Aloha all,
This post is lengthy, so feel free to grab some snacks
or just skip ahead to the pictures.
I grew up in Central NY, and when I was in college my parents moved to Putnam County (southeast part of the state). Their property was 11 acres in a beautiful forest. My mom's family was from that area, going all the way back to the 1700s. If anyone is familiar with the area, the town of Briarcliff Manor used to be an estate owned by my ancestors, who were so wealthy that their occupation was listed on the census as "gentleman." I'm also a descendant of the Van Buren family, who all lived and are buried in that area. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you feel about history
), I am not descended directly from Martin Van Buren but one of his siblings, so no royal blood here.
The family moved north to Saratoga long ago, when my grandmother was a toddler. My parents moved to the Putnam area solely because of my dad's job. By total coincidence, the property they purchased was located in an area my mom's uncle used to hunt, around 50 years ago. All this is just to say that although at the age of 20 I had probably never even heard of this area, I have some pretty solid "ancestral" ties to it.
I will make a quick note here that this same uncle used to take me out to look for arrowheads as a kid every time I visited, and sparked a lot of my interest in primitive archery. I actually found a nice point last summer while walking some fields with him, which was the first time I had ever found a complete piece. He also gave me an antique drawknife, spoke shave, and some mint condition old hand cut files and rasps a few years back, which I use all the time.
My parents property was 11 acres of beautiful hardwood forest, mostly consisting of various oaks and cherries, white ash, and maple with a few shagbark hickory and a massive (over 4' DBH) tulip poplar. In 2011, remnants of Hurricane Irene passed through and downed a tall, straight, white ash. At the time, I had taken some interest in woodworking, and wanted to cut the tree up for lumber. Sometime before that, the uncle mentioned above had made a comment about how Native Americans used to make bows out of ash and hickory. I had very little experience with archery outside of a kid's compound bow, and whatever dozens of limbs I wrapped a string around as a kid. I certainly had no idea how to make a bow. A quick internet search told me that I should cut a long section, split it, and remove the bark.
I cut an 8' section, split it into quarters, and removed the bark with a hatchet. Due to lack of knowledge, I didn't spend any time lining the splits up to avoid knots, and my hatchet took many chunks out of the layer below the bark. I threw all of it in the basement to season.
After these preparations, another quick internet search convinced me that making a bow was too complicated and I lost interest. I wasn't doing much archery at the time so I just didn't have the motivation to learn. Over the following winter, I cut one of the quarters into small boards, and made a speargun out of another in preparation for my move to Hawaii. I left the other two full size to leave my options open for what to do with them another time.
Fast forward 5 years (to 2016), and my passion for archery had been reignited, and I had been making bows for a couple years (g**ss bows and BBI). My parents decided to follow me to Hawaii, and it took some serious begging but I managed to convince them to throw the 2 remaining pieces of ash into the shipping container and not into the bushes outside. When the staves arrived, I was disappointed in how I had treated the backs, and with how many knots there were. I put them to the side and continued making bows with the other materials I was used to. Also, I really liked bows with shelves and didn't care to make a selfbow with a shelf, so I was in no rush.
Then, in 2019, I made my first BITH bow, a 52" BBI. It quickly became my favorite bow, I couldn't stop shooting it (until it delaminated). I would be in the yard until midnight shooting a haybale in the dark. My thoughts turned to my ash staves. It was time to use one to make a bow.
I cleaned up one of the staves, and worked it down to (nearly) a single growth ring in the heartwood. This gave me some perspective on what I had to work with, in regards to knots and grain.
But then I went online. "Ash bows need to be long," it said. "Ash bows need to be wide," it said. "Ash hates humidity," it said. "Ash bows need to have perfectly straight grain." In my mind, lots of requirements to make a hunting weight, durable bow with ash. I have no interest in lengthy bows, too much jungle here. I don't find wide bows particularly appealing. We average 60-70% humidity year round and frequently have days where the air is so super saturated that even on hot days our floors are wet from condensation. The stave I started working on did not have straight grain, and had several large knots. Maybe it wasn't time after all.
So I asked around here and was able to get some osage in a trade. Osage can handle being short, narrow, and snakey, and doesn't go limp in humidity. The bow I made from that stave is my absolute favorite bow so far. I am frequently out in the yard until after midnight, shooting the haybale in the dark. At one point, I only had 1 arrow and took so many shots that I wore the lawn down to a mud path (which after months of coaxing still has not regrown). My experience with that bow helped me accept that you really need to let the stave tell you what kind of bow it will be. I accepted that a stave may laugh at your preconceived notions of what kind of bow it should become, and that you need to let go of them to build the best bow possible. Now it was time to re-visit that ash stave.
With all of this history, this stave took on some serious sentimental value. To set myself up for success (in other words, to prevent heartbreak
), I restarted this project with one goal: to shoot an arrow (literally one single arrow) from full draw without the bow breaking. Whatever design adjustments I had to do to get to that point, I was willing to do, even if it meant ending up with a bow that I had no interest in shooting or hunting with. Really, it was a way to give purpose to a piece of wood that traveled 5000 miles and spent nearly a decade in a basement or shed. Let the shavings fly!
To be continued in about 15 minutes, I am going to put pictures in the next post.
