Remember when you first started?

[possum]

I believe I started in '97 also.  I had bought Jim Hamm's book on native american bows... not the one with all the pictures.  I bought the book in '91 and had just picked it back up and decided to try it out.  Bought an osage stave and found a drawknife at an antique store.  I learned to love osage just for drawknifing the back to one growth ring.  For some reason I just love doing that.  I ran into problems steaming the back on the stove.  I ended up boiling all the water out of the pot and charring the back.   I got into the book and found the publishing company and after a lot of leg work found Jim Hamm's phone number and called him up.  He was so helpful.  He told me I could probably go down through the charring, telling me osage was very tough.  He was right.  But, I was still not to be successful.  I was checking draw weight on the scale when the limb exploded!   But it was the opposite limb.   I figure I wasn't worried about that limb and wasn't watching it and it was obviously hinged.   Oh well.  I did take time off and pursued a bit of bladesmithing when I inquired about making broadheads.  I've got WAY too many hobbies.  I gleened that bit of knowledge from my wife.  She told me so.   Fun, though.  It is nice coming on here and seeing a lot of names I've been seeing since I started (Badger, Jawge, Mullet, etc)

possum

[Badger]

     One of the coolest things about this sight has been watching ourselves and each other grow and change. Some of the guys I had considered mentors or roll models kind of faded into the background to make room for newer guys who seem quite capable of answering the questions and fielding the posts that need replies instead of just comments.  I think the thing that keeps me personaly going hasn't changed from the start. I have always been a mechanic and carried my what makes it tick mentality into bow making. I never dreamed that after all these years I would still be trying to figure out just exactly what makes it tick. Thank god for a lot of you guys out there and the internet or I would have driven myself over the wall and into a nut house by now. I still think the devil created a chrono. I hit my peek in 2007 and have duplicated it a few times in 2008. This will be the first year I haven't been able to hit a new plateau or for that matter even feel driven to do so. I still felt this year to be a rewarding year as I was able to assist a friend in building a modern longbow that shattered the recorded records for modern longbows or recurves for that matter, using primitive bow tecnology. Lots of theories comming from guys like Tim Baker, Allen Case, Woodbear, and then watching the tecniques of several other guys on here in applying them. Handshock and controlling limb vibrations are my latest crusade. I feel confident that some new commer will come along and figure the whole thing out in short order! It has been a great trip. Steve

[Eric Krewson]

I was walking down a road at our hunting club with my recurve in 96. I had started with a recurve, gone to the dark side for 18 years and had been traditional since 89. I ran into a guy I didn't know carrying what looked like a rough limb with a string on it. I asked him"do you hunt with that" he replied, "sure". "Have you killed a deer with that ?" I asked. Again, he said yes.

I had to learn this kind of bow making. He introduced himself as Joe Bogle, invited me to his house and showed me his method of making a bow. We have since become great friends.

I found an old osage board at a backwoods sawmill, made what I thought a bow should look like, even backed it with sinew. I went from floor tillering to full draw in about 10 seconds and it actually shot an arrow, well 30 of them before it blew up.

I then bought every book and video on bow making I could find, cut osage around town like a wild man possessed, and started making bows correctly.  My next was a working oasge recurve that is out there some where, probably still shooting today. I have broken very few bows over the years but my tillering skills were slow in developing. Since I came up with the Gizmo bow making has become much easier.

One thing I found out about all the books and videos, they all leave out some crucial information that you can only learn by putting drawknife and scraper to wood.

[cowboy]

fun stories guys - have enjoyed em. I'm still in the madman cutting down trees stage, and developing those when I started stories .

[possum]

One of my favorite stories was of my second bow.  It was a rawhide backed red oak board bow.  I had glued a handle on it but didn't taper it properly.  My neighbor was a compound shooter and thought it would be neat to shoot a wooden bow.  Sure, OK, I thought.  He pulled it back to, God, I don't know how far, and released.  Well, he was holding it like he did the compound.  I quickly learned why the wear slings on those things now.  The bow flew ten yards in front of him and I never found the arrow.   I told him he was allowed to hold onto the handle with his whole hand.   Well, the handle ended up popping off that bow a few days later and the handle broke under the rawhide.   But I did learn how to shape a glued handle correctly after that, at least.

possum

[Postman]

Back in the mid 80's in Jr. high school i had a 45 # aluminum recurve someone made at a machine shop at the local US Steel plant. Found dad's old kodiak in the attic - it broke about the 10th time I shot it.    Went wheelie till last year, when my wife bought me a 2 -day bowmaking class because I managed to build a sunporch that summer. She thought I'd  make 1 bow, and be done.....

now tillering my 3rd selfbow, have made a few board bows, broke a few, and  have about 10 bow's worth of osage in the basement to keep me busy for a while.

[Dano]

My story is a lot like Eric's. I had hunted some in Californica as a kid mostly quail with a gun. But after the service I didn't have much desire to do much of that. But when I got transfered to a small town in Illinois, life changed Most of the guys at work hunt, be it bow season, black powder, shot gun, what ever. Then my daughter decided she'd like to shoot a bow, so we bought some compounds. Sorry those ain't bows. At a 3D shoot I met a guy that shot the socks off everybody, and it was a hemp backed hickory bow that was about the ugliest bow I'd ever seen. Nothing like hunting with your own hand made gear. Yep I was hooked, been learnin to make a bow ever since. I have never found anything to beat the fun of building a bow, well maybe one thing.

[Papa Matt]

I did like many brothers did starting out. I was 11. I was totally oblivious to chasing a ring and seasoning a stave. I took a real nice hickory sapling and decrowned it with my dad's drawknife, waving in and out of rings, made it into a bow green the same day it was cut, turned it inside out, tied a nylon string to some grooves I roughed out with my pocked knife, and was on my merry little way. It went about 48" and 20# at 20" I would guess since I never measured it. For what it was and what I was shooting, it was THE MOST ACCURATE BOW I have shot to date, I could consistently pick the lid off a milk jug at 10 yards, and with the arrows I was using back then that is quite an accomplishment. My fletching consisted of whatever raw material I had available, chicken feathers, plastic, tape, arrows were not of equal length, or spine, the only thing they had going was they were straight. I knew that much at least. But, since it had taken like 3 inches of set, and the tiller was somewhat off, as it dried out it began to crack. One day I just junked it out and got me a Ben Pearson 55# recurve. But as I got older I decided to give selfbows another try.

~~Papa Matt

[Kegan]

Ever since I was little I played with bows. I used mostly junk shrubs with strings between the ends, and my dad had made me a nice little longbow. That thing sure shot- there's still a dent in the closet door where I shot it about 15 yards striaght through the house. That was the end of that .

I played with them on and off. They seemed to fit the sort of "play" we did. About three years or so ago I got into wilderness survival, and hunting with bows appealed more than trapping for food. So I started making the same bow I had before- shrubs with string between the ends. I learned that stronger bows were better for hunting. I learned to deflex the green wood and dry it in the sun to prevent it from breaking, and help with stringing. I didn't know to unstring them though. Eventually, I found primitivearcher.com and Primtive Archer Magazine, and then bought The Bent Stick, and I've been learning ever since. I tried a few fiberglass bows for hutning, but only one ever made it to season, and I missed a nice doe at three yards. I figured I could miss jsut as well with a stick than I could with a $200 fiberglass bow. Thankfully I've gotten a little better, so the deer don't pity me quite as much .

[tom sawyer]

I've been making bows maybe nine years now.  Started with compounds before that, bought a Martin recurve and before it even arrived I found out about making bows and got going.

I remember my first archery forum, Field and Stream.  I was so worried about anonymity, I thought the animal rights nuts would be stalking me so I wouldn't register.  Then for awhile I thought G. Fred Asbell was one of the people on the site, but it was some other guy with the same initials.  Boy was I stupid then.

[Marc St Louis]

I started making bows when I got out of high school in the early 1970's.  The bows I was making were nothing to write home about so I bought a FG recurve for hunting.  When I got the bow I stopped making my own but I still made my own arrows.  Then about 15 years ago my recurve got toasted in a house fire so I started building my own again.  Didn't have a clue there were people out there doing the same as I.  Then a few years later I found the PA message board.  The information I gleaned from here helped me improve my bows considerably

Forgot to answer the question.  Actually I don't remember that much about when I first started making my own bows as it was about 35 years ago

[Adam Keiper]

I remember switching to traditional archery and pouring through every thread daily on the big trad site at the time.  I remember seeing some posts on homemade "selfbows", but dismissed them intially as being silly hillbillly toys for gray bearded mountain men types in buckskin clothes.  Further reading, however, showed they were the geniune thing, and required something of a degree of thought, effort, and skill to be made functional.  My curiosity was piqued, even if still skeptical.  I bought TBB Vol 1 and Hunting the Osage Bow, not far after.  Rusty Craine, Paul Haige, Darren Tyrell, Mickey Lots, Jim Fetrow, John Scifres, Bill McNeal, and a host of others were inspirational at the time.  (Ha!  Little did they know!)  I broke my first 3 board bow attempts in short order, before trading a pile of arrows to some guy for a decent osage stave.  I turned that into a good shooter that I've taken game with and still use.  Thank goodness, for if I had broken another couple of board bows, I'm certain my taste in wooden bows would have soured and I'd still be shooting fiberglass.  (I frankly marvel at the guys who say they broke a dozen bows before they got a shooter.  They have more persistance than me.)  Wooden bows, hands down, now occupy my biggest "recreational" time and passion. 

[D. Tiller]

I have never busted a bow I was building. Maybe that I'm using sandpaper to reduce the bows demensions? 

[Pappy]

Beware Tiller,your time will come,ant nothing like it.
   Pappy

[Badger]

     I have seen many bows brake that were perfectly tillered bows. Tim Baker had a perfect yew stave he had saved for years until he was realy in the mood, he took his time and did a flawless job tillering it out. maybe a dozen full draws then kablamo. You just never know for sure. Steve