do a few at a time and do them well.
While your waiting for your stave to cure and assuming your going to become totally hooked, like so many of us have. Keep looking for tools. Get a good draw knife, ferries rasp, a bastard file and some French Cabinet Scrappers. Build a tillering tree. I like a pully system with a inline scales and markings for my draw lengths. Maybe you want to build some cauls or forms for straightening and flipping tips. Maybe you want to set up a steam system for heating and bending. If your planning on using these you'll want to add some good clamps to your tool box.
I didn't do this but I think it would probably be a good idea. While waiting for your good stave to dry maybe you can find a good board. I've seen lots of good board bows on here. I'm sure you can learn a lot practicing on a board bow and there's sites that will have build alongside for them. Just make sure you pick out a good board.
Have fun. Don't overthink everything to the point your paralyzed and afraid to do anything. Remember it's just a piece of wood until you bring it back to life. Enjoy you success and learn from your failures.
You've come to the right place.
If you have any opportunity to attend a Primitive Meet, (especially MoJam or Marshall Michigan for sure) do so. You'll go away wishing it wasn't already over and planning for next year. Bring some fun money if you can. It's a great place to buy much needed hard to find supplies. Meeting with other bowyers is amazing and I haven't met one I didn't like yet.
Don't give up. Most of us either broke our first attempts or built poorly tillered bows. It's a learning process and certain skills and a eye for tillering need to grow. Remember the two most important and beautiful things about a selfbow. A good clean unviolated ring on its back and even more importantly, a very nice bend that spreads the stress out evenly by the wood removed from its belly. Everything else is just bling.
Keep making shavings
Bjrogg
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My advice, stay away! Dont start! Get marriage counseling and a new vacuum, cause you are gonna need it.
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Enter your question in a google search and put “primitive archer” in as well, and all the past threads will come up.
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Some say just dive in and make a bow but if you are new to the process get your self the needed tools and some boards or even some limbs and practice with the tools you're going to have to use to chase rings and such.no need to waste wood because you cant control the tools..as said do some home work such as reading .if you cant afford the books use the library or the web .all the people on here are ready to help someone but it also goes a long way to school yourself some.
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If you notice that I've included something that you don't believe or agree with please point it out and we'll decide whether to include it or not.
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Learn the language. We talk about things like chasing a ring, back and belly. Reflex, deflex and many other words we use that we almost assume you know. Maybe you don't. It makes it much easier to communicate if you know the "language"
Bjrogg
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Ask lots of questions and try not to get your noise out of joint if you don't like the answer.
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dont be afraid to ask the same question again, we are patient,, sometimes the answer changes :)
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1. Just remember, it's only a stick. (even if it's your only piece of yew). If it breaks, get another stick and try again.
2. Post lots of pictures. some here don't read too good.
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Another point when building with big box stores milled lumber a bend test (mini bow) is not a bad idea.some of it has not been treated as bow wood and allowed fungus to set in.hickory is always suspect!
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I think we're getting close to all a guy will want to read when he's starting. Anything need clarifying or punctuation correction?
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Remember to have fun! This is, after all, a hobby! There is a great deal of pride in making your own bow and a lot of exuberant celebrating when you hit that target weight and a good tiller! As well as getting the first arrow down range! Especially if you made the bow, the string, and the arrow!
Hawkdancer
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Have fun. Don't overthink everything to the point your paralysed and afraid to do anything. Remember it's just a piece of wood until you bring it back to life. Enjoy you success and learn from your failures.
I really like the quote above over thinking can freeze your bow work also I would add try to enjoy your failures in other words accept them as a stepping stone to making better bows , and pay attention to the guys that are actually making bows guys that are taking action (making bows) are far better teachers then Theorist !
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one thing I would add is never fall for the old "tiller isn't perfect but I didn't want to lose any more weight so I quit". In my opinion, getting tiller as perfect as you can trumps all. like was already mentioned, its only wood. Even if you have to sacrifice a couple bows due to coming in underweight, in the long run, you'll be a much better bowyer
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Timmy, I agree 100%. Without good tiller you only have a bent stick. Once you learn to see and achieve good tiller your bows will come out the way they was intended with the draw weight you intended.
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Agree on the tiller comments.
About the only comment I could offer is 'take your time' when working with hand tools, making a bow blank from a quarter split will take time and effort on your part. A bow isn't made in an evening or two. Oh, it can be, but likely won't be. Relax and take your time.
Cutting tools like drawknives are sharp and take your time when using them, keep them sharp, dull tools require more effort.
Take your time with the tillering process. A scrape here, a scrape there, five pulls on the string, look again, scrape a bit more...repeat as necessary.
While some are doubtless familiar with and competent with drawknives, rasps, scrapers etc when they decide to start making bows, more than a few of us haven't handled them since a shop class or hanging out in your grandad's shed when he was fixing up something around the homeplace.
There is a learning curve to learning proper and therefore efficient and safe use of drawknives, rasps and scrapers.
The learning curve includes multiple tries and fails, just look upon them as paying your dues to becoming a bowyer. If I recall correctly, I believe George Tsoukalas said he made and broke 14 or 15 bows until he a had a shooter. He stuck with it.
And that's my two cents.
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DC . . . look at #9 . . . "tend to off like bombs" . . . and . . . "were as" . . .?
This is excellent excellent stuff!!
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Good advise from some top notch bowyers . No need to add much at all .
Arvin
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Ring porous woods like maple,paper birch,red cedar tend to off like bombs,were as diffuse porous like elm,hickory,Osage,oak will sometimes give a tick warning,but not always!
Your porous/ring porous terms don't match the woods.
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Oh dang Pat where did I go wrong?was just going by memory,think that was a Friday night or something (lol)
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I decided not to try to crunch all the suggestions into one post. It was looking like they were all my ideas and I didn't want that. I deleted everyone elses ideas from the original post but they are all still there.
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Im going to go against the grain ( see what i did there? ) and say that chasing a ring on osage is far from necessary. Many bows have been made without doing so. Dont let being intimidated by chasing a ring stop you from working osage.
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Remember it's the journey that counts. Jawge
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This is awesome, thanks all.
I want to contribute. After a year I'm just finishing my 8th attempt. For the first 6 I chose pretty crappy pieces of wood so as not to waste good ones, so you could say they were planned failures. #6 was a good stave, but I put a hinge in it by not understanding good tillering technique; i evened out for a kid's bow, but it broke in final tillering.
#8 is awesome and makes all that went before worth it.
The best advice I'm qualified to give about bowyering is "make use of PA as THE best resource". Also YouTube.
I do have a solid year of wood gathering under my belt, this is something I can claim to be qualified to talk about...I'm out there 3-4 times a week.
My tips:
While you're waiting on your yew or osage to dry, cut some juniper and work it green. It's best worked green, even if you've heard different. Because it's easier to untwist it, and it dries very fast.
find out EVERY viable species in your area for bows and arrows shafts. There's a lot more to life than yew and osage. For example where I live, there's an abundance of ocean spray, hazel, ninebark & honeysuckle; relatively nearby are serviceberry, vinemaple, juniper, and incense cedar.
Thanks again you guys, this forum is truly a wonderful resource