Bowyering (Part 1)

I never used to believe in hunting. I thought that all hunters were cheap-beer-swilling fools with guns out killing things with the primary motivation of entertainment. To be fair, there are a lot of folks out there like that but I am beginning to learn that hunting, like so many things in life, is what you make it. So when I began to consider the possibility that I may need or want to hunt for food, clothing and tools someday I knew that I wanted to make it a challenging and honorable experience. After all, death is not bad or evil, it is the most natural thing in the world and we all must kill living things to survive. When I eventually take the life of an animal I want it to be at close range with a bow that I made myself. Sounds tough, and it is, but the hardest thing so far has been getting the bow.

For about a year I had been daydreaming about someday making a bow of my own but I had no idea where to get the wood, what tools to use or really where to start. Plus it was important to me to do everything in a caretaking way. So that is how I found myself on a rainy weekday in February wading into a section of flooded ash forest near Fall Creek, Oregon. I had been directed here by a resource manager for the forest service as an area where I would be likely to find Oregon White Ash in large numbers. All morning I had been up and down old logging roads looking for just the right ash grove where I might be able to do some good by removing a tree or two for the benefit of the overall forest. In this particular grove I had inspected and communicated with several little saplings and I was starting to get kind of cold. My attempts at starting a hand-drill fire in that sodden location had been pathetic and I wanted to be done for the day. Still I waded further into the grove, climbing over downed trunks and through snowberry bushes, their bare branches still bearing their pale fruit.

When I saw the tree that I eventually took I was pretty sure I had found the right one. It was about 6 inches in diameter and growing so close to it's neighbor that the trunks were touching and had begun to even twist around each other a bit. This would be a strong, fast bow because it would have tight growth rings and very few knots on one side but more importantly taking its life would benefit the trees around it by allowing them access to more sunlight and nutrients. One of these trees would eventually die of crowding and I was happy to benefit from their situation. I thanked the tree for its life and before leaving I also cut down another tree in the area that was clearly doomed to allow more resources for its neighbors and maybe provide food for local animals like beavers.

Upon returning home I proceeded to begin reducing my bowstave. Now, some people will say that this is completely the wrong way to do it. The "European" tradition of bowyering involves allowing a green stave to season for anywhere from 1 to 5 years so that it is completely dry when you begin to work it. This is to help avoid warping and cracking of the wood before you work it because it is allowed to dry slowly. In the "primitive" (for lack of a better word) tradition the maker usually reduces the wood while it is still green to its rough final dimensions. The reason for this appears to be that it is much easier to reduce the size of the bowstave while the wood is green than once it has dried. Because the people who used this method (in particular, Native Americans) obviously were able to make good bows I decided to try the latter method.

The first step for me was to scrape all of the bark off the wood. The bark should never be cut off because you could easily accidentally cut into the grain of the wood and ruin your final product. I used the edge of a metal ruler. Next, I took a look at the grain of the wood to decide where would be best to split the stave. I wanted to have the most even, tight growth rings form the back of the bow. Theoretically, it is possible to get two, or possibly even four, staves out of a trunk this size. I focused on making sure to get at least one. As I started to baton the axe through the wood the split began to twist. I was going very slowly but despite my best efforts I ended up with a twisted half-tree. My guess is that because the tree had grown in such a strange position that the grain had uncharacteristically formed a twist. This pretty much ruled out getting several bows out of this one trunk but I could still see a path to at least one, maybe two functional bows.

At this point I spent a little more time with the axe removing wood from some thick areas and then set it inside to dry a bit. About a week later I was able to gain access to a band saw and carefully reduced it to a roughly rectangular cross-section. At this point it was time to let it season.

I said before that bowstaves are typically seasoned at least a year before they are worked, however, a stave that has been de-barked and reduced will dry significantly quicker. In one article that I read in the Bulletin of Primitive Technology the author outlines a similar method to make a bow from living tree to finished bow in about three days. I let mine sit for a couple of weeks before continuing to carve on it.

In order to insure that I was cutting in the right places I marked the center of the bow and then measured out a 4 inch handle in the middle. I then made a tapering line from the handle out to the ears. This has been my guide as I remove wood to get closer to the final dimensions. All wood is removed from the belly and sides of the bow. In this project I chose to have the bark side form the back of the bow and therefore it is important that this surface not be cut. In fact it is wise to even try to keep it from getting scratched as it will be under intense pressure in the finished product.

This step in the process has been a really slow one; partly because I want to take my time and be sure that I am responding to the wood and allowing the bow to define itself and partly because I don't have all of the best tools. I started out using an old draw knife that my friend gave me but it never seemed to keep an edge and then the handles started cracking and falling off. That knife now had a new life as a hide scraper and it is much more effective for that purpose. After a couple of months I broke down an bought an excellent Scandinavian "push knife" which can be either pushed or pulled. It works great but it is still awkward to carve without any sort of vise to hold the wood. Ideally I need a shaving horse but I don't really care to make or buy one and then have to store it. If anyone out there has any experience dealing with this issue then please let me know.

That's as far as I have come at this point. I will post another blog on the topic when I have more experiences to write about. Until then here is something to think about:

From "The Gospel of Nature" By John Burroughs:

I certainly have found "good in everything"--in all natural processes and products--not the "good" of the Sunday-school books, but the good of natural law and order, the good of that system of things out of which we came and which is the source of our health and strength. It is good that fire should burn, even if it consumes your house; it is good that force should crush, even if it crushes you; it is good that rain should fall, even if it destroys your crops or floods your land. Plagues and pestilences attest the constancy of natural law. They set us to cleaning our streets and houses and to readjusting our relations to outward nature. Only in a live universe could disease and death prevail. Death is a phase of life, a redistributing of the type. Decay is another kind of growth.

Yes, good in everything, because law in everything, truth in everything, the sequence of cause and effect in everything, and it may all be good to me if on the right principles I relate my life to it. I can make the heat and the cold serve me, the winds and the floods, gravity and all the chemical and dynamical forces, serve me, if I take hold of them by the right handle. The bad in things arises from our abuse or misuse of them or from our wrong relations to them. A thing is good or bad according as ends related to my constitution. We say the order of nature is rational; but is it not because our reason is the outcome of that order? Our well-being consists in learning it and in adjusting our lives to it