Making an Osage War Bow, TWICE!

[Music] hey guys welcome back there to craftsmanship my name is Dustin and today in the shop we are making a very special video now we've been making YouTube videos for over five years now we have nearly 150 000 subscribers and over 13 million views on our Channel which is just crazy and we cannot thank you guys enough so for today's video which is our 100th video on YouTube we're going to be making a 100 pound War bow that was gonna be made out of Osage orange and I've made a bunch of bows out of Osage and Hickory but I've never made anything close to 100 pounds so I'm really excited to try to see how it goes and make sure it doesn't explode on me but it should be fun I'm gonna take you through the whole process and show you how I do it let's go ahead and get started here in front of me I have three pieces of wood these are all Osage the one that's closest to me is what The Stave would have looked like when I split it out from the tree directly before doing anything to it I painted the ends to keep it from checking and splitting while it's drying now these are both all three of these are pretty old this one in the middle I prepped to make a bow out of it about six years ago so it's been drying and aging is just perfect for making a bow out of now over here I have this so I can show you what it looks like we have bark on the outside and then the light colored wood is the sapwood and then the dark colored wood is the Heartwood and that's what you want to use for an Osage bow you want to use just the hardwood so I've cut away the bark cut away the sapwood and I've gone down a couple rings and you can see the Rings here a couple rings down into the Heartwood and then I've gone all the way and cut the whole back of this so it's just one growth ring that's called chasing a growth ring and that gives you all the strength on the back of your bow and that's the part that's facing away from you when you draw it now I'm not going to go into that whole process today because I already have this Bow State ready to go but if you want to see that I do have a whole other video on making an Osage bow and I do go through that whole process taking the bark off taking the sapwood off and going all the way down to the Heartwood and chasing a single growth ring and what that feels like so check that out if you want once you have your growth rings chased on your bow and you're ready to rough out all your Dimensions you want to kind of find that Center Line first knowing exactly where the line of your bow is now Osage can tend to be really wavy in its grain so sometimes you want to follow that grain but it's not completely imperative that you do that you can still get a really strong bow without chasing that without having that kind of sneaky grain now this one's nice and straight grain so we don't have to worry about it but I do want to find my Center Line and from that measurement then I'll be able to find my Center on my handle and my measurements for my handle all the way out so we're going to do that now [Music] foreign [Music] two and a half inches below for my handle and then an inch and a half above which will give me a four inch handle and then that way my hand is here and the bow the arrow will shoot just above the very center which should be good for you know getting the same type of draw weight from the bottom and top limb foreign [Music] limbs are going to taper from one and three quarters inches of the halfway mark down to 5 8. so I'm just putting my Center Line mark on 5 16 and then make new mark one zero and a mark on 5 8. [Music] I'll do all those same measurements the same widths on the bottom of the bow although the top limb is an inch longer all the widths are going to be the same on the bottom line [Music] thank you [Music] I have the general shape of this cut on the bandsaw I'm going to go back with the draw knife and clean up all those edges and bring them right down to the pencil lines [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I'm going to do the depth of my bow so that's the thickness of the limbs in the handle my handle is going to be about one and three quarters inch deep and then in the Fades they're going to fade down those two inches out to about an inch on either side right near the Fades and it's going to go about mid Limb and then it's going to fade down to three quarters of an inch now that's also still really high it's probably going to be way higher than I need for my draw weight but I just want to make sure at this point I don't cut off too much because I want to go below that again I got to make sure I keep that draw weight nice and high all right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm getting the vice set up now because I've already roughed everything out with the draw horse and draw knife and the bandsaw and so now we're going to do some of the finer work the finer final roughing in with the farrier's rasp a half round and a couple different half rounds and then my Shinto rasp as well [Music] foreign [Laughter] [Music] I can start to see a little bit of bending and floor tillering still really heavy obviously but I can start to at least see where it's bending this is bending out of the tip a little bit here just a little bit in here but that's where it's the thinnest there's a thin spot here and out of the end it's really thick in the middle same thing with this limb it looks like it's about the same I'm getting some Bend yep out at the tip and in close to the fade so what I probably do at this point is just remark this maybe go down to 7 8 of an inch now Mark it work it down to that just keep working down until I can get like a good four tiller where I can see that it's bending about even and then I'll make a tailoring string and we'll put it up on the towing tree and go from there thank you now at this point I'm really starting the tillering process I'm doing it mostly on the draw horse and then on the bench vice as well but marking off parallel lines against my back of my bow just working down a little bit at a time and taking that material off with the draw knife and with rasps to get the bow to a point where I can start to tiller it on the floor just to see those limbs bending and that'll get it ready and in preparation for bending the limbs straightening them out some and then getting it up on the tillering tree laughs [Music] these are both starting to have some nice Bend to them in the floor tilling process so I can start to see that they want to bend pretty even so I'm happy with that I want to get up on the tillering tree but before I do that I want to get an even back set to this now this bottom limb whoa this bottom limb has some nice back set to it already and it comes up nice and even all the way to the end but the other limb it kind of starts out from the handle coming up but then it bends back down so I actually want to correct that and bring that limb tip up so they both have the same back set so I'm going to get into the Vise get some heat on it and get some weight on the end try to bring that tip up some hmm I'm going to start with a four and a half pound Tasmanian ax as our counterweight this is from Daniel Donnelly [Applause] foreign let me take the weight off and look at it yeah that's pretty nice because I used to definitely have a Bend toward the belly and that looks like it's completely gone it doesn't look like it has as much backside as the other limb but I'm not too worried about that I just wanted to really really get both of those limbs carving toward the back of the bow that looks really nice so we'll go ahead and let this one cool completely now while it's like this and then get up on the tilling tree [Music] I'm running the edges of the back of the bow as well I'm not scraping the back so just doing the edges because this will keep any fibers or splinters from starting or popping when you're actually putting it up on your tailoring tray and starting to bend it I picked this up recently this is called the incredible blade which is a 360 cutting blade so this will work on all sorts of different materials and I think that's probably going to work perfectly for nox but we'll give it a try foreign [Laughter] my tillering tree this one we actually made from The Last Bow making video foreign video for that one specifically [Music] [Music] 55 pounds right there and it's just straightening out the limbs foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] 98 24 inches [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] Timber hitch this is a good temporary or permanent Loop for one end of your your bow string if you want it but you just wrap the string around and then you're going to twist it back around the part that it came from so I'm bringing it around I'm going to go back over and twist it around that string that came over let's do this three times around and that'll be a really good Loop that can tighten down on my knock [Music] there we go [Music] all right so you can see this is kind of the top of my thumb is going to be approximate brace height this is only about four inches right now but here we can start to see what's happening it looks pretty even [Music] [Music] all right so my tap top limb is definitely bending more so I have to take more material off of the bottom limb overall but there we're at 77 pounds at 24. 85 pounds at 26. I'm gonna go there's 90 that's 90 at 24. or 80 85. all right I'm happy with that keep on working that top one is definitely working a lot more so I got to take Material off of the bottom limb first take some off of this I'll get it back up here and we'll keep going back and forth [Music] foreign about 100 pounds of 28 right now [Music] I'm looking pretty good [Music] what the uh Breakside [Laughter] [Music] I'm still bending more and just take some off the bottom 28 inches oh man foreign well that's why you don't do 100 pound Osage bow 28. that was that was the top limb hey damn it looks like it broke right at a pin knot well I guess back to the drawing board fortunately I do have more of sage staves so I'll work one back down to this point close to it and I'll kind of get it chased and then down to here so that way I have a bow that's close to this and really I'm gonna get it down here so we can work and I do definitely think that the Osage is fine it would have held up this definitely snapped right at these two pin knots um so I think maybe next time on the next bow that I'll do will be putting a a rawhide backing on it just to prevent that from happening straight off the bat um I think that's that's going to be the plan all right guys well it's a new day fortunately I had some extra saves so I pulled one out I removed the bark in the sap wood I chased the growth ring I did some rough tillering and then I spent some time heat bending and shaping those limbs because they were a little wonky and I did a little bit finer tillering and now I'm ready to move on sir keep it moving scum okay I'm ready to move on but before I do that I really want to back the bow and I want to protect that back because that's where it failed last time so I bought some Rawhide and I want to show you guys the process of doing a rawhide backing well here's our new Stave as you can see it has some really nice back set that was natural back set in the limb which I'm really happy about it has some knots which is a little bit more problematic but that's okay that's all something we can deal with obviously you can see there's been a lot of work done on this bow so far but nothing really that I didn't show with the first bow foreign First Step that I'm doing now is I'm scoring the surface and I'm using the hacksaw blade just to add kind of a rough texture and give some lines to that surface and that's really going to give some extra surface area and grip for that Rawhide to bind to that really well now if it all goes wrong you can blame clay Hayes because I'm following his tutorial but really honestly he does really awesome work I've had him on the podcast he's a great bow maker and he has really awesome resource on his YouTube channel for all about making stuff so you're interested you want to do some more stuff in boom making go check him out this is the Rawhide and I've actually been soaking this in warm water for about the last two or three hours at this point I'm just going to wring it out to try to get all the excess water out of it because once we glue it down we don't want a ton of water I want to stretch a little bit so this comes kind of pre-ready but a lot of times you might get different areas that stretch different directions so you can actually see here it's pretty tight but in the middle it stretches just the way that the skin grows so I'm going to stretch it out so it already has that pre-stretch in it because otherwise it would want to stretch as I'm gluing it down so I'm going to kind of avoid that type on three is a waterproof wood glue and it works perfect for a lot of different bow making applications so I'm going to put this on nice and thick along the top not too much glue but a good layer and then I'll do one side and then I'll do my other side afterward overlapping the two pieces of Rawhide about an inch or so in the middle I'm going to use a fabric to wrap it now this is just an old t-shirt that I cut into a long strip and you could use something like an Ace bandage there's a bunch of different ways to do this clay Haze uses a pant leg that he puts over it and then he puts some weight in it which I think is really cool but this is what I have so I just uh I'm wrapping this around nice and neatly and I'm just being careful that on the front of the wrap as I'm pulling it over that I'm not really pulling and adjusting Rawhide which is down now you want to make sure that as I pull it up and over that I'm not grabbing a piece of that Rawhide and flipping it up backwards so I'm just pushing it down putting some weight on it and just keep on wrapping all the way to the end seemed like it worked pretty well I'm gonna go ahead and let this dry overnight and then we'll see you guys tomorrow so the next day I let this sit upstairs in my house overnight because a little bit damp down here in the basement so I wanted to really dry so now we have it ready to go let's unwrap it and see what it looks like [Music] thank you [Music] it's really nice this is really hard I feel like this is going to be a really nice secure back really happy with this everything seems like it's held down really well so my next step now is to put it back in the Vise and take a rasp and work down the edges to take off any extra material that's hanging over and make sure that back of the bow is in line right to the edge with the Rawhide all the way up and down both the limbs foreign [Music] both sides glued I'm going to let this dry completely then I'll sand it smooth get that Rawhide nice and clean and we're going to jump right back into one more time lapse I'm going to tiller it down and bring us right back to where we left off where the other bow broke foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign ly happy with those limbs they're not perfect they're not bending perfectly even but they are each limb is bending really well there's no hinges that I can see so that's looking really good um right now I'm pulling it about we're like 50 or 65 or so down to about 22 inches so it's definitely really high we'll pull it the whole way but you know for what I have and for my goal of 100 pounds I don't want to go too much further I don't want to tiller too much further because I'm just going to lose draw weight maybe that's something I do in the future but for now this is the warbow and it's looking really good all right let's see so there's 24 72 inches 72 pounds at 24. 26 81 26 again 81. 27 was 86. 28 89 let's see 91 problem at this point is that I feel like I'm hitting that pulley at the bottom so it might be as far as I can go with this [Music] 89 1 so I made it to about 28 and a half inches at 91. that's putting us approximately two and a half or so pounds per inch up to this 30 that puts me at about 96 97 my draw length is between 30 and 31. so that's putting us right about that 98 99 100 pound draw now at this point you can hear my breath um just a little nervous don't want to push it too much but I'm happy with that 28 and a half inches was 91 pounds that means it's pushing that 9789 100 pounds at 30 31 which is exactly what I want maybe a pound or two less but that's our 100 pound doorbell right there now that we've finished tillering go ahead and take it down and I'll shape the limb tips on the top and bottom finish them up nice and I'll sand it all and we'll finish oiling it [Music] thank you [Music] foreign work on the handle a little bit more and also the Fades just a little more clean these up get a nice rounded Edge on both Fades and then also just work the handle to make sure it feels really nice and I have a really good secure grip on this 100-pound draw bow [Music] foreign [Music] the 80 grit and I'm going to go to about 120 and then I'll finish up with 220. [Music] oh it's so nice so smooth handle feels really good [Music] I'm using tongue oil to finish this bow and this is what I was taught by my bow making teacher Kirk Dreyer it's what I've used on all of my bows and it seems to work really well with multiple coats it builds up a layer that really is a protective layer for the wood I've never done this on a rawhide back bow before so I'm not exactly sure if that's going to work the same way but from what I've read you can use different oils over top of Rawhide and then you can finish it with a paste wax or something like that later if you want to waterproof it further thank you man this is nice looks so pretty I'm really happy with this I'm gonna do a few more coats of tongue Wellness to really protect it well and we'll take it out and shoot it for the first time at the AOC archery tournament foreign [Music] [Music] guys well this is it we're ready we're gonna test out the war bow we're gonna do some distance shots first and then we're going to do a full send and see how far we can set an arrow laughs [Music] oh that felt really good really smooth not a lot of spring back on the bow that was really nice and really powerful phew [Music] we have all of our soldiers out here now at different distances so I'm going to shoot each one test the bow out for how far I can shoot oh oh oh he was short here we go one more oh had to have been like right above or below his shield I couldn't tell maybe right below it oh left oh here we go I shot a couple distance now we're gonna send all the way out full send I have a feeling we're gonna shoot longer than the king but I don't know this is a test here we go I'm watching I'm watching it all right so yep yeah so it's not as far as the king okay and do another one see if I can get a little further like that all right pretty good but still about the same that one's a little bit farther to the left I can see it all right so that looks like it's a little bit further than that first but they're all pretty much clustered right there yeah I mean they were like at that distance that was not too bad like left or right but like [Music] not bad pretty impressive that's a long way all right I'll just shoot him back instead of carrying them that's pretty good for distance between my first Arrow my last Arrow was probably a good 30 or 40 yards so I definitely with more practice and with this bow just getting used to it can really send these pretty good foreign got a feel of it now we're gonna invite all our friends to shoot with us and this is the old archery tournament art of craftsmanship version um these are all people who have helped us over the years and put a lot into our Channel we want to give back a little bit so we're going to have some money bags so they're going to shoot at some different targets to different soldiers and they'll be able to have a chance to win some money thank you I'm gonna hit [Music] him let's see probably another like ten dollars or so 10 total price there we go I got him now a dollar two bucks but a golden one yeah all right I'm gonna go for the king headshot thank you [Music] dialed in a little bit oh nah same spot [Music] ah [Music] foreign [Music] I hear some jingling hmm one two three four and five dollars [Music] ah I just miss left foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] nice [Music] Ready Aim loose oh all right nice good job that was sweet [Music] so who's that guy so guy let's go so Corrine you get this one the next closest to that one will be probably dad this one oh I didn't even see that one so you're the next closest to that one so Tom is the closest um this is me so I'm closest to that guy uh this one is guy so you guy you get this one here I got the ax guy for uh 30 bucks nice all right [Music] [Music] the last thing we're gonna do is we're gonna shoot at the king king is twice the distance that we just shot so we're gonna do nice a nice high volley the King has five bags of money on him so the five closest people will get to each have a bag now if someone hits it or if more than one person hits it then those people get to either have all the money or they divide it up between them aim loose oh mine's left oh my God or unless someone hit the uh a short guy Ready Aim loose slide right on right on right on oh that was close it's ready aim loose oh man hit him hit him oh that was so close is uh all right that's a me I told you my last one was right in line there's Sean all right so who's are those that's guy who's that that's Drew Nicole so don't pull him yet so Nicole's won [Music] Drew's two Sean's three guys four and so wait who's who's the last person you can choose whichever you want what's that yeah event [Music] so if no one got like tens or five dollar bills in it that means all the ones that were on here were the fives from the first long shot because they all had five dollars it was the second short shot where there was a big span like Drew got two bucks someone got 20. all right everybody well that was a blast thank you all so much for watching this has been awesome 100 videos on YouTube 100 pound drawbo this thing works like a charm I'm super happy with it it's really smooth and not a lot of spring back it's just a great feel for the bow so really this has been fun but really what we've done so far on YouTube is about you guys and 100 videos on YouTube it's really thanks to all of everyone who has subscribed and liked and commented commented and watched over the years and to all of our friends that have helped us over the years that's really what we're here for giving back to the community so thank you all so much thank you all for watching and we will see you in the next video foreign [Music]

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 20,394

Keywords: War bow, Bowmaking, Bow making, Long bow, Broken bow, Failed bow, Rawhide backing, Bow backing, Attaching rawhide, Raw hide, longbow, making a long bow, making a selfbow, making a longbow, hickory, osage bow, bois d arc, bowyer, how to tiller a bow, chassing a growth ring, flatbow, tillering tree, making a tillering tree, tillering jig, bow making tiller tree, american flatbow, native american flatbow, how to make a bow, how to make a flatbow, bow and arrow, self bow

Id: fNHBUq7rAgE

Length: 45min 53sec (2753 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2022