Latest / Salish Wolf / #85 Joddy Pettit on Project Quiver

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#85 Joddy Pettit on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

• 0:00
  I'm thrilled to announce the upcoming release of Quiver, The
• 0:02
  Art of Life through Bow Craft. Published by Trope of Chicago,
• 0:05
  this 336 page coffee table book features more than 350
• 0:10
  photographs and explores the legacy of primitive archery
• 0:13
  through the lives and work of 14 of the world's finest
• 0:16
  traditional bow years. We're launching a special
• 0:18
  Founder's Edition available exclusively through Project
• 0:21
  quiver.com. Each copy includes A numbered
• 0:24
  book plate hand signed by Ella and me and is available only
• 0:27
  during our limited pre sale. The Founder's Edition presale
• 0:31
  begins at the end of June exclusively at
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  projectquiver.com. We'd be honored to have your
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  support and to share with you our reverence for permitted bow
• 0:38
  craft. Welcome to Project Quiver, a
• 0:46
  father daughter journey across the globe to document the
• 0:49
  artistry and spirit of the world's finest traditional
• 0:51
  bowyers. I'm Todd, and Ella is my
• 0:54
  daughter. Together we've traveled to the
• 0:55
  workshops of master bowyers, carving bows under their
• 0:58
  guidance, photographing their work in extraordinary detail and
• 1:02
  preserving the stories behind one of humanity's oldest crafts.
• 1:05
  The result is Quiver, the Art of Life Through Bow Craft, a
• 1:09
  photographic and narrative exploration of traditional bow
• 1:11
  carving. This podcast shares stories and
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  experiences of the remarkable individuals who are carrying
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  forward the enduring legacy of the bow and arrow.
• 1:19
  The book is Quiver. The journey is Project Quiver.
• 1:23
  Welcome to the Salish Wolf podcast.
• 1:28
  All right, we're live. It's nice to meet you.
• 1:32
  Good to meet you too, I appreciate the invite.
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  Yeah, my pleasure. I've been seeing your work for
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  quite some time and you seem to be very busy carving bows.
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  Is it a full time venture for you?
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  Oh man, I wish it was I I actually do it just on my 2 days
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  off and and do the all the social media stuff.
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  Then on my days after work. So I I run a regular, I wouldn't
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  call it 9:00 to 5:00, but I just, I run a regular job and
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  then and then do this as I can. What's your job?
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  Actually a store manager for Kroger affiliate here in Denver.
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  So I called King Soopers. So I'm like I'm the store
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  manager of my location. Keeps me very busy.
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  Right, only two days a week of Bokar man.
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  Well, you are producing a lot. I've been doing it for a real
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  long time so. How'd you get into it?
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  You know, gosh, in high school, I'm going to even take one step
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  further back than that. So my uncles were hunters and
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  they lived in a a small game town, gaming town here in, in
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  Colorado called Gunnison. And I love to fish with them.
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  So I would fish like all my childhood would, We'd do a lot
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  of fishing up there. My, my dad and I, I never got
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  the opportunity to go hunting, but they did a lot of bow
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  hunting. And so I, I wanted to get
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  involved in that too. When I was in high school on my,
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  my first bow was a compound bow. And that's what I shot poorly,
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  even with all the gadgets and tools you can have on a compound
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  bow. And ran into a friend in high
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  school who told me I needed to give traditional archery to try.
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  He was shooting a Longbow and we went out to the archery range
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  and, and he put that in my hands and I, I started shooting it and
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  that was the end of it for me. Like I, I was on the traditional
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  bows for good. Always been a Craftsman of
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  sorts, right? So I would consider myself first
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  like a woodworker, just in general woodworking and, and
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  like a boy or behind that. And so I, I spent time, I love
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  creating stuff. I started with making my own
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  arrows and thought that that was kind of the end all for my craft
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  ability in that in that genre, but moved on to making bows
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  shortly thereafter. So, you know, I'd, I'd already
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  been pretty proficient in a in a woodshop by that time.
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  And you know, I told my parents AM interested in making bows.
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  And the next thing I know, I'm, I'm gifted with the traditional
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  Boyers Bible series for my birthday.
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  And truth be told, it was not what I wanted.
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  That that was way outside what it was I was interested in doing
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  because I, I shot a fiberglass bow and wanted to learn how to
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  make fiberglass bows. They seem straightforward,
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  something easy to make, you know, recipe wise, just build a
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  bow. But I read the books anyway and
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  took even one more step toward the more primitive style of a
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  bow making and started making self bows.
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  Started with a board bow. I just happened to find a a
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  perfect board in my dad's garage and made a bow out of that and
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  it turned out perfect. A just a pyramid style red oak
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  bow, 40 lbs I think 28 inches. I still have it on my bow rack.
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  And that bow turned out real well.
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  And I was like stoked. I was super excited and I don't
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  think I made another functional bow after that one for a long,
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  long time. Like all I was making at that
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  point was firewood. I just kept breaking a break.
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  How old were you when you made that?
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  I'm 50. Three just turned 53.
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  When you when you made that first bow, how old were you?
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  I want to say I was maybe 2223. OK, so so I've been doing this
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  for about 30 years. And yeah, so that that's when
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  the real prolific building began.
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  I just start. I always had a bow on the bench.
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  I always was working on a bow. Kind of like these days, I could
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  turn out more bows if that's all I was doing, but I don't want to
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  necessarily turn out bows after, after all the broken bows, after
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  all the heartache of trying to get beyond making firewood.
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  You know, I, I decided I wanted to show people how to do it once
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  the means became available. You know, so I don't, my ability
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  to contact other, other traditional Boyers was very
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  limited. Like the space was nearly void
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  of anybody, you know, especially locally, nobody around Colorado
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  that I was aware of was making bows, not in the way I was
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  making them. And so, you know, once the
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  Internet come along and I started trying to contact some
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  some different lawyers and, and how to get past some of the
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  roadblocks that I was running into.
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  And I would love to report that I found a a strong community of
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  guys willing to share their knowledge and everything.
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  I think they were willing to share their knowledge.
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  They just gave me a really hard time because I didn't know what
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  I was doing. And just from that point just
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  really learned most of everything I know on my own.
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  And so, yeah. I visited Gunnison once.
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  I think about 30 years ago I visited Gunnison.
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  Beautiful, beautiful area. There's a university there,
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  isn't there? Yeah, yeah.
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  Western State. Right.
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  I think that's why I was there. And what is that behind you?
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  Did you make that? No, Matt, it's just a tree of
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  life. Yeah, some.
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  Yeah, just some. What sort of woodwork do you do
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  outside of bow craft? Not a lot anymore.
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  I mean, I'm, I'm pretty dedicated to bow craft at this
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  point, but I've got a lot of furniture pieces around my home.
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  I did some cabinetry, that sort of thing.
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  Yeah, that pretty much that. Just furniture and cabinetry.
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  Yeah, so you're, it looks like your range in bow making is
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  fairly diverse. I've been scrolling back through
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  your social media and you have primitive bows all the way up to
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  some pretty advanced looking composite bows.
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  Do you have a a niche? Do you have a a preference or
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  are you just love making bows? I.
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  Love making bows, just period. I love making bow.
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  I think the novelty that there is in traditional bow making and
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  then one step back into primitive bow making is what has
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  really kept this whole thing alive for me.
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  If I was stuck making just one particular Nisha bow, you can
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  quickly get bored with something like that.
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  Now I would temper that with the notion that I probably spent
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  like 10 years straight building or trying to build reflex, D
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  flex bows, right Bamboo backed reflex and D flex bows.
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  So much so that that I I recorded every build, like down
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  to the down to the last micrometer, you know what I
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  mean? Like I measured every piece,
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  every part lengths, type of wood thicknesses and bamboo ratios of
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  belly wood to back and all of these things to come up with the
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  best version of the reflex and Deflex bow.
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  I think I fell in love with that particular design at some point
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  in time and made it my, my mission to like perfect it.
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  There was so little, there's so little information out there
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  about them, which is why I that, that kind of became my, my area
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  of practice, like my pursuit to try and, and get the, the
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  perfect bow and that in my mind, that was it.
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  And for that period of time anyway, and happened to come
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  into an ability to acquire bamboo right like that.
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  That would have been another, another issue back in the the
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  late 90s, coming up with materials and, and finding
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  suppliers for that sort of thing was it was a challenge.
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  You know, you could mail order stuff and I, I just, I was AII
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  was adverse to buying wood sight unseen.
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  You know what I mean? Like I, I, I didn't trust
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  anybody else to send me something that was going to work
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  and, and got, and got burned a couple times too, trying to get
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  some materials. And you know, when, when I was
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  starting, I was not well to do, still not, I'm not well to do in
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  any way, shape or form, but I had to do it on the cheap, you
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  know, like I had to try and source my own wood.
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  And in Colorado, there are not many Bo woods growing around
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  here. And like the only Bo woods
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  you're going to find is growing in somebody's front or backyard
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  and you're not going to be able to cut that down.
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  Yeah, you know, would visit some arborists here and there to get
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  my hands on some wood, but it been on the ground or whatever
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  the case may be. And I got AI got battle all the
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  the insect damage that's in the wood and do all that.
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  So it was a it was kind of challenging for me.
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  Lumber was always available and I could find good lumber without
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  a problem. But once I could start getting
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  my hands on bamboo, that changed the game entirely for me.
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  And, and at one point in time, I guess if you're asking about
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  like a niche, I believed that I wanted to be like a premier
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  bamboo, bamboo materials bow maker.
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  And then that's what I do a lot of my bamboo or a lot of my bows
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  with is with bamboo. What type of bamboo are you
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  using? It's MO, so bamboo.
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  I'll get it from a lot of different suppliers.
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  It's when, when COVID hit, something happened with the
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  supply. I like, I, I don't know if they
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  quit cutting or the shutdown in China, like just stop the supply
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  or what, what happened there. But I couldn't get my hands on
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  it there for a minute. So I've I've picked it up, I
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  want to say through like 6 or 7 different purveyors, but it's
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  pretty clear it's all coming from the same place.
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  Is that mostly for backing or using it on the belly as well?
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  I'm using it on the belly these days and on the obviously on the
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  back, you know, the, the relative humidity here in, in
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  Denver, if you're lucky, if it's into the double digits a lot of
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  the times you know, and, and wood dries out so badly here,
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  you know, where Hickory is a sluggish bow wood.
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  And in most of parts of the country here, it's a Stinger.
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  And it it is when it's dry, it is a killer bow wood.
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  So with the Bamboo, are you at this point, are you
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  experimenting primarily with different cores or different
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  shapes for your reflex D flex? Sounds like you've kind of honed
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  that design. Is there still experimentation?
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  Yeah. So as far as experimentation is
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  concerned now, like I've, I've really been exploring, you know,
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  peri reflex builds again, a, a very small amount of information
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  is out there. I felt really fortunate at one
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  point in time. I, I can't, I couldn't tell you
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  exactly when. It was sometime in the early
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  2000s, maybe 2000 tens that I got on the leather wall forum
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  and was lucky enough to get into a forum where Dan Perry was one
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  of the participants and just was answering questions about, you
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  know, or, or just dispelling a lot of the thought process
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  behind, you know, his glue up process.
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  And, and, and Dan will be the first one to say that he's not
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  the one that discovered the process.
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  They, they just named it after him because he's the one who
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  really put it into use with both.
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  But gluing the belly onto a back under tension, like it transfers
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  a lot of that energy into the glue line.
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  And you're working with shear instead of compression and, and
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  tension as much, you know, And if you can maximize that part of
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  the process, then you're making safer bows, you're making
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  stronger bows and you're making wider bows.
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  So it's like a win, win, win all the way across the board.
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  And trying to use bamboo on the belly of bows has been, this is
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  really where my experimentation has led me.
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  So Howard Hill would use bamboo on his bellies.
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  Mostly people that you talk to will tell you the bamboo is
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  terrible about taking set. And that's true.
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  I, I think the best I've been able to manage, I actually
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  managed to keep a bow with some reflex that had bamboo on the
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  belly that took maybe in total 3/4 of an inch of, of set.
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  And I feel like that was kind of a silver bullet.
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  And I'm, I'm, I haven't been able to replicate that since.
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  And, and I don't know if that's the core material.
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  I don't know if that's the ratios of the back to the belly
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  to the to the core, you know. Oh, and so that's kind of where
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  I'm at, just kind of experimenting along those lines.
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  For the Perry Reflex, I'd only heard of it when I interviewed
• 15:43
  Paul Comstock. Can you talk a bit about what
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  makes that unique? What is the peri reflex?
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  So yeah, peri reflex is just a lamination process.
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  And if if you talk to, I mean, the way Dan would put it is that
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  you can only benefit from the process, from that lamination
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  process. If you use two pieces of wood,
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  when you start laminating more pieces than that, you start
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  watering down the value of what peri reflex is.
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  So it's just one, one surface being your back here like that,
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  this your back. And then you got the other, your
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  belly. And as you're gluing them, you
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  glue them purposely into reflex. And then if, if you were to
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  actually do this with your hands and you move it back the other
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  direction, what you'll feel is like the skin on your fingers
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  creating, you know, it'll, it, it creates friction there.
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  What that does is that that stores the energy on that
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  friction line. And, and when, when there's so
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  many dynamics to it, it's insane.
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  So let's say you take a, you take a piece of wood and you
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  glue it into reflex like this, like to get that bow back to
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  straight and it takes force to do it.
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  But your belly would, when it comes back straight is actually
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  in a relaxed state, like it's not feeling any compression yet,
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  but you're already building poundage in the bow.
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  So there's less compression on the belly in the operation of
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  that bow. So when when you do that, you
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  can actually make a smaller dimensional bow, like if they
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  are not wide, the wider you make it, the worse off you're going
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  to be. And chances are you're going to
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  crush the belly of your bow. You want it to be narrow and
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  thick because the the you got to have some compression wood to
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  stand up to the bamboo. So it didn't help.
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  A lot of the common belief or common understanding about how
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  to make a functional bow wide thin limbs goes out the window.
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  I could say it's actually the opposite.
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  And how thick is that belly layer?
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  Oh, my bows maybe 3/8 of an inch.
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  You know, I mean, it's not when I say thick, I I think I mean in
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  relative terms to the to the bow itself.
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  So where where you can, you can look at a a self wood bow and
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  you've got you know, your fade's going to be relatively thick,
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  you know, half inch, half inch or more.
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  If you're at 1/2 inch on on like a Perry reflex build, you won't
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  you won't be able to bend it. Yeah, there's.
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  A point how? You said narrow limbs.
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  How wide are we talking? One and 1/4 at the tops, one and
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  an eighth depending on the belly wood.
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  And also if I'm using Hickory or E pay, E pay.
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  I've gone as thin as as less than one inch.
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  Yeah. And for hunting weight, you
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  know. And are you experimenting still
• 18:55
  with the different widths and thicknesses?
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  Or is it playing around with different woods but using the
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  same parameters? You know, I've I've already
• 19:05
  played around with different woods and have found that that
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  pretty much within basic parameters it's going to work
• 19:14
  out right. So anything from like wide O
• 19:16
  Osage E pay would probably be the one hold out because it is
• 19:22
  such a heavy mass wood that it'll make up a smaller bow than
• 19:26
  the remainder of those woods. Hickory, I think I did one in
• 19:33
  Elm at one time. They're all right there in that
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  one and an eighth to one and a quarter wide and pretty pretty
• 19:42
  like thick in comparison, you know.
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  Yeah, and always with Bamboo backing.
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  I've done some with Hickory backing and so I I made a cherry
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  cherry belly bow with Hickory backing because I didn't trust
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  the cherry could stand up to bamboo.
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  So I'll do the same builds with a Hickory back.
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  That particular bow was 66 inches long tip to tip, so 64.
• 20:11
  On the, on the strings, on the string locks.
• 20:14
  And I just wanted to see how far I could push it, you know, and
• 20:19
  beyond 32 inches, I was just like, I'm, I'm not going to
• 20:21
  break that though. Not I didn't, not that I
• 20:23
  couldn't, I didn't want it. I could pull it back to 32
• 20:27
  inches and it's still kept an inch and a half a reflex.
• 20:30
  I mean, all of its original reflex, which to me was insane.
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  I'm, I've always been so worried about breaking bows.
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  It's always in the back of my head.
• 20:39
  And it's a shame to be in that. It's a shame to be in that
• 20:41
  position if you make bows. And when you say only two wood
• 20:47
  types, so you're using for the peri reflex, it's just a belly
• 20:50
  wood and bamboo is primarily what you're using a riser at
• 20:54
  all? I'll glue on a riser.
• 20:58
  So whatever the whatever that ends up being, typically I'll
• 21:02
  just match the belly wood, you know, in some manner or or
• 21:05
  fashion only because I like the continuity of the look.
• 21:10
  So you could bet you could put whatever you want on there.
• 21:13
  But part of that construction is, is getting that D flex into
• 21:17
  the bow itself. And it's a real key not to D
• 21:21
  flex the limbs themselves. You've got put that deflux into
• 21:25
  the grip. And if it's too thick, you
• 21:27
  can't, you can't put a deflux into that piece of wood, not
• 21:32
  easily anyway. So it's always a glue horn riser
• 21:36
  for me. And are you making these
• 21:41
  primarily for their performance value?
• 21:45
  Yeah. That's what you found.
• 21:47
  These are they perform. They're just, they're smooth,
• 21:50
  they're fast, they're safe. You know, I'm like safe.
• 21:54
  I mean that that you can, you can draw it in.
• 21:58
  The chances of a breaking are pretty poor.
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  Not that it can't be done, but there it's a safe design that I
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  can trust. You know, if I'm putting it into
• 22:06
  somebody else's hand that the chances are really good that
• 22:09
  it's going to perform for a very long period of time and not give
• 22:12
  them any hassles. Yeah, what are you using to
• 22:15
  laminate the layers? Nowadays I'm, I'm using smooth
• 22:21
  on EA 40, that's that's all I'll use I for I for one period of
• 22:26
  time I was using Unibond 800 way back I was using resource and
• 22:36
  all, but I, I, I couldn't get my hands on bamboo yet at that
• 22:40
  time. And you can't.
• 22:42
  You can't find resource and all now, so.
• 22:47
  So who is who? Who's using your bows?
• 22:51
  You're selling them to customers around North America, around the
• 22:54
  world. You.
• 22:55
  Know I'm, I don't do, I actually don't sell very many bows.
• 22:59
  You know, I'm, I'll sell a handful a year and, and
• 23:02
  sometimes I think, I think the way it has gone for me is
• 23:08
  somebody will ask me for a bow and, and we'll, we'll go ahead
• 23:11
  and Commission a build and I'll build it on my channel, you
• 23:15
  know, so some of those builds are going to customers.
• 23:18
  A lot of those builds are still hanging on my, on my wall.
• 23:23
  If I wasn't building it for a customer, I still have it.
• 23:27
  So I've been thinking about selling them because I don't
• 23:30
  know what I'm going to do with them at this point.
• 23:33
  But before I got into the whole YouTube thing and social media
• 23:38
  deal, I, I, I just, I was building prolifically building
• 23:42
  bows and I took all of, you know, all my best offerings up
• 23:47
  to a shop named Rocky Mountain Specialty gear here in town.
• 23:52
  And they market, they market on the web worldwide and they'll
• 23:56
  ship them worldwide. And I've gotten calls from
• 23:59
  people, you know, I mean, from from California looking for me
• 24:05
  to build him a bow. And I'm like, OK, I'd be happy
• 24:08
  to. And he's like, I want you to
• 24:10
  build it like this particular bow.
• 24:11
  I'm like, well, where did you see that bow?
• 24:12
  And he's like my buddies shooting it, you know, in the
• 24:15
  league I'm in. And sweet.
• 24:18
  Glad to know it made it all the way out there, you know what I
• 24:20
  mean? I've seen my bows on like,
• 24:23
  secondary bow sites. You know, people sell them,
• 24:28
  which is kind of cool, but there's not a ton of them in
• 24:31
  circulation. So I mean, if if you got one of
• 24:35
  my bows, it's one of the very small number of bows.
• 24:39
  Would you go down the social media route?
• 24:43
  Weird story and, and I want to, I want to stay above the line
• 24:48
  while, while I talk about this. I, I was, I was a student of the
• 24:55
  craft forever and ever, OK, And I want to stay up until about 5
• 25:01
  years ago before, you know, I, I just kind of came to the
• 25:04
  realization that, that I've got a lot of knowledge that that
• 25:07
  really isn't out there or wasn't at the time anyway.
• 25:11
  And I'm searching, I'm searching all of these different
• 25:16
  resources. I got a whole, I got a shelf of
• 25:19
  books. You know that all the books that
• 25:21
  I bought over time, you know, all of J Massey's stuff, Jim Ham
• 25:24
  stuff, Paul Comstock stuff, the the Boyers Bibles, Dean Torgis,
• 25:30
  my hero, I got, you know, all that stuff.
• 25:32
  And interestingly enough, I never bought Dean Torgis's
• 25:37
  bamboo back bow book, which probably would have saved me a
• 25:41
  lot of time, you know, overtime now that I've seen it after the
• 25:45
  fact. But and he and I still don't do
• 25:50
  it the same, but it would have saved me a couple couple issues.
• 25:53
  The then come social media, right.
• 25:58
  So instead of, you know, 2 dimensional pictures in the book
• 26:03
  and trying to understand what they're saying, you know, in
• 26:07
  text, you could start seeing actual pictures, get some
• 26:12
  feedback from the people that were doing it.
• 26:15
  Got on and found poor folk bows. Sam Sam Harper.
• 26:21
  I think Sam Harper is like an unsung hero of the Boyer
• 26:25
  community. I think more people could
• 26:27
  probably relied upon his knowledge then maybe even he
• 26:31
  realizes. And when I got there, like a lot
• 26:36
  of things started to open up for me again.
• 26:39
  We don't do it the same at all. And I've been in contact with
• 26:43
  him after the fact and, and you know, he's like, well, I'm glad
• 26:48
  that I'm, I got you moving in the direction when you moved in
• 26:51
  a completely different direction than I ever went.
• 26:53
  So that there's, there's that. But started tooling around
• 26:59
  YouTube channels and I hit a channel.
• 27:02
  I was like, Oh my gosh, somebody's out there building
• 27:05
  bamboo back reflex D flex bows and I start watching the channel
• 27:11
  and, and, and I'm finding myself like, that's not really the best
• 27:18
  way to do that. I don't know that I would do it
• 27:21
  that way either. And I'm starting to watch things
• 27:24
  going like that's like that's red flags in my mind.
• 27:28
  And I thought, you know, I've been looking for somebody who
• 27:33
  knows what I have accumulated in terms of knowledge.
• 27:37
  Like I'm looking for me and I'm and, and I'm not out there.
• 27:40
  I'm actually, I know enough that I could share it and decided
• 27:47
  that I was going to do that. And I and I don't know if the
• 27:51
  the motivation necessarily was it's not a competitive thing.
• 27:57
  You know what I mean? It's just not a competitive
• 27:59
  thing. I think the more information
• 28:00
  that's out there, the better off everybody in the whole and that
• 28:05
  whole genre is right. You can see different
• 28:07
  perspectives, get different thought processes behind
• 28:10
  different modes of building bows.
• 28:12
  But I, I came across, you know, someone just thought, you know
• 28:16
  what? I'm going to throw my, I'm going
• 28:18
  to throw my knowledge into the ring because I, I, I have a fair
• 28:21
  amount of it. And, and I'm not, I'm not saying
• 28:24
  I'm the best at anything. I'm just the guy who managed to
• 28:27
  turn on a camera and take a chance at people, you know,
• 28:31
  ridiculing him for what he puts out there.
• 28:34
  And I'm, I've dealt with enough of that too.
• 28:38
  But fact of the matter is that I've come in contact with so
• 28:43
  many people and been able to answer so many questions.
• 28:47
  My, my role in my profession, in my professional work is as a,
• 28:52
  you know, basically coaching and teaching people how to do their
• 28:56
  jobs. And on top of that, teaching
• 29:00
  process and understanding processes and doing things in a
• 29:03
  regimented manner to get a particular outcome.
• 29:07
  And that's kind of corporate America as it stands.
• 29:09
  But I, I, I really kind of put that to work in my bow building.
• 29:16
  Like I can break this down in, in bite sized pieces in
• 29:21
  manageable chunks where what took me a decade to figure out,
• 29:26
  I could probably help somebody like erase that decade of work
• 29:30
  and kind of jump in at year 7 or 8 and, and wanted to do that.
• 29:35
  And so that's what I started doing.
• 29:38
  And then the only thing that I never taught on YouTube as time
• 29:43
  went along, the only thing, and to this day, the only thing I
• 29:46
  don't teach on YouTube are the things that I don't realize
• 29:49
  people don't know, right? Like when you start, you start
• 29:54
  working with somebody, you start answering questions and then and
• 29:57
  they're, they're starting ask asking things, you know, like,
• 30:00
  well, you know, I bet, I guess I've been doing it so long.
• 30:03
  It's it's kind of like when you tell a kid to put on their shoes
• 30:06
  and they're like, well, OK, but how do I tie them?
• 30:09
  I didn't think about that because tying them, it's just a
• 30:11
  natural course of action when I put on my shoes, you know what I
• 30:14
  mean? And how to tie that knot and how
• 30:18
  you know how tight to tie that knot and all those things.
• 30:20
  So that's, that's kind of where I went.
• 30:22
  That's kind of the road I went down when it came to teaching
• 30:25
  how to build bows. It's all about trying to save
• 30:27
  guys time and energy to get get to a level where they can start
• 30:31
  innovating on their own and making bows that that are going
• 30:34
  to, you know, make a difference in the in the bow building
• 30:38
  community. How much are you recording every
• 30:41
  bow build or do you have something in mind and every bow
• 30:45
  build? Pretty much.
• 30:47
  Do they it's all get posted or you I'm sorry, do they all get
• 30:52
  posted or do you just keep some of them just to have the the
• 30:56
  information and. Pretty much everything gets
• 30:58
  posted. So I mean, if you think about
• 31:02
  it, I'm getting a Bo done maybe once a month.
• 31:07
  You know what I mean? It that's between weekends
• 31:12
  working on it and I only get one day off at a time.
• 31:14
  So I generally get Sundays and Thursdays off.
• 31:17
  That's my normal schedule as if normal exists in the grocery
• 31:22
  industry. But I'll I'll build on Sundays,
• 31:29
  build a lot and film on Sundays. Thursday I'm I'm, I'm like
• 31:33
  editing every night, Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday
• 31:37
  night, Wednesday post on Thursday and then start doing
• 31:42
  some more building on the bow and then finish up on Sunday and
• 31:45
  just follow that. It's a loop for me.
• 31:50
  So you're posting content every week.
• 31:53
  Every week you're posting content.
• 31:56
  Pretty much I there, there are times where we're all missa on
• 32:00
  missa post, but for for about 4 1/2 years now, I mean, it was
• 32:05
  always my intent. Every Thursday, every Thursday,
• 32:09
  I got something up. Dedication.
• 32:12
  Do you ever teach people in person?
• 32:15
  I haven't had anybody in person, no.
• 32:19
  I would love to. I've had a couple inquiries to
• 32:22
  do it. Putting together the time is
• 32:25
  really the is really the. Yeah, I guess with your
• 32:27
  schedule, you would almost need someone who's local who could
• 32:29
  come there on those days. Yeah.
• 32:34
  And then you wrote a book. Tell me a bit about it.
• 32:36
  I haven't had a chance to look through it yet, and you just
• 32:38
  sent it to me. But thank you for that.
• 32:40
  Yeah, I mean, it is just everything that I've learned,
• 32:44
  just a complete brain dump of reflux, deflux, bamboo back
• 32:49
  bows, something that I, I hope again, we'll save a lot of time
• 32:57
  and energy for anybody that's truly interested in doing that.
• 33:00
  I think the one thing, the one hard part about building bows is
• 33:06
  like not getting discouraged, right.
• 33:10
  And like I said, I, I think I broke at one point in time.
• 33:15
  I want to say in probably the first five years, I broke bows
• 33:18
  at a pace of 2 to 1 to bows that I'm to good bows.
• 33:21
  And I may and it may have even been a higher ratio than that.
• 33:26
  And it's like just tenacity that that keeps one doing this, you
• 33:30
  know, learning from the mistake and then doing it different the
• 33:33
  next time. And then, you know, for me with,
• 33:36
  with the, I think with the, the reflex D flex bows, really where
• 33:41
  I started to narrow down the build process and make it
• 33:46
  something of a production thing. Right where I built my own
• 33:54
  thickness drum Sander, right like a built the Sander so that
• 33:59
  I could, I could quickly get to the part where everything's
• 34:03
  laminated and I got a bow blank and could try again, You know,
• 34:07
  because I was just, I'm, I don't know, I was breaking them.
• 34:09
  I never had any kind of compression problems and still I
• 34:12
  until I started working with bamboo.
• 34:15
  So I went from breaking every bow in tension to crushing every
• 34:18
  bow in compression. Never ever experienced that
• 34:21
  problem until then. So that's, that's the, that's
• 34:26
  the thing you got to look out for in the style of bow.
• 34:30
  So with this high performing reflex D flex bow, if you're not
• 34:34
  creating them that much for customers, you must be an avid
• 34:39
  Archer, then you must enjoy the the the performance value of the
• 34:43
  bows. So I fit in archery where I can,
• 34:49
  you know, So I, there's a, there's a passage in the Boyer's
• 34:55
  Bible for that says, you know, boyers and Archers or distance
• 35:00
  cousins, right? Like I, I can know, I can build
• 35:06
  a bow and I have enough experience with enough bows that
• 35:09
  I can put it on the spectrum of, you know, this one's a sweet
• 35:15
  shooting bow. This one's fast.
• 35:17
  This one hurts my hand when I shoot it.
• 35:19
  Here's here's the difference here and there that that makes
• 35:21
  it more smooth, you know, here's the sweet spot for the length of
• 35:28
  the bow, or here's me really pushing the limitations of it
• 35:31
  all. I did this special something in
• 35:34
  the riser for this particular bow, whatever the case may be,
• 35:37
  right? Pushing the envelope on
• 35:41
  different design ideas. I think the shortest reflex D
• 35:44
  flex bow I've built was a Hickory belly bow with bamboo
• 35:53
  and I'm I think I built it 58 inches long, scared to pull it
• 35:58
  past 27. I'm not sure why, because I'm
• 36:01
  sure it'll probably go to 30 and not break.
• 36:04
  But the you know, like the riser on that things only I mean, if
• 36:08
  if you're into handguns at all, it's like a micro micro handgun,
• 36:13
  right? It only, it only fits my palm to
• 36:15
  here because the, the limb is working right out of my hand to,
• 36:19
  to get that long of a draw length out of that short of a
• 36:22
  bow and also almost eliminating the, the existence of the riser
• 36:27
  all together to, to make that happen.
• 36:31
  So it's always just some level of experimentation.
• 36:35
  You know, I mean it at this point, I could turn them out
• 36:40
  easy. You know what I mean?
• 36:42
  It's it's the the recipe for me is there and I, I can do it
• 36:46
  pretty easily. I, I really like making Beau
• 36:50
  blanks and sending them to people so they can till her
• 36:53
  mouth. They can do their own thing with
• 36:54
  it and then it's probably, it's probably 70% done when they
• 37:00
  receive it. What was the process like for
• 37:04
  you writing the book? It was I, I took a vacation,
• 37:12
  took a vacation from work and I'm, I'm told myself I was going
• 37:16
  to write a chapter a day, every day.
• 37:19
  I was just going to write a chapter and be very thorough,
• 37:23
  you know, in, you know, putting into words exactly every step
• 37:31
  that I take to make it, make it happen.
• 37:33
  Try to keep it interesting. You know, I've read a lot of
• 37:36
  I've read a lot of text about building bows.
• 37:43
  There can be a drier topic unless you're really into it,
• 37:46
  you know what I mean? So trying to keep it interesting
• 37:50
  on some level. If anybody has read Dean Torges
• 37:58
  of the book on hunting the Osage bow, that's a fun read.
• 38:01
  Like he actually makes it a fun read.
• 38:03
  I would have loved to do something along those lines, but
• 38:05
  I couldn't because I'm just not that that much of A wordsmith.
• 38:10
  But try to really just try to really spill out exactly what it
• 38:14
  takes to build the ball, you know, in as plain a language as
• 38:17
  possible. And then as I'm, as I'm going
• 38:20
  back and I'm reading it again, it's like, what's the next
• 38:23
  question? What's the next question?
• 38:25
  And answering the questions in advance, sent it out to a few
• 38:29
  folks and, and like, ask them to please try and build, like just
• 38:33
  try and build to it. Just try to follow the
• 38:36
  instructions and build the ball and tell me what questions you
• 38:38
  have and, and what I need to do differently.
• 38:41
  And got a little bit of feedback back from that.
• 38:44
  But for the most part it, it, it, it seems because I've sold a
• 38:48
  lot, I've sold several copies of it without too many questions
• 38:55
  coming back. I, I think it's pretty
• 38:57
  exhausting in terms of what you need to do to to be successful
• 39:01
  to make that ball. Did you already have an outline
• 39:04
  prepared for it when you sat down to write during that
• 39:06
  vacation, or is that something you created at the same time?
• 39:09
  You know what, I think I had filmed so many tutorials on
• 39:13
  YouTube that it was more along the lines of taking the, the,
• 39:19
  the, the sections of coaching or trainings that I did on YouTube
• 39:24
  and just putting it into, to paper.
• 39:27
  The the trick of it is, and like you, you know, I'm the first one
• 39:32
  to say there's nothing new in the book that isn't already
• 39:35
  published out there for free. It's just all in one spot.
• 39:39
  You know, I've done like I've done really nothing to try and
• 39:47
  preserve any information for myself or do anything like that.
• 39:51
  It's it's all been about if, if I know it, I'll put it out there
• 39:55
  for you and I'll put out there to help you build better bows,
• 39:59
  arrows, if that's something you're into.
• 40:01
  I'm I'm not, I'm not much of an arrow maker.
• 40:03
  Arrows are a whole different. That's a whole different game.
• 40:09
  And probably more complicated and difficult than making bows,
• 40:12
  to be honest, but the, yeah, if it's out there, I'll put it out.
• 40:18
  And, and so basically I just kind of took everything that,
• 40:21
  that it was actually my very first run of videos how to build
• 40:25
  a reflex and reflex bow. I think it ended up being like
• 40:28
  8-8 different videos. And then beyond that, as I start
• 40:34
  getting feedback, I, I would say half, yeah, I mean not half, but
• 40:39
  a very good portion of my content is dedicated to bamboo
• 40:44
  built reflex and Deflex bows. And so just try to put that all
• 40:51
  into one spot where it's easy to read, easily accessible, and and
• 40:56
  it's going to have the answers to pretty much all the questions
• 40:58
  that I've ever been asked right there.
• 41:01
  Now you said back in the 90s you were tried to collaborate with
• 41:04
  some other bow yours. How about now?
• 41:06
  Are you still collaborating with lawyers?
• 41:09
  Sure. I mean, I, I talked to different
• 41:11
  lawyers. I want to say that there's going
• 41:14
  to be a lot of recognizable names in there.
• 41:17
  You know, I've, I've contacted some people and I've, I've
• 41:20
  talked to Paul Comstock about some things here and there.
• 41:24
  Not a ton, you know, mostly just contacting, thanking him for his
• 41:29
  contribution to, you know, my, my knowledge level.
• 41:33
  You know, I would say like it was actually Paul's book and
• 41:37
  everything that he contributed to the lawyers Bibles that
• 41:41
  convinced me that I could make a bow because there's no Osage
• 41:44
  anywhere around in Colorado. You know, I'm not probably have
• 41:47
  to go 1000 miles to find the first Osage.
• 41:49
  Now take that back. There's one in the archery place
• 41:52
  here, but it does not grow naturally here.
• 41:57
  Pine trees and aspens as far as you can see.
• 41:59
  And neither make bows. So.
• 42:03
  What about Rocky Mountain Juniper?
• 42:04
  Do you have any of that? Yeah, yeah, if you can find it.
• 42:11
  And generally speaking, it's in people's yards.
• 42:13
  Yeah, of. Course.
• 42:15
  Because it's pretty ornamental and grows slow.
• 42:18
  So people put it in their yard. You're, you're, you're, you're
• 42:21
  hard pressed to find it. You know, up in the mountains
• 42:24
  it's all, all spruce. And like I said, Aspen.
• 42:29
  Tons of Aspen. Do you follow the work of any
• 42:32
  other bow ears? Like for example, are you
• 42:35
  familiar with bamboo bows and Stefan Tim and the Netherlands?
• 42:40
  Oh yeah, You know, when I've, I, I've contacted Yap Coppandryer
• 42:46
  several times. Was really, really hoping I, I
• 42:50
  tried to collaborate with him to get down there and learn how to
• 42:52
  make a Yumi bow. I I would love, love, love to do
• 42:55
  that. I'll say like Stefan, Tim is
• 42:59
  going to be like the second coming or probably the the one
• 43:02
  with the best tutelage underneath Yap and would love to
• 43:10
  find that opportunity. But if there's a big difference
• 43:13
  between, you know, 1200 miles to Georgia here and heading out to
• 43:18
  Europe, you know, to do it. So yeah, I don't know.
• 43:26
  Yeah, and he he makes obviously he his, the Yumi bows are
• 43:29
  beautiful, but then he also makes the Orion hornbow, which
• 43:32
  is a beautiful hornbow with bamboo backing.
• 43:35
  So it's kind of a take I think, He says it's like the inspired
• 43:39
  by the Chinese 5 curve bow, but instead of having Sunu backing,
• 43:42
  he has bamboo backing and that's very sweet performing bow.
• 43:47
  Yeah, yeah, I've seen those bows and actually would I, I have
• 43:51
  contemplated trying to do something similar.
• 43:54
  So horn would be horn would be new on my my repertoire of
• 43:58
  materials. Never use sinew either outside
• 44:02
  of like, you know, as a binder binding down like arrows or
• 44:06
  feathers or something. You know, and what about the
• 44:09
  bamboo, the yap girls, Medaki? Do you use medaki bamboo at all?
• 44:14
  I've I've gotten some from him, so yeah, I've used it in the
• 44:18
  past. Can you tell the difference
• 44:20
  between that and now what you're using?
• 44:23
  No, not really, no. He he, he talks very highly of
• 44:35
  it and I think that he processes it far different.
• 44:37
  So there's when you get when you get the Madaki from or when I
• 44:41
  got it, He he had it, it had been fire treated.
• 44:46
  But I would stop short of saying it was tempered because then you
• 44:50
  don't necessarily want tempered like all the way through.
• 44:55
  But yeah, it's beautiful, beautiful bamboo that I got from
• 45:01
  him. And it's like all the waxes have
• 45:04
  been melted into the rind and and it's just been heat treated
• 45:10
  just right. Like he's got that part of the
• 45:13
  process down 100%. I'm out here with a, you know, a
• 45:16
  weed torch trying to trying to temper my bamboo and catching it
• 45:22
  on fire and doing all kinds of crazy stuff with it.
• 45:25
  But you know, it's again, it's a learning process and, and one
• 45:29
  that I think I'm, I'm starting to hone in on.
• 45:31
  But that's going to be one of those things that for explaining
• 45:34
  it to somebody who's new to it and be very difficult to, to
• 45:38
  thoroughly explain like this is how hot and for how long, you
• 45:42
  know, and this what it should look like.
• 45:44
  And don't be afraid of the scorch Marks and that sort of
• 45:46
  thing, because that's what I'm doing at this point.
• 45:50
  I'm just scorching them. But it's, I got a bow sitting
• 45:53
  out in the garage. It's another experiment that I
• 45:57
  I've got high hopes, Let's put that way.
• 45:59
  Got high hopes And I'm I'm in a phase now with the reflex D flex
• 46:06
  Tri Lam, basically Tri Lam peri. I call it a peri reverse, you
• 46:11
  know, reverse reflex D flex. So I'm I'm gluing the belly in
• 46:16
  in D flex on and then I'm gluing the back and reflex.
• 46:20
  So I'm and it's 2 glue lines, but I'm thinking they're they're
• 46:23
  in opposition when it comes to friction within the limb.
• 46:27
  And I've, I've had limited success.
• 46:35
  I'm going to put it that way like I'm I'm still in the the
• 46:38
  experiment stage. And as a Tri lamb is that bamboo
• 46:42
  belly and back with a corwood? No, So I'm I'll do, I've done
• 46:47
  EPA bellies. I've done and the the one right
• 46:52
  out there right now is an Elm belly.
• 46:55
  Did a hackberry belly did Mulberry belly did cherry?
• 47:03
  No, no, no all cores. I apologize.
• 47:06
  These are all cores. So cherry core hack Berry core
• 47:10
  and really the, the, the thought process on the course just to
• 47:12
  get that, that main taper. I just want to get that main
• 47:15
  paper from the from the fade to the tip.
• 47:18
  And then everything with the bamboo is tillering it in
• 47:21
  advance and then laminating it to the bow.
• 47:23
  So it's, it is mostly tillered. You know it's not 100% tiller,
• 47:29
  but mostly tillered when you take it out of the after you've
• 47:33
  glued it up and you take it out of your.
• 47:36
  Yeah. And then what are you using for
• 47:37
  the belly if not bamboo? It's all bamboo.
• 47:41
  Everything's OK, So it's Bamboo. Belly and back, and then you're
• 47:44
  playing with the Corwood. And I'm just playing with the
• 47:46
  corn. Yeah.
• 47:48
  Are you using any hand tools? It sounds like in the from the
• 47:51
  laminess that I've made, I know there's a lot of power tools
• 47:53
  involved. You know, I, I kind of, I kind
• 47:56
  of fancy myself a, a wood shop warrior.
• 48:02
  I'm a Boyer who has a, a standard shop full of wood
• 48:07
  tools, right, table saw, band saw, belt Sanders, that sort of
• 48:12
  thing. And so I'll put them to use.
• 48:15
  And, and I'm, I know that for most guys out there, if they're
• 48:19
  looking to get into bow building, chances are decent if
• 48:23
  there's somebody that's doing, you know, just handy worker, got
• 48:26
  a little bit of wood building experience, They probably have
• 48:30
  two of the three tools. You know, I have an industrial
• 48:35
  size Sander, but it's not required.
• 48:41
  You know, you can just do a $50 bench Sander, do the exact same
• 48:44
  thing. And, and so, yeah, I use mostly
• 48:48
  power tools simply because I'm limited on time.
• 48:51
  You know, I'm, I'm in a position of having to get, get to the
• 48:55
  tillering piece, get to the tillering piece quick and then
• 49:00
  tiller slow, if that makes sense.
• 49:03
  So once I get my, my bow blank put together, which is actually
• 49:07
  probably like say about 70% of the build and I get into the
• 49:10
  tillering piece, then it's files, brass crack cabinet
• 49:15
  scrapers, that sort of thing. So.
• 49:20
  So it's no surprise that I'm a big fan, more of a fan of
• 49:24
  primitive bows than of the the composites are modern bows.
• 49:29
  And I noticed a little bit further back in your social
• 49:31
  media you have a fair number of primitive bows.
• 49:34
  Did you begin mostly with primitive bows?
• 49:37
  100% OK, yeah. How many of those do they still?
• 49:41
  Do if any. I cut my teeth on primitive
• 49:44
  builds like there's there's. There's nothing more gratifying
• 49:50
  than building a self bow really. I love building a soft bow.
• 49:55
  They're they're time intensive, but when it comes to like truly
• 50:02
  testing your skills when when it comes to tillering and truly
• 50:06
  understanding how wood operates and, and and the workmanship
• 50:12
  that goes into a self bow, yeah, there's there's no, there's no
• 50:17
  comparison to that, you know, so I love building them.
• 50:22
  It's it's to your point, you got to go, you got to go kind of far
• 50:27
  back into the social media piece to see them.
• 50:30
  But if you think about it, it's only four or five years.
• 50:34
  You know, I've kind of dedicated myself lately.
• 50:40
  I guess. I mean, we all hit those, those
• 50:44
  spaces in time where you focus on one thing or another, you
• 50:47
  know, and, and I'm, I'm really focusing on trying to get these
• 50:51
  bamboo builds down to something that I could, I could
• 50:56
  communicate and, and help other guys replicate.
• 50:59
  I, I really kind of feel like first and foremost, I, I like
• 51:02
  teaching bow building, but that, that's why I really like doing
• 51:07
  and talking to guys about building bows, talk about
• 51:11
  philosophies about how to do things differently, how to
• 51:15
  change this or do that. And, and I do fall a little more
• 51:19
  into the laminated bow landscape these days, but without a very
• 51:27
  firm understanding of how to make a, a bow out of a single
• 51:30
  piece of wood. It's a tough, tough transition,
• 51:35
  you know? But you've been building bows,
• 51:38
  as I said, for 30 years. In those early years, though,
• 51:42
  was it pretty sporadic? No.
• 51:46
  And. No, it was mostly self bows, but
• 51:49
  my problem it, it, it was more a more a circumstance of necessity
• 51:56
  for me to start backing bows because the all, all I ever did
• 52:01
  was break them, you know, like I, I build them and I break
• 52:05
  them. I, it's like I couldn't build a
• 52:07
  bow wide enough to keep it from breaking.
• 52:11
  And it took a little bit of research, a little bit of
• 52:13
  talking to different guys and like, you know, you, you live in
• 52:19
  a, in a darn near desert. You know, your, your woods too
• 52:23
  dry. And that would be like you got
• 52:25
  to figure out how to how to manage the tension on a, on a
• 52:28
  piece of wood. That's just, it's just too dry.
• 52:30
  I, I can't hydrate it, you know, mastered the art of a rawhide
• 52:41
  back. Like I just rawhide backed every
• 52:44
  bow I ever made just to, just to keep it in one piece, you know,
• 52:49
  and even then they're like 2 inches wide minimum.
• 52:52
  I'd started like 2 1/4, you know, real wide flat bows just
• 52:58
  to keep them in one piece, you know, and, and I think that's
• 53:01
  where my, my personal shell shock comes from, like always
• 53:05
  worrying about a bow blowing up because, you know, it's, it's
• 53:10
  one thing to have a bow go on you once, but when it becomes
• 53:13
  routine and you're just getting showered with, you know, wood
• 53:17
  chips and limbs flying everywhere and they're bouncing
• 53:20
  off parts of your body and it hurts like heck, you know, you
• 53:24
  don't want to do that again. So my big deal was how do I stop
• 53:29
  my bows from breaking in tension?
• 53:30
  And I became my mission for a for a long period of time.
• 53:35
  And this is where I ended up. It's interesting how much your
• 53:38
  environment is shaped what you've become as a bugger.
• 53:42
  You imagine if you were somewhere else, like in the
• 53:44
  Pacific Northwest, you would be doing more self bows and.
• 53:48
  Probably would. Yeah.
• 53:51
  Yeah, I'm, I'm. I love building soft bows.
• 53:55
  I just hate having them blow up in my hands.
• 53:57
  Yeah, when it comes to self bows, do you have a favorite
• 54:02
  type of wood? I would say Elm, actually.
• 54:09
  I love that. Particular type.
• 54:13
  I, you know what? I, I just, I was able to get my
• 54:16
  hands on on a lot of red Elm here.
• 54:19
  So, so kind of got in with a, a, like I said, a, an arborist
• 54:26
  that, you know, cut and, and I'd, I'd go by and he'd take me
• 54:30
  to his red Elm pile. And I just, of course, they're
• 54:34
  none of them are stave length. So I always had to, always had
• 54:37
  to splice them at the grip was really the harder part of all of
• 54:42
  it. I can tell you how many
• 54:44
  propellered bows I got out of that deal.
• 54:47
  There was a few. How do you learn the splice
• 54:50
  handles this trial and error? Repetition, Yeah, yeah,
• 54:55
  repetition. I always did AZ splice, you
• 54:57
  know, So that's just kind of how I did it, yeah.
• 55:02
  Repetition and luck, I guess, you know.
• 55:04
  And then, yeah, repetition, luck and resource and all.
• 55:08
  It filled all the gaps, you know?
• 55:11
  I imagine that's a bit of an intimidating build for a lot of
• 55:14
  failures beginning. For me it is.
• 55:15
  I've never done one and just when I look at I'm like, I
• 55:17
  don't, I don't know how that happens, but I'm sure once you
• 55:23
  get a system set up it's probably just like anything
• 55:25
  else. Yeah, I mean, experience is a
• 55:28
  phenomenal teacher. I've got tons of experience.
• 55:31
  That's what I've got. The, the, The thing is, is I, I,
• 55:36
  I learned the hard way and I in, in, you know, you start getting
• 55:41
  to where I'm at now. So I started doing the math and
• 55:44
  truthfully, you know, the big scheme of things is I'm hoping
• 55:48
  to, I'm hoping to retire from my normal from my, my other job, or
• 55:52
  at least change my relationship with work in the next couple
• 55:57
  years where I can spend a lot more time actually pursuing what
• 56:03
  I do in the shop and maybe even making bows just for, for
• 56:09
  dissemination. But I'm trying to track where I
• 56:17
  was going. Some extra time.
• 56:20
  Yeah, yeah. Like like that's, that's the
• 56:25
  bigger picture. But you know, when I started
• 56:27
  lining things up and I'm thinking to myself, if I'm
• 56:30
  getting like 10 bows a year done and I'm 53, that doesn't give me
• 56:36
  a whole lot of both, a whole lot of experimentation time to work
• 56:41
  with, You know what I mean? If, if I've got, if I've got
• 56:45
  several days per week or month that I can spend well, week,
• 56:50
  several days in a week that I can spend in the shop, I can
• 56:53
  start making some good headway on some of the stuff.
• 56:55
  I don't know. But I spent, I spent all my
• 56:58
  formidable built bow building years learning the hard way, you
• 57:03
  know, and, and I look at it and think I need to save the, the
• 57:08
  younger guys, A, the frustration of breaking so many bows.
• 57:12
  And then B, you know, do something great with it and, and
• 57:16
  keep moving forward with your own skills and, and get past
• 57:19
  the, the tedium, you know, and I think that showing up at the
• 57:25
  doorstep of a great Boyer and having them show you how to
• 57:27
  build a bow and, and you've, you've done that with several of
• 57:30
  them that advances your knowledge so significantly, you
• 57:34
  know, where not everybody has the ability to do something like
• 57:39
  that, you know, and that's, that's kind of where, where my
• 57:43
  niche lies. I guess I'm, I'm kind of, I'm
• 57:46
  aimed at the guy who's like me, right?
• 57:49
  Like I'm my, I'm my own customer, so to speak.
• 57:53
  You know, I live in a tract house in a suburban neighborhood
• 57:58
  with neighbors on all four sides of me, you know, kids playing
• 58:02
  all around all the time. It's, it's a busy area.
• 58:05
  Everybody's mowing their lawn on Saturday or Sunday and, you
• 58:09
  know, doing, doing the usual suburban night thing.
• 58:14
  That's where I live. That's what I do once.
• 58:16
  It's like when it comes to traditional Boyers, I'm probably
• 58:20
  the least traditional of them all.
• 58:22
  I'm, I'm just like a dude in the corner house, you know,
• 58:27
  everybody in my neighborhood knows I'm the guy that builds
• 58:29
  bows, right? That I do have that reputation.
• 58:32
  But you know, that's about as far as that goes.
• 58:35
  So for someone like me to learn, I have to turn to those social
• 58:40
  media outlets. I have to turn to the, to the,
• 58:42
  the information that's available to me that fits within my
• 58:48
  schedule. And that's kind of the guys that
• 58:50
  you know, if you only got a couple days a week to try and
• 58:52
  pursue this, let me help you advance your abilities and at
• 58:55
  least keep you keep you fresh and wanting to do it instead of
• 58:59
  frustrated with broken pieces and calling it off all together,
• 59:03
  you know? Whose content are you watching
• 59:05
  the most or appreciate the most? Oh.
• 59:08
  My gosh, you know, I don't watch a whole lot of boat building
• 59:17
  content at at this point. I, I don't, I don't watch a lot
• 59:23
  of that. I'll watch some, but not a lot.
• 59:26
  I'm more interested in seeing some of the artistic work that
• 59:29
  the different guys are doing. I would say that if, if you were
• 59:35
  to go through the litany of Boyers that you highlight a on
• 59:38
  your podcast and in your book, those are the guys that I, I, I
• 59:42
  really look at and really look for, for, you know, expanding
• 59:48
  the, the, the idea of what a great bow could look like,
• 59:53
  right? The unconventional materials,
• 59:55
  the primitive style of doing things.
• 59:58
  I can't do all of that. You know, I, I put my, I put my
• 1:00:02
  two cents in and, and I think that collectively we all put out
• 1:00:07
  stuff that we can then, oh, assimilate into our own designs,
• 1:00:14
  assimilate into our own builds, however however we want.
• 1:00:18
  Like I know a lot of these guys by their handles, right?
• 1:00:21
  I don't necessarily know their names off the top of my head,
• 1:00:26
  like self bow dot chapter. Yeah, Simon Cowell.
• 1:00:32
  Yeah, phenomenal is amazing. Oh.
• 1:00:36
  My God, like you look at you look at that work and, and just
• 1:00:39
  think man alive that Batman is a Craftsman and and God bless him.
• 1:00:45
  And I, I like got my idea for my arrow passes my, my strike
• 1:00:51
  plates, the round strike plates. Looking at his stuff.
• 1:00:56
  That was a beautiful little touch.
• 1:00:57
  And I've been putting round leather.
• 1:00:59
  I've been doing that before. I'd seen, seen his stuff.
• 1:01:02
  Like I never thought about inlaying form or anything else.
• 1:01:06
  And that's where that's where I acquired that from, right?
• 1:01:11
  Just kind of incorporated it into my bows.
• 1:01:15
  So yeah, just different, different things you see in
• 1:01:18
  different bows. And then all of a sudden you can
• 1:01:20
  incorporate it into your own and in some manner or fashion and,
• 1:01:24
  and we'll just drive that whole artistic piece forward.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, the artistry of it is incredible.
• 1:01:31
  And that's that's actually something Simon is quoted in in
• 1:01:34
  my book saying that he he can tell whether a bow is a good bow
• 1:01:40
  or not just by looking at it. And it's based on the beauty of
• 1:01:42
  it, the symmetry of it, the shape of it, the even he said
• 1:01:45
  even before it's he's drawn the string, he can tell whether
• 1:01:49
  that's going to be a good bell. Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 1:01:52
  You can, yeah, Yeah. Where did your business name,
• 1:01:56
  Meadowlark come from? Yeah.
• 1:01:59
  Interesting story behind that. I, I spent a summer shooting
• 1:02:04
  with a guy that I, I had met down at the archery ranch here
• 1:02:08
  locally and we would just shoot for fun out there.
• 1:02:12
  And, and I'd run across him every once in a while and, and
• 1:02:16
  he was like, man, I, I was out here the other day and I'm, I'm
• 1:02:20
  going to be in a lot of trouble if anybody finds out that I, I
• 1:02:23
  shot this meadowlark off the top of one of the, one of the bow
• 1:02:28
  butts down there and, and, or the arrow butts.
• 1:02:32
  And, and I'm like, what do you mean by that?
• 1:02:34
  And he's like, well, it's the state bird.
• 1:02:36
  I mean, you can't go shoot in a meadowlark, right?
• 1:02:40
  So I'm like, OK, I mean, if I want to try and incorporate some
• 1:02:44
  local local feel to the to my my name, I thought my meadowlark
• 1:02:49
  would be a cool way to, you know, bring in my local room and
• 1:02:55
  and make a part of the name. What really sucks about that is
• 1:02:59
  when I started doing some research, the state bird is a
• 1:03:02
  lark bunting. Meadowlark is the state bird for
• 1:03:06
  Utah, and I think you know me and I'm like, well, it's too
• 1:03:11
  late now. Your.
• 1:03:13
  Research. Like it's late now because I'm,
• 1:03:17
  I, I love the name and I'm going with it anyway.
• 1:03:20
  I'm not going to call my company Lark Bunting.
• 1:03:23
  So I just stuck. With it, there's quite a number
• 1:03:27
  of Bowers who have branded their their bows after birds.
• 1:03:31
  I think about it like quite a number.
• 1:03:34
  So that's interesting. So what now for you, Jody?
• 1:03:38
  You're continuing on carving bows on your days off and.
• 1:03:44
  So yeah, you know. Any new projects or content that
• 1:03:48
  you're working on? You know, it's it right now,
• 1:03:51
  it's, it's followed a cycle, right?
• 1:03:53
  It's just the next bow, the next bow, then the next bow, then the
• 1:03:56
  next bow. And I'm, I'm, I'm wanting to
• 1:03:59
  kind of graduate from, from just documenting builds at this point
• 1:04:03
  and get back into more, whether it be experimental stuff and,
• 1:04:07
  and kind of take my audience, if you will, along the ride for,
• 1:04:11
  for stuff like that or develop some, some sort of means of
• 1:04:16
  coaching and, and teaching people how to make both.
• 1:04:19
  So you get to let me ask you a quick question.
• 1:04:25
  How old are you 4747 so you got to have some designs at at 47
• 1:04:33
  you're starting to put some designs on retirement, you know,
• 1:04:36
  I. Retired decades ago.
• 1:04:39
  All right. Life for me is always
• 1:04:42
  retirement, so. Good for you.
• 1:04:44
  So here I am, I am putting designs on.
• 1:04:47
  The and I shouldn't say decades ago, but officially five years
• 1:04:51
  ago. So I'm, what I'm, what I'm
• 1:04:54
  trying to do is, is, is segue into this full time, right?
• 1:05:01
  And I'm, I'm making some money doing what I do.
• 1:05:04
  And I, I wouldn't mind selling some bows.
• 1:05:07
  Like, like I said, the, the, the number of bows I, I put out is
• 1:05:10
  just extremely limited. So it's not a if, if you were
• 1:05:13
  doing bow building for an income, right, like building
• 1:05:20
  bows. And I see these guys that are
• 1:05:21
  just, they're putting out bows and putting out bows and putting
• 1:05:24
  out bows. Two things for me that would
• 1:05:29
  become too monotonous for me in the way that I approach it.
• 1:05:32
  I, I just, I couldn't do it that way.
• 1:05:36
  I and I had contemplated it at one time, but it's just, it's
• 1:05:39
  not, that's not me. Like that's not where I want to
• 1:05:42
  be. But I do want to glean some sort
• 1:05:46
  of like livelihood in that, you know, in that niche, so to
• 1:05:51
  speak. And that's where the social
• 1:05:53
  media part comes in. So I'm, I'm, I'm getting a
• 1:05:57
  little traction in terms of being able to draw an income
• 1:06:01
  from all of that through different means and
• 1:06:03
  methodologies. And, and I'm testing the waters
• 1:06:06
  on some different stuff to try and maximize that to support, to
• 1:06:10
  really support bringing the information forward to, to guys
• 1:06:14
  that want to know it and learn it.
• 1:06:17
  Once my schedule clears, that'll be a completely different game.
• 1:06:21
  You know, it's it'll, it'll change things completely for me.
• 1:06:24
  What that looks like, I'm not 100% sure right now.
• 1:06:29
  I got about a year and a half to figure it out so.
• 1:06:34
  Nice. Well, it's in the works.
• 1:06:36
  That's sounds like some exciting things.
• 1:06:39
  You've got such a catalog of great online material.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah, like there might be something there for you to to
• 1:06:45
  create off of that. It's a, it's, it's a long story
• 1:06:51
  of, of stuff, you know what I mean?
• 1:06:52
  And and there's if if I was a little more cognizant of, of
• 1:06:59
  recording it, there'd be tons more, way more.
• 1:07:03
  Like you are more cognizant than any other bow your I've met if
• 1:07:06
  you're recording every bow build.
• 1:07:08
  Well, to some degree, you know what I mean?
• 1:07:10
  Like, OK, I filmed the bow build, but what's what's missing
• 1:07:13
  from all that is, is like all the preparation that goes into
• 1:07:17
  this particular process that gets this done right?
• 1:07:20
  And like, you see the end result.
• 1:07:22
  And I think for some people it's like, but wait a minute, how'd
• 1:07:25
  you get there? Or, or what's what's really
• 1:07:27
  behind a bow build? You know, when we just watch it,
• 1:07:30
  slap pieces of wood down on a bench, glue them together and
• 1:07:33
  bingo out in the next episode. You're shooting at a a target,
• 1:07:36
  you know what I mean? And I think to some degree
• 1:07:39
  that's the entertainment piece of it.
• 1:07:40
  And people lose interest when you get lost in the minutiae of
• 1:07:43
  of building a bow. But I think there's a there's an
• 1:07:47
  opportunity in the minutiae piece in some manner, right?
• 1:07:51
  Like that. That's where the that's where
• 1:07:53
  the coaching teaching comes for guys who are specifically
• 1:07:56
  interested in that. And I don't think that's a
• 1:07:58
  YouTube thing. I think that's going to be a
• 1:07:59
  different that's going to take a different is that.
• 1:08:02
  Going to be in person, you think?
• 1:08:04
  I, you know, I'm trying to actually bridge that gap, so I,
• 1:08:08
  I'd be more than happy to go in person, but I, I feel like from
• 1:08:13
  an accommodation standpoint, I don't think my shop can
• 1:08:16
  accommodate more than a couple people.
• 1:08:18
  So are you thinking then more of some sort of online schooling,
• 1:08:22
  not YouTube based creating your own platform in?
• 1:08:25
  The distance and I, I'm not sure that that's really been done out
• 1:08:29
  there in any way so that. Building.
• 1:08:31
  I'm not sure. Yeah, certainly in a lot of
• 1:08:33
  other areas and there's tons of resources for putting your
• 1:08:37
  content into course format like that's so much available.
• 1:08:42
  To you and I'm and I'm thinking it'd be more of a real time
• 1:08:45
  thing though, you know, like be able to get together and and
• 1:08:49
  like basically spend an hour in the shop together.
• 1:08:52
  Go what's the question? What are you learning?
• 1:08:54
  What? What do you need from you know
• 1:08:56
  what can I help with? Is there anyone in your local
• 1:09:01
  kind of ecosphere who carves bows, who you're sharing ideas
• 1:09:05
  with, or just bouncer about Bo boiling?
• 1:09:10
  Yeah, several guys. No, nobody that's really into
• 1:09:13
  the like on the social media scene or anything like that,
• 1:09:16
  right. So I've come in contact with a
• 1:09:18
  friend named Jim. He lives in Virginia, contact
• 1:09:23
  with another gentleman out of South Carolina, another another
• 1:09:28
  fellow that lives just north of me up here in in Wyoming.
• 1:09:32
  And we talked a lot about it. I've had some, some good
• 1:09:36
  conversation with like Mark Bellitz, you know, when, when I
• 1:09:39
  was working on some Howard Hill bows and just great conversation
• 1:09:45
  to, I just love talking about bows.
• 1:09:47
  I love making bows and anything that anything that has to do
• 1:09:51
  with producing a bow I I, I really enjoy.
• 1:09:54
  Do you ever go to any of the big Jamboree or?
• 1:09:57
  I have not been able to, yeah, I've not been able to.
• 1:10:00
  That is something that will change though, certainly in the
• 1:10:03
  YEAH in the future. So you're not it's, it'll be a
• 1:10:07
  drive, but you're not too far from some of those in the
• 1:10:09
  Midwest, like a Missouri and Oklahoma and whatnot.
• 1:10:14
  Yeah, Yeah, I haven't either. I've heard good things about
• 1:10:18
  them. I'm hoping next year that once
• 1:10:19
  our book is published, my daughter and I will get to go to
• 1:10:21
  some of them. Yeah, I hear, I hear great
• 1:10:24
  things about them. I would love to be there just
• 1:10:27
  just to meet the guys out there like I, I think I'm on one hand,
• 1:10:32
  the thought would be like, well, should go out and be a vendor
• 1:10:35
  out there and I actually wouldn't want to.
• 1:10:37
  I want to go out and just meet all the guys that are doing
• 1:10:39
  this, you know, out there that got their stuff on on social
• 1:10:44
  media and, and doing their, their thing.
• 1:10:46
  And then the guys who really have like really nurtured the
• 1:10:56
  primitive bow culture because there for a minute it seemed
• 1:11:01
  like it it had lost all traction, you know, like it was
• 1:11:04
  a very, very small number of guys back in the 90s that were
• 1:11:08
  doing this sort of thing. So yeah, it's incredible to see
• 1:11:13
  where it is now and being, you know, almost obsolete.
• 1:11:18
  I think probably at some point in time before the Bowyer's
• 1:11:22
  Bible and the authors that involved in that put out their
• 1:11:25
  own stuff. Damn, they had to do it on their
• 1:11:28
  own to make it happen. You know what I mean?
• 1:11:30
  So, Paul? I, I think Paul was, he talked
• 1:11:34
  on our first interview about writing the bent stick and
• 1:11:37
  producing it kind of at his kitchen table and literally like
• 1:11:40
  hand glowing books together and it was.
• 1:11:42
  Shipping really, I mean it, it just looks like a photocopied
• 1:11:46
  Ledger of notes. You know what I mean?
• 1:11:48
  And then some type stuff. I I actually really liked it a
• 1:11:52
  lot. I love this book.
• 1:11:56
  Anything else you want to share, Jody, before we sign off?
• 1:11:58
  Any questions? Any anything else?
• 1:12:01
  Yeah, no, I mean, I'm just thank you for having me on, you know,
• 1:12:05
  it's actually quite an honor. I'll, I'll tell you that I've
• 1:12:09
  been following your content for quite some time in in beautiful
• 1:12:13
  photography and beautiful examples of great pose and
• 1:12:16
  Craftsman and everything else that go with it.
• 1:12:19
  And secretly thought to myself, man, it'd be nice to get invited
• 1:12:25
  to do something like that. And and that popped up in my DMS
• 1:12:30
  and I'm I was ecstatic to get that.
• 1:12:32
  I want to thank you for for inviting me on SO.
• 1:12:35
  Thanks for sharing, that's my pleasure.
• 1:12:37
  I feel so fortunate. I am a very amateur Boyer at
• 1:12:40
  best, and it's just something I love to do.
• 1:12:42
  And yet I get to be in the space where I get to have these
• 1:12:44
  conversations with experienced Boyer such as yourself and get
• 1:12:48
  to live and learn through through all of your your
• 1:12:52
  knowledge. And as you mentioned, I've had
• 1:12:54
  the great fortune of visiting with now 151415 different
• 1:13:00
  bowyers and carving bows with them.
• 1:13:01
  So I'm just extract that I get to do this.
• 1:13:04
  And sometimes my daughter comes along with me and takes
• 1:13:07
  beautiful photos. So it's a, it's a win, win.
• 1:13:09
  There you go. Yeah, well, thanks again.
• 1:13:13
  And it's been really nice getting to know you and keep
• 1:13:17
  keep putting out the good content and the beautiful bows.
• 1:13:20
  All right. Yeah.
• 1:13:21
  Thank you. Appreciate it.
• 1:13:23
  You're welcome. Thanks for listening to Project
• 1:13:31
  Quiver on Salish Wolf. Follow our journey on Instagram
• 1:13:34
  and YouTube at Project Quiver Official as we discover the
• 1:13:37
  world's most extraordinary traditional bowyers and join our
• 1:13:40
  newsletter at projectquiver.com. Quiver, the art of life through
• 1:13:44
  Bow Craft, Our photographic and narrative exploration of
• 1:13:47
  traditional bow carving published by Trope, will be
• 1:13:49
  available in fall 2026. We are honored to share with you
• 1:13:53
  the beauty, tradition, and magic of the bow and arrow.
• 1:13:57
  The book is Quiver. The journey is Project Quiver.
• 1:14:00
  This is the Salish Wolf podcast.