Making an American Flatbow: Hickory

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the art craftsmanship my name is dustin and today in the shop we're going to be making a native american style hickory flat bow i'm super excited about this it's been a while since i made a bow out of hickory i usually use osage and with osage it's a lot harder to get everything ready and prepped to be able to start making a bow the nice thing about hickory is that's a really good beginner bow because all you have to do is remove the bark from the outside of the tree let it dry out and you've got your back of your bow ready to go you just make your marks and your measurements you cut away the belly and do your tillering and you've got a bow made really easily there now we use these hickory staves when we first started and i took this class with ranger kirk and the baltimore county parks and rec along with my brothers and some friends back in 2013 and learned the process of making hickory bows now the other cool thing is that i've kept in contact with ranger kirk over the years and reached out to him and he generously along with baltimore county parks and rec donated these two hickory staves to the channel so we could show you guys how to do this and we'd love for you to follow along try it it's really easy and it's something that you could definitely do in your own and end up with a really cool bow that would work really well the other cool thing is that i still have the original literature and documentation from the class this is the folder that he gave to us when we took the class and i have his notes in here his other literature on bow making as well as my notes so we'll dive into this we'll show you everything kind of show you how we're going to lay this out to cut and get ready and should be fun let's get started well the two staves we have here both have a little bit of curve to them this one's a little bit more curvy so it's fairly simple we're going to go ahead and use this one now because it's a better stave we'll use the other one later and maybe do some heat bending on that but for now this one's pretty nice we'll just have to remove a little bit of material off of both sides but it's a fairly straight line down the limb that we'll be able to use so i'm going to take a look at the dimensions i'll show you what we have there and then we'll add our lines and markings on that to be able to start cutting i'm going to walk you through the plans of the bow at least on the front of the bow now so the actual main profile of the entire bow and i'll take a really nice clean image of this picture and put it up on our instagram page at the art craftsmanship so if you want to have that for your own reference you can see it there so at the top of the bow we have about a half inch wide limb and about an inch tall pin knock we're going to move down depending on the length of your bow but you're going to move down to about 13 inches or so above the fade out on your handle and at that point we want to be about an inch and a half to two inches wide and we're going to move down 13 inches to the top of your fade out and here you want to be two inches wide and then the fade out's going to take about two inches down until we hit our handle then the handle is about an inch wide going to move down four inches and then we'll fade back out to a two inch wide limb for the bottom limb and then from there we're going to move down about 13 inches or so stay at about two inches to two and a half inches and then from that point you're going to move all the way down to the bottom of the limb and we're going to taper back to a half inch and here you see we have a standard knocking point and that'll be about three quarters an inch or so up from the bottom i have pretty clean ends on both ends not a tons of ton of checking or cracking so i'm just going to go ahead and measure straight down from end to end for my overall length which is 72 and a half inches so six feet so i'm going to come to three feet and maybe make a mark at a three and an eighth because i'll come in just a little bit have give me give myself some room so three and eight there and we'll check it another mark at three and an eighth and split the difference so there's our center and now we can start making our handle out from this point i'm looking at both sides of this limb to see what i want to do for top and bottom now there's a few things i'm taking into account one is the curve of this bow now when you're holding your bow you want your string if at all because i'm not going to be cutting an arrow rest into this bow you want your string to favor your hand side because then you're not asking your arrow to curve so much around the bow i think with the way this tapers this long slow curve on this end i think this is going to be better for the top limb because it has that curve and it should bring the string a little bit to my side on here the bottom also curves the opposite way which would work as well but i think because this is a little bit straighter and longer it'll work a little better i'm going to mark out one inch above that center line and that's my top limb and three inches below the center line for my bottom limb and that's my four inch handle overall now because of this is kind of funky and it's not perfectly flat i can't really run a chalk line down the middle to get a perfectly centered line and there's going to be some natural curve to it anyway so i'm kind of figuring out where i want my handle to be and just working my way back and trying to mark off my center line but i want it to be i'm trying to kind of create a straight line up and down the bow so i'm just doing this by eye we'll come back in and put all these together afterward and then we have to need to make some corrections to it we can do that but i'm just kind of looking down the bow lining up my marks at this point to try to get a relative straight line up and down the bow so make sure you take your time and work on this center line it's good to try to establish a nice and even center line as close to perfectly straight as you can get it there's going to be some curve to it but try to get a center line that works up and down the bow the straighter you can get it the better you also want to take into account some of the curvature of the actual limbs that looks that's looking pretty good [Music] uh [Music] at the top of the handle we'll make a mark on one and zero so we have a one inch come down to the center and i'm going to add an extra eighth or sixteenth of an inch on either side so i can get a full eighth of an inch wider just a little bit to give me some palm swell and then down the bottom of the handle we'll go back to one inch come back behind and connect those lines going to measure two inches above and below the handle and then i'll measure out an inch on either side of the center line on both sides to have that taper from the handle out to the widest part of my limb at two inches [Music] the next mark you're going to make is 13 inches above and below your two inch fade out and that's your mid limb mark [Music] now if your bow stave is a little bit wonky like mine is you're going to make a couple more marks between your handle and your mid limb to be able to connect them together again my full limb is 72 and a half inches i'm gonna go for six feet 72 inches so i'll take a quarter inch off on either end now for a standard long bow it's going to be around your height or around six feet or so you can kind of go plus or minus two to four inches on either side so you could be anywhere from 67 to 68 inches all the way up to 74 to 76 inches at the end of each of our limbs we're going to make a mark for a half inch so a quarter inch on either side of your center line and then we're going to connect those marks in a straight line to our two inch wide marks at our mid limb [Music] so all right this is looking great i'm excited it's starting to actually look like a bow in my drawing it's been a while since i made a hickory bow so this is really cool at this one i'm going to use my band saw to cut off the majority of the extra material i'm just going to cut fat on my line to make sure i have plenty but if you don't have a band saw you could use at this point you could use a hatchet or a draw knife to kind of cut down and just get to those basic lines [Music] so all right well it doesn't matter how much tuning you do on your bandsaw if the blade is dull like this one it's not going to cut straight especially when i'm trying to cut through almost two inches of hickory so i'm going to put away this i did say that we can use hand tools to remove that material so let me show you how to do that put away a band saw and get out the schnitzel punk all right i'll be using the draw knife to remove this material and this is what the draw horse is designed for specifically because with this you're going to be pulling at the same time you're pulling you're pushing with your feet which will clamp the top down i picked this draw knife up on ebay for i got it in conjunction with a spokeshave and they were like 25 bucks for both of them together so pretty expensive i have a few more as well that i use but it's just a perfect perfectly designed tool for bow making some hard stuff hickory is great because it has a ton of strength it's great for uh for bending but it's also tough so remove as much as you can with an aggressive knife this is a sharp knife and it's still going to take a while but that's just part of the part of the charm of bow making [Music] so [Music] okay there are two different ways that i use this draw knife one is bevel down which means that the actual bevel that you can see on the edge is facing down as i'm pulling it now what that's doing is actually bringing the the angle of the bevel back up toward me which means it wants to bring the blade back up out of the wood so that's a little bit less aggressive and more finesse work if i want to be a little more aggressive i'll flip it so the bevel is facing up which means the angle is pushing down and that'll actually want to draw the blade down into the wood which will be a more aggressive draw so i'm pretty close to finished uh the profile on both sides of this on both sides of the limbs getting it down to my drawings that we put on there and since we showed the bandsaw and showed the draw knife i figured i'd show you one more trick um one more hand tool that you can use to do a lot of this material removal so i'll pull out my stump and show you how to do it with a hatchet all right which x to use i have a bunch of hatchets here i have my bushcraft modification hatchet i have a circular saw hatchet but i think i'm going to use the little norlin this one's pretty sharp and has good ergonomics [Music] so [Music] just made it all right so using a hatch you pretty much want to work straight down it's good to have a stump because then you can cut all the way down to the end of your limb uh just watch your grain you don't want to hit a piece of grain that wants to go in toward your limb because then if you hit too far it might crack in and kind of split all the way in so watch your grain you might have to flip your bow up and down a little bit you might have to work on the ground once you're up if you're working up in your handle material area but otherwise you know have a sharp hatchet work straight up and down as much as possible and just remove material slowly you want to be mindful about your grain around your handle specifically because as you move in you'll see if you tear out it'll go into your upper lower limb so work about halfway through and then we're going to flip it over and we'll work on the other side [Music] i'm working right now to get everything down to about an inch thickness on my top and my bottom limb once i'm done that then i'll be able to come back and clean up my size a little bit so i can mark off i'm only going to about an inch because i don't want to go too closely up to my actual final dimension which is going to be about 3 8 of an inch or so once we get down we'll mark those sides off and we'll come back with a little bit more hatchet work to kind of get down to that and then we'll go into using our farrier's rest to get it down to our final dimensions [Music] got two main big rasps that i like to use this is my farrier's rasp this is nice because it's aggressive one side and then kind of a medium aggressive on the other side i also have a real aggressive half round rasp from nicholson which i really like to use so i'll kind of use a combination of both [Music] oh i forgot i have a shinto rasp sent to us as a gift from my uncle jack thank you uncle jack give that a try oh oh that feels nice oh that's super nice oh yeah that's where it's at right there oh it's got a smooth side too oh yeah that's nice that's so cool [Music] so [Music] man that's nice that makes a nice finish now that i have both sides finished up and cleaned up now i can draw the dimensions for the thickness of the bow all the way down both sides i'll start at the top of my limb and mark off where the end of the limb is and i start marking at a half inch deep every two to three inches and i'll slowly work my way down the limb all the way until i get to the bottom of the top limb where the fade out starts then i mark my fade out the top of my handle and the bottom of my handle and my bottom limb fade out and each of those marks on the handle i'll mark an inch and a half deep for my handle depth and i continue at a half inch continuing working all the way down the bottom limb every two to three inches making a mark until i get to the very end then i'll come back behind and i will connect all those lines all the way up and down the limb and then connect the lines around the handle after i connected all those lines i'll flip the bow over and make all my marks and connect them all together on the other side of the bow okay now that i have all the measurements marked off on the side of my bow i'm going to come back and clean up a lot of that material now you can use a draw knife or a rasp or even a band saw if you're able to do that at this time just be careful you don't want to take off too much you just want to go to your line i'm going to use my hatchet to remove a lot of material now just because it's a lot and i can control this fairly well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well i am as far as i feel comfortable going i'm actually starting to get a little bit of bend and four tiller i don't want to go too much further than that because i also don't feel confident in actually using my hatchet to go down and that thing wears you out your arm you got to be careful you don't want to stick yourself in the leg if you're getting fatigued but now i'm ready to move over i'll clamp this in the vise and you'll use the rasp to take some of this material off if you follow along on instagram then you would have seen i made a new little golf ball handle for my farrier's raspberry i'm excited to try that out [Music] one [Music] hello [Music] i've worked on this bow for about two hours or so now and i've gotten down pretty close to my final thickness of the half inch marks that i made with my pencil now i'm going to flip this over and i'll work on the width of the limbs and get those down to those final dimensions i'll clean up the handle a little bit more and we'll be able to flip it back over and start working on the tillering [Music] i [Music] now this handle uh when when the stave was cut there were some kind of saw marks into the handle area and it's fine it doesn't matter because the handle is not going to bend at all i'm still going to have about an inch and a quarter or so of handle depth here but i'm going to remove around this and shape the handle a little bit kind of get a little bit closer to the fit of my hand before we move on to tailoring [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] my [Music] i don't want to go too much further than that i feel like that's just a bad home and you try to shape your handle too early on and then your bow explodes so but i wanted to remove the big chunks the big cuts out of it i got rid of those i got it to a you know feeling that feels pretty nice something that i'll actually be able to hold on to and grip a little bit as i'm doing some floor tillering now we're ready to move on to tailoring the belly of the bow [Music] i'm slowly going to remove material from the belly of the bow on both sides evenly until i get it to a point where i can kind of see on my floor tillering that it's bending relatively well and then i'll be able to put up on my tillering train look at it for real and figure out which spots i need to remove now the nice thing about hickory and the reason why i'm doing a flat though is because hickory is really good with tension it's not particularly good with compression so when you're drawing a bow the part that's bending the part that's facing away from you the back of the bow is under tension it's being stretched the part that's facing towards you as you're drawing it is bending and it's under compression so it's being pushed together now tension has to spring back and compression has to be able to relax hickory is particularly good for tension which is why a wide limbo works well you want to kind of distribute that tension across a wide flat surface and you want to make sure it's wide rather than an osage bow or you where you have tension and compression so you can have a narrower bow where the belly of the bow is going to compress and the back of the bow is under tension i've worked maybe two or three passes on both sides the top and the bottom limb evenly just to remove even material and so i'll now check with floor tailoring floor ceiling is just putting some pressure on the bone bending it a little bit on the floor now i'll hold the handle of the bow and have a hand at the top limb and just push in the middle just to see what's bending it's kind of hard to see specifically as you're looking down on it but you can get a feeling of the entire flex of the bow and just check both make sure they're bending a little bit make sure you get some some movement here i can see i have a pre-bend down here i'm getting most of my bend right now in the middle of the limb but it's feeling good i'm going to do a few more passes in the vice before i move into the tailoring tree now that i have the belly of the bow kind of to the point where i want it i'm ready to move on and maybe start moving up in the tillering tree so there's a few things i need to do first and first thing i want to do is actually remove some of the sharp edges on the back of the bow on the sides i don't want to raise the grain i'm going to use a cabinet scraper which is just a flat piece of metal with a bur on the edge this works really nice to remove material and i'll use this a lot more throughout the entire process you can also use sandpaper or even a rasp but you want to get rid of those corners and those edges because you don't want to invite actual grain to lift up as you're putting tension and bending that bow that i finished rounding over both the top and bottom limbs i need to put in knocking points and i want to be able to use this on the tillering tree so i need something to hold on to each limb now on the directions that you've seen i have a pin knock at the top and i'm not going to do a pin knock i have bows that have pin knocks and they work fine but i like the look of a self knock better and a self knock is just a knocking point that goes directly to the wood there's no tip overlay or anything in there to protect it on the backside now my top knock is going to be a little bit further down so i have a little bit more room above it and that room isn't actually doing anything for the bow it's just there but i like to add a little bit of decoration there to help me define between the top and bottom nock the bottom knock will be closer to the bottom and it'll just be rounded over because that's something that'll normally be on the ground for my top knock i'm going to come down about three quarters of an inch i'll just measure down and make a mark and i'll just bring that mark all the way across the bow now again this is the back of the bone with a self-knock you need to be really careful that you don't violate this growth ring completely so we're going to work just on the sides now from the sides of the bow i want to make about a 45 degree angle i'm just going to eye this but we'll go from where our lines came and we'll make a 45 degree line here now make sure that your 45 degree angle is going toward the belly of the bow and toward the handle you don't want to go the opposite way that complete completely ruin your knocking points you have to cut them off and start down lower we'll flip the limb over and do the same for the other side i'll be using a chainsaw file to file in my knocks this particular chainsaw file is about 3 16th of an inch thick and i'll go almost the entire depth on both sides of the tip before i get too deep on this one side i'm going to flip it over and work on the other side to make sure i can make any adjustments that i need to to make sure that both sides are symmetrical when i'm making my knocks on the belly side i like to kind of round over the grooves because the the bow string is going to sit in those grooves and lay along the belly so i kind of groove that a little bit and i'm going to do the same thing for the back of the bow just a little bit i want to kind of square these corners up because this corner here is really sharp and that's where there's going to be a lot of pressure on the bow string there so i'm just kind of squaring them up just a little bit just round them over smooth them out so it's not such a sharp edge right there on the bowstring all right these are looking pretty clean now pretty even i'll probably tune them up a little bit more later on but for now this is good i'll move down to the other end of the bow now this knock at the bottom limb will be the same process but instead of being three quarters of an inch from the end i'm going to mark it at a half an inch from the end we we we we we we we we we we we way way way way way way way way way way way all right we got knocks on both ends of the limbs now so let's go ahead and take out our new tailoring tree put it up there and see how it looks this is my new tillering tree i just made it recently for this bow build specifically and if you want to see this tillering tree being made and figure out how to do it you can check it out on the video we'll put a link in the description below i'm using a tillering string that's extra long and extra strong this is just one that i made specifically for this process but this way i can attach this to it and it'll stay loose on it this is a timber hitch on one side and then a flemish twisted loop on the other end now obviously at this point everything is really high draw weight and it's not a ton of bending but i wanted to see what was working and right now it looks like both of the first kind of quarters of both limbs the top and bottom right outside the handle are bending everything else is staying pretty straight so i'm going to work on taking material off of everything on both sides but focus on the outer two thirds of both rims [Music] [Music] another thing i'm going to do is i want to try to keep my limb orientation the same way every time so i'm going to keep the upper limb to my left and the lower limb to my right one more thing that i'm looking at as well is that my final weight is going to be 50 pounds i don't want to go too much higher than 50 pounds so this scale is designed to actually pull up to 50 pounds and that's right about the top of the scale so i really don't want to put too much more pressure than 50 pounds on this bow at any point because that's my final draw weight so if i'm not drawing it down very far that's because i've already put 50 pounds of pressure on it all right material there remove material there alright we've got a long way to go we'll keep on tailoring [Music] do [Music] so [Music] when i'm tailoring i'm looking specifically for areas that are not bending and so i usually will just mark those with some hash lines and those the areas i'll work on first before i work evenly on the bow [Music] there we go now we're getting somewhere oh that right limb that lower limb looks really nice it's bending really evenly top limbs always get a little funky because it has that pre-bend to it so it'll always be a little funky but maybe i can work on taking some of the bend out of that yeah look at that [Music] now with the draw weight down some i'm ready to string this bow and actually shorten up the bow string to see how it looks actually strung now i don't want to string it at my full brace height now standard brace height is going to be about when you put your hand on your handle with your thumb up it's going to be about the height of your thumb so that for me is about anywhere between six and a half to seven and a half inches i want this one to be about five and a half to six inches just because i don't need it to be a full bracelet yet and with a bow string for a long bow your standard bow length bow string length is it going to be about three inches or so uh shorter than the length of your bow so i'm going to go about two and a half inches because i don't think it needs to be strung all the way to full brace height at this point it should be good all right that's looking pretty good not too too much bend one or the other looks fairly even now this is my top limb which should be bending a little bit more and right now it looks like it's pretty even soft to adjust that but i think as of right now that's looking really nice that's uh i mean it's about a four inch or so brace height but it's just a good way to get a look at the bow strung completely top limb and bottom limb so right now that's starting to feel good pretty nice and my uh my bow string tip to tip is pretty even as well and it as i'm looking down it goes through the handle and it's actually a little closer to the left side which is my my arrow side so it's actually really nice the air is going to go right around the handle really well without having to curve around too much yeah that's 50 50 pounds at 20 inches that's looking good though definitely the top limbs working a little bit more which is good because it's a little longer and now i can really start to see where i need to make some adjustments so i'll tell her some more bring that down but it's looking pretty good it's been a few more days and i've spent a few more hours working on the tillering i've gotten the bow down now to about 55 pounds of 28 inches which is about right for where i want it before i do my finished sanding and all my finishing which should bring that draw weight down just a little bit more i've also shortened the bow string so now when i actually string the bow it's at its correct brace height so i'll go ahead and string it up we'll put it up on the tree and i'll show you how it's bending i really feel like the tips are coming down fairly evenly on both sides to about the same distance it's looking pretty good i know that top limb looks a little wonky but again that's because of that pre-bend i'm pretty happy with that [Music] [Music] now to finish the handle i'm starting with 80 grit i'm using that on all the handle part and in the fades nothing that actually is going to bend at all on the limbs i don't want to use that really rough grit sandpaper on the limbs so after i move through that and use that grit to remove the tool marks then i move up to a 120 follow behind that just to clean up everything else and smooth it out get down to 120 tool marks and hit the edges of my limb as well as a little bit on the belly then i move to 220 and work the entire bow with 220 except for the back this whole process you don't do anything to the back that stays exactly the way it is but smooth everything out with 220 and then we should have a nice smooth surface all the way handle and limbs [Music] it's 25 50 pounds 26 inches yeah that's great that's perfect so it's gonna be right around 54 55 pounds and 28 inches perfect beautiful now it's time to carve our tips [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] that actually works surprisingly well uh using the steel wool to clean up the back of the bow it just got rid of the the pencil lines all the marking and then also all the dirt that was on it surprisingly well so much so that i like it that i'm actually going around and kind of hitting everything with this steel wool now to get a nice polish and buff on it [Music] i've come to the finish line it's time to oil the bow and i will be using 100 pure tongue oil and i'll coat it once let it soak in kind of wipe it down and i'll add a few more coats [Music] when i'm wiping this first layer of oil off i'm doing it because you don't really want that oil to become sticky on the outside of the bow you want to put on a nice thick layer on your first pass because you want it to soak in in the dry wood but then you wipe it off wipe off the excess that way that oil can soak in then we'll put another layer on let that sit for a while as well and then we'll wipe off the excess as well again you always you don't ever really want to leave too much excess oil on your wood for too long because it's just going to sit on the outside and become sticky well it's happened again we've come to the end to oil the bow it's ready to be shot and it's nighttime just like last time when we made the osage bow it was raining out when we finished up so we couldn't shoot it right away but we will come back tomorrow we will string it up and we'll shoot it and we'll bring you guys along with us should be exciting all right well it's a beautiful december day really nice uh chance to get out here and now we can shoot the bow for the very first time and we'll show you how it shoots all right i'm going to warm the ball up a little bit before i shoot it and we talked about this a little bit before but you want to acclimate your bow to the temperature it's colder outside now than it is in my shop so i'm going to warm it up a little bit by stretching it and drawing the bow about halfway 10 or 15 times and then i'll draw it full draw about 10 or 15 times before i shoot it the first time i've also served the middle of this bow string this is my tillering string but i was going to use the shoot today so i served it with some serving string and if you want to see me make a bowstring and serve it specifically for the osage orange bow i did do a video of that we'll put a link in the description below all right we have five bucks on the line right now devin's betting me five dollars that i can't hit the middle of the target on this first shot so it's a little tricky to shoot a bow for the very first time and be on point but this will make it challenging oh well i didn't hit the target i did hit the top of it i gotta find it in the grass we'll see how it goes the second time oh yeah it's fast it feels really nice though still shooting high huh same spot to just down a little bit more a little bit better let's try number four all right it feels really good put five hours now through it feels really nice feels fast i'm excited well definitely shooting left and high could be with my uh where i'm knocking my arrow so there's a lot of different things that take into consideration but i'll make you know adjustments and get it to shoot really nice so you got a little split in the air there [Music] [Music] so [Music] well guys i am really pleased with the way this turned out this bow is shooting really fast i'll have to tune in a little bit to get a shooting as straight as i want to do but at 55 pounds about 28 inches or so it's a really nice draw weight for my size and for what i like to do and if you want to get into bow making i would highly recommend using hickory it's a beautiful wood to start with and it just it makes a really beautiful bow and a really nice strong bow so i'd encourage you to do that there and if you do decide to make a bow and you're following along with our steps we'd love to see it we'd love to give you some feedback so you can always send us an email there to craftsmanship gmail.com you can follow us on instagram and you can dm us or tag us in your post there i'd love to follow along and see what you're doing and kind of comment back on your work and we'd love for you to check out our new podcast the art of craftsmanship podcast on the makery network it's been super fun to be able to have some guests on the podcast talk to other makers and craftsmen and really get into their minds about how they make things a little bit behind the scenes on what they do in their shops you know their choices for materials and what they make and what they do it's just really fun to be able to talk to other makers and then also we go into like all the different videos that we've done um and talk about those as well a little bit more in depth so if you're interested in following that you can find us on the makery network uh so thank you guys so much for watching this has been a fun day a fun couple days in the shop and a fun build we appreciate you all watching and we'll see you in the next video [Music] [Applause] do so [Music] you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 1,283,229

Keywords: longbow, making a long bow, making a selfbow, making a longbow, making a hickory bow, hickory, osage bow, bois d arc, bowyer, how to tiller a bow, chassing a growth ring, flatbow, tillering, tillering tree, making a tillering tree, tillering jig, bow making tiller tree, hickory flat bow, making a flatbow, flat bow, american flatbow, native american flatbow, hickory flatbow, how to make a bow, how to make a flatbow, bow and arrow

Id: t4t9RQCQRM0

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020