I don't have any pictures to post of this moment, but I was completely amazed about a week ago by a bow that my buddy Robbie built . Robbie is going to be a great bowyer one of these days, but right now he is on about his second or third bow. He is a hands on, learn by doing kind of guy. He split a very straight osage sapling in two and and made a bow out of it. He took the bark and the sapwood off and roughed it out and let it dry for a month or so. HE WORKED THE BACK WITH A FOUR INCH ANGLE GRINDER. Ring chasing didn't enter into it..... The back looked like hell. He brought a wonky, non tillered 45lb pull bow to my shop. He strung it and proceeded to fling arrows into my round bale target. He is new to selfbows, traditional archery.... Heck, he hasn't even read a full chapter of the Traditional Bow Builder's Bible yet. He drew that bow back to his ear - 30 or 31 inches at least. The bottom limb bent like the letter "C" The top limb had rings not just violated, but literally raped. It had hinges and flat spots. It had pin knots shamefully ignored. I cringed and watched. I looked around for him some safety glasses or a hard hat. He kept shooting. I waited for the big explosion that never came. He shot that crazy yellow bow for thirty minutes. It was fast and he could hit with it. He was so proud of his new bow - and so was I!
I thought of the time that I had spent chasing rings and babying pin knots and worrying and fussing over a couple of osage bows in my past. Here I was thinking you had to be so exact and careful with that yellow wood, when in fact, it is the toughest stuff you could make a bow out of. Robbie taught me some things about osage.
We took his bow and put it on my tillering tree (Robbie hasn't built one yet) and evened up those limbs. It had taken about 3 inches of set from the incredible abuse it had suffered. I put the heat gun to it and flipped the tips a little and it came in about 40lbs on the nose. The back still looks just like it did when he quit grinding it. He talked about putting a backing on it, I asked him to leave it just like it is as a testament to the king. I will get some pictures of it as soon as I can. I am convinced that no other bow wood could have stood up to that kind of abuse and survive.
