My First Bow

Bow making, like a lot of these skills is an art form. The only difference is that when you are done, you can use it to kill a deer! You can’t do that with a painting.

It is a great feeling making something with your hands and watching it take shape. I especially like working with wood and carving through each growth ring and seeing how the grain peels apart. I’ve attempted a few bows but I’ve never made one all the way through so this is very exciting for me. I picked out the stave which I thought to be Black Locust. Turns out it is White Ash with a weird orange tint to it. With much help from Barry Keegan I stenciled the outline on the back of the bow and roughed out the shape. The stencil we used is the Sedbury style bow from Peabody, MA. This is a copy of a bow from the 1600s and thought to be one of the few known bow designs that was made with stone tools. I think that is cool. I've finished roughing out the outline and now I'm working on finding a nice growth ring which will make the back of the bow (the "back" of the bow faces away from you while shooting, the side facing towards you is the "belly"). Once the back is finished then I will start thining the belly until it starts bending. More to come...