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I look for hardwood saplings. My favorite woods are sugar maple, hickory, and ash,
but there are many others. I want saplings that are about five years old, one to two
inches in diameter, as straight and free of knots as possible, and 50 inches long.
Before the I take or harvest a sapling, I make sure that the mother tree is nearby.
The mother tree will propagate more saplings and the forest wont suffer from the
loss of one sapling. I thank the sapling for giving up its young life for the benefit of
everyone who is going to learn how the Native Americans survived and thrived.
Plan first
I take the sapling (now called a stave) home, debark it, and store it horizontally for a
month to cure. When its ready for me to work it, I test for the natural bend in the
wood. Common sense would dictate that I plan to bend the stave the way it naturally
bends. Right? Wrong. I do just the opposite and plan to bend it in the opposite
direction. Why? The final bow will be stronger that way.
I remove wood from the belly of the stave, which is the side of the stave that is
going to face the archer. I must remove wood only from the belly of the stave, not
the other side, which I call the front and which is going to face away from the archer.
If I were to remove wood from the front, the stave would break under the stress of
bending it. It has to do with the physical properties of the wood.
In time, with careful trimming and testing, the bow must properly draw on the
tillering post to 24 inches without breaking. At this point, the bow is essentially
complete.