Fantastic diagrams, they were very helpful!

What an amazing resource for the bow making community! this will help so many people

Wow, so thorough!

@Geoff Lybeck It’s down today but i’m working on getting it fixed asap

Understanding wood , what an adventure. Thanks for what u do !

You’re all too kind, I have a lot to improve! I always enjoy the time I spend talking bows with you all

Yes, this man and Clay Hayes...wealth of info, spectacular teaching methods/ videography.

thanks my friend!

Glad to be back! I have three more that are almost ready to launch and a few more on the chopping block

Start em while they’re young!

I agree!

thanks Jacob! Got plenty of stuff ready to release soon

Thanks again Michael, always appreciate you sharing the videos and everything you do to keep the facebook group running smoothly. I’m very glad tutorial style content is what folks are responding most to since I really enjoy making it

Thank you! Hope this helps

Thanks Erica, glad ya learned something! All species have sapwood and heartwood-the sapwood is the living part of the tree and the heartwood is the dead, resinous, usually darker part. And both have growth rings-one for every year the tree is alive. As you carve through them you’re flying through tree history!

thanks as always my friend. May your arrows fly true

Glad to be back! There’s plenty more coming up soon!

@@DanSantanaBows 😎 👍🏼

Thanks Fiona! Always glad to be a part of this community

For sure! I’ll hook you up with some staves, Ive got some really nice hickory drying lately

Thanks Maciek. How are your bows coming along?

@@DanSantanaBows hi Dan, holmegaard roasted #40 @28, just need some extra time over coals, oil and string , will do next week, then got 2 ash staves to take care of. Flying today to my home country tonight - there in a garage waits 2020 maple trunk to be touched😁. Busy, have to ditch my work soon and get full time on the wood😄. Many thanks

Can’t wait to make more stuff together! Thank you as always for the beautiful music

@@DanSantanaBows coming soon...!

Thanks Dennis!

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions and visit r/bowyer for help

@@DanSantanaBows Thank you very much 😃

Thanks Sam, hope it helps!

Thanks Gem, appreciate it! I’ve been casually learning drawing and calligraphy in my free time so I’m ready when it’s time to put a book together

@@DanSantanaBows I have the same two hobbies of bowyery and calligraphy as well, although less advanced than you on both counts. They're both rather complementary, I find. And now I'm excited to see that book!

Thanks again! It’s a never ending thing, but if I had to pick it would be the 70# hickory sapling bow (from the natural stains video.) The hickory static recurve from the tree to bow buildalong is a close second. My favorite go to design now is a simple high margin for error flatbow-gives me the best chance with tricky character staves.

@@DanSantanaBows I've read of a few master bowyers like you or the late Dean Torges turning more towards reliability and durability as time goes on, stemming away from flashy recurves, short lengths and crazy reflex. It's interesting

Glad it was helpful!

I’ve never made a horn bow but one day! Check out stiliyan stefanovs channel for some great composite builds

@@DanSantanaBows I've seen his videos, they are some of the best! But I'd like to see you make some because your such a good teacher.

English longbows made of yew are usually made with a D cross section, nearly parallel width taper for most of the length, and a thickness taper determined by the tiller. In a way this is sort of the opposite of a trapped back because it’s an attempt to maximize the area of the back rather than the belly. Rounding the belly is a pragmatic way to keep the back from breaking by making the belly take set first. It keeps labor quick which makes sense for a wartime tool. Personally I rarely find myself in a situation where a D belly makes sense. Chasing a growth ring rather than violating the back makes for a much more trustworthy back and eliminates the need for the inefficient round belly. The elb is somewhat overhyped. It’s a wise and pragmatic approach for a wartime bowyer, but these days when yew is precious I don’t think it’s the best design for a longbow. Personally I prefer to go with a flatter belly only rounded in the corners.

The wartime aspect certainly makes sense. I can definitely see a fairly large amount of set being acceptable for use in warfare. Efficiency and velocity become far less important when using heavy war arrows with high poundage. I wonder if that's why they went so high in weight? A 100+ pounds does quite a bit from a physics standpoint to offset loss in velocity/efficiency. I'd be curious to see what draw weight it would take from a highly efficient selfbow to throw an equal weight arrow at the same velocity as a heavy but (relatively) inefficient ELB? Personally I'm interested in doing an ELB style just because I haven't made one yet (and they're one of the easier historically interesting designs). Want to play with all of them eventually. Though, as you said, Yew is precious. So I'll likely continue to play with ELB designs with the hickory, ERC, and White oak plentiful in my woods. Plenty small enough in diameter that I should be able to just peel the bark and start tapering for an ELB design. Thanks for taking the time to respond!

@@BakaEngel The bowyers bibles go into a lot of detail about the diminishing returns of high draw weights. While you do stop gaining as much speed as the weight skyrockets, you still get a lot more kinetic energy because you can handle much heavier arrows. High weights aren’t very valuable to target archers and beyond about 80# they tend not to be best for flight archery. But if you need to pierce a knight though thick armor hundreds of yards away then a massive draw weight really helps

Drywal tape won’t ruin a good bow but it also won’t save a bad one. Compared to other cheap and available backings I really don’t think it’s worth it. There’s a good reason that fiberglass backed wood bellied bows did not last long in commercial archery history. fiberglass tape glued together is much worse than a real strip of bow making fiberglass, and even that isn’t a great idea unless you’re making a proper fiberglass bow and also put it on the belly

Thanks again Console. Nobody kept any secrets from me so it’s only fair

Wow, thank you Art!

My pleasure!

Glad to hear! Visit us on r/bowyer if you ever need a tiller check or some advise

Thanks my friend! That one’s called a cooper’s drawknife, for making hollow barrel staves. They pop up on ebay once in a while but you’re welcome to try this one when you visit

My pleasure!

If you can get rid of the tunneling you should be good. I think a little bit of damage on the belly is not always a big deal but personally if there was a bug tunnel on the back i’d keep chasing rings or pick another stave

It looks more like spots than tunnels. Like if the bug had a small winter hole up to the sap wood. Just enough to see the locations on the sap wood but didn't get through the ring layer. Those damages are only visible on the back. You know what... I'll finish the bow and post back what the results are. At least it will serve as a good learning experience. I still have 5 staves of this tree so i need to find out if this one will be good for other bows.

The bow has been completed with success. Overall I have found the wood to be of extremely good quality. Resistant to compression and flexible. 43lbs at 27.5 draw length. Super happy with the result. Cheers!

Emerald ash borer wasn't a problem 👍

@@martarmis Awesome that’s good to hear, congrats! You should post it on r/bowyer sometime so I can see

on the bow not much other than moisture barrier if it’s a waterproof wood glue, but you may as well use a better finish for this job. On the back of a stave it can slow moisture loss through the back reducing the chance of checking. This is standard practice for freshly cut osage that has had a ring chased while the wood is still green

I don’t have any laburnum around here so it’s very rare for me to get a piece. Check out Simon from stone hill prinitives for some beautiful examples. He calls it golden chain tree on his site. Branch bows can work but they’re tricky because they’re so much more characterful but they can work. It’s much harder finding full length pieces so I usually end up making short bows with branches

Very good! Muito bom.

I will, a lot of people ask for that. For now check out the video on workholding methods, in the section on that vise I take it apart so you can see how it’s made. Let me know if you have any questions. I got the vise screw from woodcraft and everything else can be made from scrap logs leftover from bows or from thick boards

As long as you choose a board with fibers that span end to end across the back without violation then you can use any growth ring orientation

I hear it’s not very good but you can practice with it. Make the bow wider, longer, or lower in draw weight or draw length. Vine maple is excellent stuff

Definitely seal the back if there’s still moisture in the stave. Sometimes I don’t exactly follow my own advice here but I also ruin staves from splitting once in a while. Eventually you’ll pick up an intuition about what’s safe to dry how fast but if you want to be safe sealing the back won’t hurt and will help keep the cracks away

Harvest whenever you want to make a bow. Whitewoods cut in the spring make fine bows too

im not worried about the wood being bad or the sorts, im just trying to gather information on how to preserve natural bark on the back the best for bows. thank you for the input either way.

definitely hide glue

It’s hard to find information about it, but the stats for Turkey oak which is a very similar species look promising. As far as I know all the Quercus genus makes good bow wood so I’d definitely give it a shot

@@DanSantanaBows thankyou so much for taking the time to looks at this and reply to my, I genuinely appreciate it.

Maybe you have chestnut, as we do in Andalucia, growing alongside cork oak. And lemonwood, I think you have to try, suck it and see, as we say.

@@anthonyhedgecock1248 yes, we have Chestnut 🌰. Do you think that would be a better choice to try first? I believed Lemon and orange would be great, but less chance of finding one of those that needs a big pruning. Greetings from Portugal 👍

@@BrancoCustoms I return to Spain at Christmas and will try chestnut first but will begin to look for lemon and orange branches that could be left to grow instead of being pruned out. Chestnut is great to split with wedges. Im sure there might be other species that would work. Im experimenting with laminations and so far everything has broken!! Im learning. Greetings from Dorset uk.

That’s a lot to ask from wood but with sinew and the low draw weight maybe it’s possible. I’m probably the wrong one to ask though since I don’t make sinewed bows

@@DanSantanaBows Wow, thanks for the quick answer! Well, let's try and see what happens. No one remembers a coward :P

I try to avoid leaving tool marks like that because any severed fiber is a place a splinter could lift up. Realistically it’s probably not a big deal but I like to avoid it. I find that using a scraper with a burr leaves a smoother back, but many bowyers do it your way There is a big spectrum to the concept of violating the back. Bowyers often talk about violating entire growth rings, which is a huge deal for most woods. Violating the surface fibers with little nicks and dents isn’t nearly as bad

Just keep in mind I can’t give you the final dimensions of your bow, that will depend on the design and tiller. Check out my board bow tutorial, in that video i give basic rough out dimensions and drawings. These notes are for my next video and show the finished dimensions of a maple longbow www.reddit.com/r/Bowyer/comments/uz1rbj/maple_longbow_design_notes/?

@@DanSantanaBows tnx

Basically you’re narrowing the back at an angle so that the cross section resembles a trapezoid instead of a rectangle. Anyway, trapping isn’t a good idea in that situation since it will make the back weaker. That’s usually a good trade off for hickory since the belly is the weak spot in terms of performance. In your situation a backing makes more sense, or a sinew wrap in the problem area. Be careful with sanding and planing on the back which can violate the back and possible worsen issues with splinters in the long run

@@DanSantanaBows Thank you for the feedback. I think I misunderstood what you were saying in the video about a trap shape. I have some linen on hand and will go that route-I only tried planing it because it looked like it was an isolated area. Hopefully this fixes it. Also, I love the diagrams you put on the webpage-they are very well done.

Artificial sinew is too stretchy for a backing. I’ve never used gut but saw someone post a gut backed bow on r/bowyer recently

@@DanSantanaBows ok thank you

I don’t speak turkish at all so I can’t do it manually. KZfaq recently improved the support of autotranslated subtitles but there’s still no option for turkish. Hopefully there will be soon. If you go to the description of the video and hit “see more” you’ll see an option to view the transcript of the video. You can also auto translate it into 16 languages but right now turkish isn’t on the list so your best option is to copy the transcript and use google translate. Hopefully that’s good enough to follow along but let me know if you have any more questions!

Either way would be totally fine. The most pragmatic thing you could do is just use the underbark surface for the back, but it’s also very common to thin the sapwood so more of the pretty heartwood is in the bow. Many say you must use a strip of sapwood on the back and heartwood on the belly but that’s total nonsense. Sapwood, heartwood, or any combo of the two makes great bow wood. The differences are there but relatively minor in the grand scheme of thing s

@@DanSantanaBows thanks a lot. In that case, I'll take the easiest (and more foolproof) path, since it's my first build. I assumed it wouldn't make much difference since it's a lighter draw weight on a fairly long bow so compression strength shouldn't be an issue, but I wanted to check with someone experienced.

Yep it’s my main bow wood. See the video on bow woods for more details

​@@DanSantanaBowsHi. Thanks for the prompt response! I really appreciate that. Yes, right after I posed the question, I reached the midpoint where you talk about how Hickory is your primary word. It's great to know that my instincts weren't wrong. I was also curious about why people don't use plywood to build bows, but I really don't know much about the mechanics required of the material. It seems to me that 1/2" Baltic Birch or something similar might be suitable. I was thinking that someone could take a couple of pieces of 1/2" Baltic birch, and perhaps laminate some formica in between, or as a back, or somehow incorporate some fiberglass or carbon fiber tape. And then do most of the shaping using belt sanders, and random orbital sanders, and then finish by hand sanding to a fine degree, and then possibly seal and finish with an epoxy, and then dull rub that. Perhaps even using a dye or a stain or maybe charring it to add character. And if it needed to be bent, it could be wet, and then bent and dried, or maybe steamed. But I don't know much about the spring-mechanics required in a bow, and whether or not the plywood with the opposing grains would provide that. Maybe it would be too stiff. Or maybe it wouldn't have enough back spring. And obviously it's not traditional materials., but it would the inexpensive, and the materials are pretty much readily available, and it would probably reduce the time required quite a bit. Certainly not the same level of artistry, or craftsmanship, but it might turn out a great, inexpensive utility bow. Is there something that you have considered at all? Also, I just wanted to compliment you on your content. It's really great, along with your craftsmanship of course. Thanks for the great instruction. I love You Tube University! 😁👍👊 🏹🏹🏹

​​@@DanSantanaBowsand hopefully my suggestion about using plywood to build a bow doesn't overly offend your purist, artistic sensibilities, lol. I would totally understand if it did.😂😂😂

@@Curtis3366 The opposing fiber direction in plywood wastes a lot of weight. You could use uni directional plywood in theory, just like making a laminate bow

Man, I love this video. Getting into the 2nd half now. So much great insight. "A bow made of itself". Wow. An amazing insight of what a bow actually is. I really just started looking at bow making videos today, and I'm already hooked. And my mind is exploding with all kinds of different ideas. But watching this video, it basically boils the bow down to its purest essence which really is a beautiful thing. I really appreciate this kind of content. It shows a high level of understanding of the inherent nature of not just the materials, but the character and qualities of a tool itself. I've been thinking a lot lately about how activities, and tools, both have inherent philosophy built into them. They are designed to do specific things. I started thinking about it mostly from a martial arts perspective, because each martial art has a different philosophy built into its actions and reactions. Some are highly destructive, and meant to kill and maim. Some are more competitive and designed to reveal a winner. Some are more geared towards self-defense, rather than destruction. But the philosophy is in the movement itself. And whoever trains in those movements, becomes that philosophy in action. It gets hardwired into them. It's a difficult concept to explain in few words, but it lends itself directly into the idea of a gun for example, as compared to a shovel, or an axe for example. Both are designed for certain things. And both imbue the user with their inherent philosophy. When you hold and shoot a gun, you can't escape what it is designed to do, regardless of the reason it is used. And when you use and hold a shovel, you can't escape its inherent intention. And without getting too far into the weeds here, this line of thinking really makes me appreciate qualities of this type of bow building. Just because it's so pure. Anyway, I wanted to mention the linen backing which appealed to me immediately when I saw you cutting it, and then you mentioned denim. And I was wondering about making a bow out of laminated denim and epoxy. Again, obviously not traditional, but it would be original, potentially highly effective, and potentially very striking in appearance. Especially if the epoxy were tinted navy blue. Like I said this concept of bow making really appeals to me, just because of its creative potential. I can't wait to watch more of your videos. I've already sourced my Hickory. 😁 Thanks for sharing.

It’s really hard to find one without many knots but worth the trouble if you do. Use the sapwood for the back or try to chase a growth ring as well as you can. Rawhide backing is a great option

Egyptians made self bows typically either out of acacia or jujube. I saw that the british museum has a few specimens but i can’t find what they look like

@@DanSantanaBows thank you man for all your help

I can move a lot more wood with a drawknife while having more fun and without throwing dust everywhere. I had the same thought when I was starting out, thinking the angle grinder would be much easier. That’s true early on but when you get experience with blade tools and stop making so many mistakes then they’re not so slow and have the advantage of following the grain. That’s not to say you can’t use one, but like any power tool (belt and oscillating sanders are more common in bowmaking)you have to be careful about following the grain. Having tried it both ways, I can do a much, much better job with hand tools. The only time I’d consider using the heavy powertools are for a board bow or modern laminate. For character bows and the workflow I have they just don’t fit in that well.

@@DanSantanaBows I'm not gonna argue as I spend waaay time shaving away ash bark/wood using a hand-blade. :-) I sit in the shade & clamp the stave in my knees, work away dust free.. and happy. It's like a form of meditation. :-) But the grinder stuff works too. :-)

Yes in terms of relieving some tension load. But you won’t get the splinter protection. A cable backing would also be similar in this respect

Yep treat it like osage just make the bow about 10% wider

@@DanSantanaBows so how wide is it supposed to be approximately

@@nikolakolenovic4589 It depends on the design and stats. That would be compared to an existing osage bow with the same draw length and width

It doesn’t fully wet itself. That layer doesn’t take long to dry. By the time you start bending the bow it should be fully dry again

Classic whitewood. Does well with heat treating. Can be hard to split so I usually use the whole log as the stave unless it’s a very big one

@Dan Santana Bows thanks, that was a fast response! I have one log laying around and removed the bark on the side I want to take as belly so it dryes better. I'm not sure if I even should use this one. It has a side were there is a tiny bit of damage. I probably would have to chase a growth ring. Do you think it would be better for me to start with a board bow? I don't have a stave laying around sadly :,D

The big advantage of a board bow is you’ll be able to get started right away. Usually I recommend finding some staves and making a board bow while they dry

@@DanSantanaBows thanks for the advice! I will watch your build along board bow video again and take some notes. Be ready for my first tiller check in a few weeks!