Latest / Salish Wolf / #55 Jamie MacDonald on Project Quiver

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#55 Jamie MacDonald on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

• 0:06
  Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
• 0:09
  the globe to capture the artistry and spirit of the
• 0:12
  world's finest traditional bow carvers.
• 0:14
  I'm Todd, the father. Ella is my daughter.
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  Together we're on a mission to create a stunning coffee table
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  book that profiles more than a dozen master bow years and their
• 0:23
  unparalleled skill. For each chapter, we travel to
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  the Bow Years workshop. Carve a bow under his guidance,
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  photograph his woodcraft in detail and share his story here
• 0:32
  on the Salish Wolf Podcast. The book is called Quiver the
• 0:36
  Art of Life. Through Bow Craft and this
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  journey, our living story is Project Quiver.
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  How are you, man? Hey, pretty good.
• 0:50
  Yeah, long time no see. It's been a while I I don't even
• 0:53
  remember how long it's been. Oh gosh, I mean I always want to
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  say like 4 years but reality it's probably like 6.
• 1:01
  Yeah, something like that. It's been a while.
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  Yeah. You're looking good.
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  Yeah. Keeping busy, having fun, You
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  know, kids are getting big. And we've been.
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  Yeah. Yeah, Things have settled out a
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  bit. You know, we've been doing the
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  whole community stuff for a few years and finally our house is
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  all done and. Nice.
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  Yeah, a little more time and space in our world to yeah,
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  enjoy. Kids are getting old.
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  How old are the kids now? Feather is turning 14 on
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  Saturday. OK.
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  And you and just turned 11. All right, yeah, I was trying to
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  remember how old they might be. My son is 12 and my daughter's
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  15 so. OK.
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  So what you got one year ahead of us?
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  Yeah, I guess so. Well.
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  Such such cool names for a bow ears kids.
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  Feather and you and what are yours?
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  Yeah, Bria or Brea. That's my wife, OK, my daughter,
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  my daughter's Ella and my son is Ollie.
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  How cool. Yeah, at some point I'm curious
• 2:02
  to pick your brain. Costa Rica a little bit, but
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  happy. Well, we're going to have a,
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  we're going to have a handful. Of days to do that.
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  Yeah, that's true. Cool.
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  Yeah. Sound wise.
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  Can you hear me OK? You're just on speaker.
• 2:16
  Yeah, it's, it's OK. It's not studio quality, but I
• 2:19
  think it it's fine. Yeah.
• 2:22
  Yeah. So it looks like you are in the
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  workshop where I've been before. Is that still your your place?
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  Yeah, we're still Langde Rd. Yeah, I'm trying to think not.
• 2:35
  I don't feel like too much has changed around here.
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  So on your tell me a bit about how your property has changed
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  cuz when I last saw you guys were pretty new there and you
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  were creating kind of an eco conscious community, is that
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  right? Yeah, pretty much.
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  So we bought the place I guess January of 2019, so 6 1/2 years
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  ago now. And when we bought it, it was an
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  old sort of bed and breakfast sort of natural retreat I would
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  say. Yeah.
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  So we have been pretty busy around there.
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  We've cleared a bit of land at this point.
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  I think we're up to 566 new houses have been built there.
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  And so far everything has been sort of natural built like a lot
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  of clay, lot of, you know, cob, variation on cob, earth bag,
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  just that. Yeah, 'cause we have sort of no
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  enforced building code where we are in the regional district,
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  we've got that flexibility. So been building sort of smaller
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  housing. We've been putting in, you know,
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  water systems and grey water systems and orchards.
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  And yeah, it's been busy. That is so cool.
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  So it's how big's the land again?
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  We got 42 acres. Wow, OK, that's way bigger than
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  I thought. 42 acres, a lot of forest.
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  We got our whole eastern boundary is the river and yeah,
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  I mean it's a complicated property because it's pretty
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  benchy sort of big natural terraces.
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  But we've also got a ton of water coming through there.
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  We've got three ponds, springs, river Creek.
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  So we've got setbacks all off off of all of those water
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  bodies. So it's even though it's big,
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  it's relatively limited on, you know, where we can do what we
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  want to do. But we a lot of wild space with
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  it too. Yeah, it's so beautiful too,
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  with the river and all those waterways.
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  That's and all the trees. Yeah.
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  So for the homes that you built, do you have families living in
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  them? How many families aren't?
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  How many families now are part of the community?
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  I think we have 8 full time families there now and another
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  one that's sort of in exploration.
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  So I think we have, I want to say we have about 20-3 people on
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  site. OK.
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  Yeah, yeah. I'd have to do a head count to,
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  you know, figure out exactly. But yeah, good balance.
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  You know, our youngest is 5 now. He was born there and I think
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  our oldest is turning 80. So everything in between.
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  And is that everything you had envisioned?
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  Is it complicated? You know, like this year we are
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  doing a potluck with our sort of sister community 'cause when we
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  started it there was six families and last sort of not
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  last minute, but when it came time to buy property we split
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  into two groups. So we three families bought the
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  sort of out of town acreage that we're on and three families
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  bought a farm in town. So this year in August will be a
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  10 year anniversary to the start of the meetings.
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  So it's been a lot, you know, so now that things are, we've put a
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  lot into it, like Jen and I have been yeah, relatively central in
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  the whole, you know, building the system.
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  So now that things are sort of built out a little bit feeling
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  more stable, you know, that was always the baseline.
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  It's like we got to get to where things are stable.
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  Where it's the amount of work required individually is not,
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  you know, overwhelming. So feels like we're at that
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  point now. So this year we're our families,
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  We've taken a little bit of a break.
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  You know, we did a big trip in the winter.
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  We went down to South America for five months.
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  Right. Yeah, I want to hear about that.
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  Yeah, really getting into our surfing as a family.
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  So it's great. It's yeah, it's been a lot for
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  us in the family for sure. So we're taking a little, not a
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  break, but we're just, we've transitioned, we call a
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  nourishment phase. So for years we were building
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  and clearing and infrastructure and systems and, and now we're
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  just taking a break, really trying to connect as a
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  community, refocus why we're here and yeah, trying to take
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  the time to, I want to say enjoy it.
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  Yeah. Are you expanding still?
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  Are other families like I know you said you had an application
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  for one or one considering is there a desire to go beyond
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  that? Yeah.
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  So the way it's set up now is we cleared an area and we put in
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  eight building sites and there's another probably two or three
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  building sites on the lower section.
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  So I would say we could easily handle 8 to 10 before we had to
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  look at, you know, further development, more clearing.
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  So I think for now we're just sort of, yeah, not clearing any
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  more land at the moment, slowly trying to build up to those,
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  getting the sites we do have occupied.
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  But at this moment for the last year, we've taken a pause on
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  membership just because things are stable financially, it's
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  quite affordable. So we are we're all just taking
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  a little breather and a break. There was the risk of a burnout.
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  So we are actively trying to avoid, you know, overdoing it
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  and burning out and losing members.
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  So we'll take a break for now. There's still, there's a family
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  coming, partly because we all know them and we're excited to
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  have them there. But yeah, new people take a lot
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  of work, you know, integrating them into the place, the
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  systems. So at this moment, we're kind of
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  on pause to just chill out, relax, no stress, take care of
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  ourselves as community members. But there is definitely room for
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  further expansion down the line. Yeah.
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  And what is like the general ethos of the community?
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  Are you guys completely off the grid sustainable agriculture?
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  What is the the vibe? No, I would say I often describe
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  us a bit of a Goldilocks. You know, we're not too this,
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  we're not too that. We are grid tied.
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  We all have power. We have, we're working on our
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  food systems, but it's not the greatest farmland, you know,
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  it's pretty forested, got a lot of rock.
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  So I would say direction, not perfection, you know, trying to
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  take it easy on ourselves, moving towards, you know, a lot
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  of those pieces, food, sustainability.
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  And I would say our focus or what ties us together is 1 is a
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  love of the land. It's a beautiful spot,
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  especially in the summer. This time of year.
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  We have hands down the most beautiful swimming holes in Pell
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  River. So that, yeah, is definitely a
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  piece. So love of the land,
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  affordability, sort of support helping each other out.
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  But we are not, we don't have, we're not a religious community.
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  We're not, you know, strictly a vegan community or that sort of
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  thing. It's a bit of, yeah, love of the
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  land and portability and kind of, I don't know, slow down,
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  enjoy life, come together, celebrate, but no sort of strong
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  tying piece, I would say. Yeah, is most of the building,
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  most of the structures, are they natural build?
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  Yeah. A lot of them are, yeah.
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  So far everything new has been natural built.
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  So, Jenna, is that the? Is that the community coming
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  together to do that? There's some of that, yeah.
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  At this point, when you join as a member, you're sort of
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  assigned a building lot. In reality, you can build pretty
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  much whatever you want on it, but there's definitely an
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  emphasis on natural material, smaller dwellings.
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  You know, in our. We have a common house, you've
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  seen it. We've got that big house there.
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  So we have guest bedrooms, we have communal laundry, We have,
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  yeah, big kitchen gathering space.
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  So some of having, you know, guest bedrooms in the common
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  house is you can build a smaller house because maybe you don't
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  need a guest bedroom. So, but I think the natural
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  build, some of it's been affordability, you know, cost of
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  building these days has gone absolutely crazy.
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  So natural builds, although there's more labor involved,
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  material wise, they're still pretty affordable.
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  We've done a lot of volunteer labor through the Work Away
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  program. And yeah, there's community
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  members, you know, helping each other on site for sure.
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  When I came over here, couple people from the community were
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  helping one guy shingle the side of his house.
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  So yeah, it goes on, but it's not a like a prescribed
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  necessity I would say. And you guys have, I guess,
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  obviously built your own house, you and Jenna and the kids.
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  Yeah, we built her home. We got interested in a style of
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  building called Earth Bag, so also known as Hyper Adobe.
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  So using they call it Rochelle netting, like an open weave
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  polyethylene polypropylene bag, kind of like an onion sack, but
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  comes in a long tube. So we would fill those tubes
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  with clay from on site, local sand and pumice.
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  So that puffed volcanic rock. So there's a there's a mine up
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  in Pemberton. So our house has a high ratio of
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  pumice. Yes, we built an earth bag and
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  then it's all called Dover Natural Plasters.
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  So we built a small one first, maybe about 600 square feet,
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  single story with a sort of a post and beam roof structure.
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  So we built that one during COVID and finished it up and we
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  sold it to a community member and that we learned a lot and it
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  gave us the confidence to build our family house which is now 2
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  story load bearing earth bag. That is awesome, I can't wait to
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  see it. It's pretty cool.
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  Yeah, I love the natural building, so it's well done.
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  Where are you from? Is Powell River home?
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  No originally, originally just across the pond.
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  So I was born raised in Comox, Courtney, Comox Valley, grew up
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  there, but both my parents came from east during Canada.
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  So my dad's from New Brunswick, moved out to Vancouver in the
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  like 70s and my mom's from Saskatchewan.
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  OK, yeah, well, I, I promise we will talk about bows, but I want
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  to hear about South America. Yeah, yeah.
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  So we were looking for, we've been working on our Spanish as a
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  family. We want to all learn better
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  Spanish. We've been trying to time it.
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  We, we've wanted to do a big trip for a number of years and
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  we were trying to find that sort of sweet age where Feather
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  wasn't too old, but Ewan was old enough.
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  So yeah, we left. Feather would have been, I
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  guess, 13. Ewan would have been 10.
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  And we've been to Mexico a few times in the past and we wanted
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  to go a little further afield. And yeah, affordability was a
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  big piece because we want to go for a long trip and we home
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  school, so we had a lot of flexibility to just roll, yeah,
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  South America into the kids education.
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  So we settled on Peru. A couple reasons.
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  One, it's known of the home of the left hand point breaks.
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  Everything is peeling left and up and down the coast, which
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  appeals to three of the four family members, Jen and I Yeah,
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  yeah. There's the wave Tacoma, which
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  is pretty famous that we watch on surf cams and wanted to see
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  in person. So we and then Peru had such a
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  variety of ecosystem, you know, right from some of the driest
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  deserts on earth to the wettest Amazon jungle to like the high
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  Andes mountains, Lake Titicaca, a lot of volcanic activity.
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  There was just so much to see and do within that country.
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  And then we settled on a town sort of North Central Peru
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  called Wanchaco, which is a suburb of the town, city Truvio.
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  And we were looking for a place where we could surf the morning,
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  super consistent, not big, but consistent and Spanish classes
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  sort of during midday. Yeah.
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  So we've settled there, little town called Wanchaco, got
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  enrolled in Spanish classes, bought some surfboards, and
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  yeah, we stayed there for a month at the start.
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  Super consistent waves, like, unbelievable.
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  You can surf every day all year. Super friendly, super
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  affordable. Yeah.
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  So we surfed there for a month, and then we went up the coast
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  and visited a bunch of other waves for a couple weeks.
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  And then we went down to Chile and visited.
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  We did a family reunion for Christmas, so Jenna's side of
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  the family came down, did some surfing, did some sort of inland
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  volcano hiking stuff, and then we traveled for two months all
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  through up to Lake Titicaca, the Atacama Desert, up into the
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  Andes, Sacred Valley, Busco Oyantitambo, thought of that old
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  Inca stonework, Machu Picchu. And then we went into the jungle
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  and we did A8 day canoe camping trip with us and the boat driver
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  and the guide and the cook and went pretty, yeah, deep up the
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  waterways into the Amazon. And then we went back to the
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  coast and we surfed for another six weeks and surfed Juanchaco a
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  lot. And then, but we really loved
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  that jacama area. It's pretty desert.
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  Like it's, it's not the most beautiful sort of visual, like
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  it's some of the desert, like there's nothing alive.
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  It is just windswept barren. But the wave, yeah, it just
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  wraps around this point and then peels.
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  And until you've seen it either in video or in person, it's hard
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  to explain. Like really long periods, like
• 17:27
  1819 second periods and crazy long rides.
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  Like we got a video of feather, a drone shot and she's ripping
• 17:35
  backside and you missed the start of the wave.
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  So she's on it for a little while first, but the video is
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  over a minute and 1/2 of her of her ripping backside.
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  So crazy long rides. It's got quite a bit of current
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  so can be a bit tricky to paddle.
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  You got to hike out to the point and then punch out.
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  But there's also a couple guys there.
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  We became buddies with one of the boat drivers.
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  So they run little Zodiacs and you hire them for three hours
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  and they'll run you out to the point, drop you off, and then
• 18:07
  sort of boat along beside you as you're surfing in, pick you up
• 18:11
  and run you back out. So we got hooked on some boat
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  trips in Tacoma and yeah, surfed our faces off there.
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  Yeah, that sounds amazing, all of that.
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  Yeah, no, it was good. And we skipped winter.
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  We we left at the end of October and we came home at the end of
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  March. Yeah.
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  So we're in that the return home phase now where we're sort of,
• 18:35
  yeah, got the memories, but kind of Jones and for what's next.
• 18:41
  Yeah. So when you travelled around,
• 18:44
  were you, did you have a vehicle?
• 18:47
  At times we rented, we did everything, you know, we kept it
• 18:50
  super light. We only had carry on bags so and
• 18:54
  we had wet suits in our bags with us.
• 18:55
  So we had packing super minimal. Most of the area we were in,
• 19:00
  it's basically 22° sun and cloud all year sort of again,
• 19:06
  Goldilocks not too hot, not too cold.
• 19:09
  We probably had three days of rain in five months, so super,
• 19:15
  super dry. There's an air current that sort
• 19:18
  of swings around Antarctica. All the moisture freezes out and
• 19:23
  then it comes slamming into Peru.
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  So the air itself has very little moisture in it.
• 19:29
  So it is very rare. Like a lot of the shopping malls
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  are sort of open air. There's just no roofs on
• 19:34
  anything. So when they do get rain, it's
• 19:37
  pretty, can be catastrophic, but it is so rare.
• 19:41
  Yeah, but a lot of bussing, you know, a lot of bussing, a lot of
• 19:43
  taxis with your surfboards. No, we, we rented at first
• 19:51
  there's, yeah, decent board rental most places that we
• 19:54
  rented. And then the last trip when we
• 19:58
  came back to the coast for six weeks, we bought boards.
• 20:02
  There was a local shaper there who three of us got boards made
• 20:07
  and then we just we brought the boards home with us.
• 20:10
  What's a locally made shape board cost from there it.
• 20:13
  Was about 400 Canadian. Oh wow, yeah, he was great
• 20:18
  because yeah, his shop was like right on the beach and he'd let
• 20:21
  you try everything too. He'd be like, oh, I built this
• 20:24
  one, take it out. What do you think?
• 20:25
  Try that. So it's not a lot of times you
• 20:28
  can demo the board, you know, like brand new boards.
• 20:32
  But great. He offered, he said if you buy
• 20:34
  the board for basically about four hundred, 425 Canadian, he'd
• 20:39
  buy it back for you from you for half price at the end of the
• 20:42
  trip if you wanted. But by that point we all got
• 20:45
  pretty attached. And yeah, souvenirs really.
• 20:49
  Some people bring, yeah, absolutely.
• 20:51
  Some people bring home surfboards.
• 20:55
  Well, you can keep using them. Yeah, wet suits required.
• 20:59
  Yeah, 3 twos. Yeah, 3 twos.
• 21:02
  Some places we, we did bring booties just because there's
• 21:05
  yeah, decent. Some places got rock 3 twos.
• 21:09
  There was a couple times in sort of their winter where I could
• 21:15
  have done a four, three. But yeah.
• 21:19
  But with that, it's just that same sort of Antarctic current,
• 21:23
  decently cold water. But with that cold water comes
• 21:26
  just a plethora of sea life. So, so much fish, so much
• 21:31
  seafood. Yeah.
• 21:34
  And it also, I think is probably what keeps the surf, you know,
• 21:38
  less crowded because it's not super tropical.
• 21:41
  It's more arid desert and the water's a little chilly.
• 21:44
  And I think a lot of surf travel is, you know, chasing tropical
• 21:47
  warm water. So yeah, it was.
• 21:50
  There was times it got busy, but there's a lot of times where it
• 21:52
  was not not busy at all. That's amazing.
• 21:57
  Good for you. Yeah.
• 21:58
  Where did the Where did the family learn to surf?
• 22:01
  We've been going to, I mean, I've surfed since I was little,
• 22:06
  but we've played around in Tofino a bunch, so that's
• 22:11
  probably where the kids started when they were little.
• 22:14
  We had them like they were the little two and three-year olds
• 22:17
  in the little mini wet suits and boogie boards and so they've
• 22:20
  been in the water since they were real small.
• 22:24
  Tofino is where they started picking it up.
• 22:27
  But this trip, everyone's surfing just levelled up big
• 22:30
  time. We did a couple trips to Mexico.
• 22:33
  They were a bit smaller, but that's sort of where Jenna
• 22:36
  started getting into it. Yeah.
• 22:39
  But this trip, everyone, yeah. You guys on short boards or long
• 22:44
  boards? Anything in between we we have
• 22:48
  Jenna, I have long boards, but we're ride more fun boards.
• 22:51
  I'm on a bit of a 6-8 egg thing. Jen's on a sort of 7273 fun
• 22:57
  board and the kids are into their short boards feathers on a
• 23:00
  little 55 yeah you and like short boards they want something
• 23:05
  they conduct 5 cuz they they're some and you know the waves are
• 23:10
  big for us they're huge for them so.
• 23:12
  Yeah, yeah. And how'd the Spanish go?
• 23:16
  Pretty good, the kids I would say picked it up quicker than
• 23:19
  us. That's expected, I think.
• 23:22
  Yeah, they got those malleable little brains that just soak it
• 23:25
  up. Yeah, yeah, In some ways I think
• 23:28
  we're hoping to pick up a little bit more.
• 23:30
  The hard part is travelling as a family.
• 23:32
  It's like we still talk English together as if you're there, you
• 23:36
  know, entirely on your own. But near the end of the trip,
• 23:40
  both in Wanchaco, we met a good friend there who we keep in
• 23:45
  touch with, Carlos. And so that's been good.
• 23:49
  And then the kids met 3 little friends in Tacoma who they were
• 23:54
  hanging out with and playing with and are still video
• 23:56
  chatting all the time. And they don't speak any
• 23:58
  English, so that's super good for them.
• 24:02
  But we're all sort of at that point where we've got a bit
• 24:05
  better Spanish, we've got a bit better at surfing.
• 24:07
  And we're sort of thinking, man, if we went again, like, what
• 24:10
  would the next level up, you know, look like on both of
• 24:13
  those? That's so amazing.
• 24:16
  And the homeschooling, so that's something that obviously affords
• 24:19
  you guys a lot of flexibility. Have you always homeschooled?
• 24:22
  We've homeschooled right from the get go.
• 24:23
  Yeah, yeah, both of them. We have an older son who's now
• 24:27
  24 and he went through public school and it, yeah, public
• 24:32
  school, you know, works for some, doesn't work for others.
• 24:34
  It didn't work for him. So there was some struggles that
• 24:38
  came along with that. So with these guys, because our
• 24:41
  business has been entirely flexible as well, the
• 24:46
  homeschooling, yeah, really fit for us.
• 24:50
  I wouldn't say we were opposed to public school.
• 24:54
  It's looking like perhaps both of them are going to school this
• 24:57
  year. Feather.
• 24:59
  Feather really wants to do high school.
• 25:01
  So where we live, high school starts in Grade 8.
• 25:04
  So we skipped Grade 8 on our trip.
• 25:06
  So she would be into Grade 9 this year.
• 25:09
  Yeah. And she's excited for the, the,
• 25:12
  you know, the drama and the foods and the pieces that come
• 25:15
  with it. We just really wanted our kids
• 25:18
  to get a, get their feet under them, figure out a little bit
• 25:21
  who they are, what's, you know, important to us and our family,
• 25:24
  what our values look like. So that when they do enter that
• 25:28
  system that I want to say there's just a bit more
• 25:31
  self-confidence that comes with that and that they both have
• 25:34
  that they're both super solid, you know.
• 25:37
  Yeah, good communicators. And I think they'll they'll be
• 25:40
  OK. But it feels easier now to put
• 25:43
  them into that system than when they're really little.
• 25:46
  Right now, were you guys doing kind of the unschooling thing or
• 25:49
  did you have some curriculum that you were trying to keep
• 25:52
  them pace with? So where we live in the Pell
• 25:56
  River region, there is a department of the public school
• 26:00
  called the Pi program Partners in Education.
• 26:03
  So it's run through our school district.
• 26:05
  They were assigned as teacher and school work with that.
• 26:09
  So they've been, yeah, doing the BC curriculum with that.
• 26:15
  And then, you know, through the year, they would have activities
• 26:18
  and interaction days with various events in the community.
• 26:21
  And so no, we were doing, I would say the homeschool, but
• 26:25
  sort of supported through the public school system.
• 26:28
  But our teachers were really, really great.
• 26:30
  You know, basically I would say our teachers trusted us as
• 26:35
  parents and, you know, education as a priority.
• 26:38
  So a lot of times the teacher would come out and the kids
• 26:41
  would sort of sit down and show them, run through pictures or
• 26:44
  slideshows of what we've been doing and working on.
• 26:46
  And, you know, the teachers were really good at finding ways to,
• 26:50
  you know, make that life skills fit into the boxes that they
• 26:54
  needed. Nice.
• 26:56
  So it sounds like a good system. You're lucky to have that.
• 26:59
  Yeah, no, it's good. I mean, when the kids were
• 27:01
  younger, they had more friends who were homeschooling and then
• 27:04
  over time, you know, more and more of their friends started
• 27:06
  going into the public school. Whereas at the point now there's
• 27:10
  a couple friends they have at home school, but yeah, most of
• 27:13
  their friend network is in school now.
• 27:16
  So it's also gotten to the point, you know, some of
• 27:18
  feathers programs to grade 9. Like you get to a point where
• 27:23
  it's nice to have a math teacher who really understands it and
• 27:25
  can explain it in a way that, you know, works in English.
• 27:28
  And so when it when they're really little, it's easy as
• 27:31
  parents, it's all, you know, super, super basic.
• 27:35
  But I also the value of having, you know, the right teacher at
• 27:39
  the right time who can, yeah, explain the material better
• 27:44
  because we are many things, but we are not school teachers,
• 27:49
  yeah. I can understand that.
• 27:53
  So how's the rest of things been going?
• 27:56
  Let's talk about bows. Yeah.
• 27:58
  So our bowfront, you know, leading up to our trip, we
• 28:01
  worked really hard for a long time so that when we did go, we
• 28:05
  had a good collection of bows for sale up on the site, which
• 28:09
  was great. And, you know, sales were pretty
• 28:11
  steady throughout our trip, and we had someone back at our shop
• 28:14
  who could do our shipping for us.
• 28:16
  So it was nice to be able to, you know, keep that rolling
• 28:19
  while we were away. Although we couldn't physically
• 28:22
  do the work, we could still, yeah, sell our product.
• 28:27
  So that was good How how many did you have pre made for sale?
• 28:31
  I think we had, I want to say 22, I believe nice and I think
• 28:36
  we sold 18 of them while we were away.
• 28:39
  That's. Fantastic.
• 28:40
  Yeah. So that helps, you know, But
• 28:44
  yeah, business wise we've been, gosh, we started when Feather
• 28:48
  was born. So in 2010 I believe is when we
• 28:52
  started our business. So we're 2011 maybe we started,
• 28:57
  I think we're going on 14 years now.
• 28:59
  We've been building bows full time.
• 29:03
  Yeah, full time the whole time. Good for you.
• 29:05
  Both of us, Jenna and I. So we is she carving bows now or
• 29:11
  is she helping with? Jenna does, and we have very
• 29:15
  complementary skill sets. So Jenna still does all the
• 29:17
  finishing. So we have somewhere, you know,
• 29:21
  I knocked the tree down, split it, dry it, build the bow, all
• 29:26
  the horn tiller stuff, get it sort of final sanded.
• 29:30
  And then Jenna's shop, I don't know when you were here, but
• 29:33
  Jenna's shop is up above my shop here upstairs.
• 29:35
  Yeah. And she still does, you know,
• 29:37
  final sanding, signatures, burnings, all the strings,
• 29:42
  handles, Bosox packaging, shipping and all the admin, all
• 29:48
  the. Yeah, e-mail shipping, counting.
• 29:52
  Amazing. All the team.
• 29:54
  So no, it's a good team because, yeah, the nice thing for me is,
• 29:59
  you know, I've built enough bows that I can build a real nice
• 30:01
  shooting bow. But she finishes the bows way
• 30:04
  beyond what I could do, which is neat because it's, you know,
• 30:08
  producing a product that is, I want to say, greater than one
• 30:11
  person. So for me, it's nice to see them
• 30:14
  finished up because it's, yeah, it's not my Forte.
• 30:17
  Yeah, well, that's such a cool little collaboration you guys
• 30:20
  have going on and it's been working well for a long time.
• 30:24
  So you're doing something right. Yeah.
• 30:26
  No, it's been good. Our business has always been
• 30:28
  sort of split into 3 components. We've been building bows, you
• 30:33
  know, a lot of bows. I think we're well over 1000
• 30:36
  bows have built now. Yeah.
• 30:39
  So we have a pretty good, you know, sense of what we can do
• 30:43
  and what we can get away with. For a long time we were, you
• 30:48
  know, doing stock bows and then for a long time we got right
• 30:52
  into most of what we're building was custom bows.
• 30:55
  And then couple years ago I tried to slow down our custom a
• 30:58
  little bit. Custom's great, but sometimes
• 31:01
  you run into the want to say the square peg, round hole
• 31:05
  situation. You're trying to produce a
• 31:06
  certain weight and a certain length and you know, the piece
• 31:09
  of wood is asking for something different.
• 31:12
  And, you know, the nice thing about being a boy here is just
• 31:15
  really trying to follow and listen to the wood as best you
• 31:18
  can. So then I sort of started
• 31:20
  thinking, you know, if I had enough bows on the site in the
• 31:23
  right, you know, a good range of weights and lengths, maybe
• 31:28
  there's not a need for custom bows, you know.
• 31:31
  Yeah. So then we paused our custom for
• 31:33
  a bit and started just building a lot more stock bows, which in
• 31:37
  some ways was really great. Just that freedom to pick up a
• 31:42
  piece of wood and just without attachment to what it ends up as
• 31:46
  you know, what is the best use of this wood.
• 31:49
  So yeah, we've done that for the last couple years.
• 31:52
  Everyone's will still take custom orders here and there,
• 31:55
  especially for, you know, good returning customers and we'll
• 31:59
  open up our customs. But a balance, you know, so 1/3
• 32:03
  of our business has been building lots of bows.
• 32:07
  At first we are building more flat bows than we were long
• 32:10
  bows, more hunting style, recurved wider stiff handle sort
• 32:14
  of stuff. And then our orders just started
• 32:18
  going heavy and heavy English Longbow.
• 32:21
  So now we're still building mostly English Longbow, building
• 32:25
  a lot more war bows than I've ever built.
• 32:27
  So that 90 to 140 range, I can't shoot them personally, but get
• 32:35
  them on the tiller stick and stretch them out.
• 32:37
  And yeah, yeah. And now getting back a little
• 32:41
  bit more into flat bows, been doing some more of that.
• 32:45
  I've also been having fun with laminates.
• 32:47
  I've been playing around a lot with my bamboo back U laminates.
• 32:52
  So making a couple different styles of that.
• 32:54
  Longbows, flat bows, recurves or reflex D flex.
• 32:59
  Good use for some of the bigger trees that you know aren't
• 33:02
  necessarily self bow quality, but there's still lots of good
• 33:05
  sound lumber in there. Yeah.
• 33:08
  Yeah. So doing that and still teaching
• 33:11
  lots of workshops, you know that's been a right from the get
• 33:14
  go. The workshops have always been a
• 33:16
  big part of our our business here.
• 33:18
  How many of you doing a year on average?
• 33:22
  Well, we're traveling less over time.
• 33:25
  I used to travel more. I used to do a like a three day
• 33:28
  sort of crash course bow making workshop.
• 33:31
  And now this year all of our courses are sort of what we call
• 33:35
  our week long bow immersion. So people come from all over.
• 33:41
  I had first time this year I had someone from Australia come out
• 33:45
  and yeah, we got a full week in my shop to build, you know,
• 33:48
  whatever we can get up to. So our focus has always been
• 33:53
  building a nice self bow, either a flat bow or a long bow out of
• 33:56
  a nice use. Dave, I like to do a laminate
• 33:59
  bow, build on the side, build some arrows, build a dozen
• 34:03
  arrows to match the bow, get some shooting time in and yeah,
• 34:08
  head up into the Bush. We got some real nice sort of
• 34:10
  forest around here with good you would.
• 34:12
  So it's nice to head up into the Bush and see the trees and their
• 34:15
  natural state and yeah, just develop that eye, you know, for
• 34:20
  what Savoy are looking for in a tree and in a stave.
• 34:24
  So this year, I think we have 5 or six of those, yeah.
• 34:30
  That's amazing. What is one of those cost?
• 34:34
  I believe they are 1200 Canadian.
• 34:38
  That's a hell of a deal. They might be 1400 but I would
• 34:41
  have to double check. Yeah, that's great to get one,
• 34:44
  to get a custom bow that you've taught them to make.
• 34:47
  I mean, I've, I've obviously done a few with you and then
• 34:50
  been so happy with the product, shot them for years.
• 34:54
  Actually, one of the bows I still teach with is the very
• 34:57
  first bow that I ever bought, which was 40 LB bow from you
• 35:02
  Bailey's. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:04
  And yeah, it's still one of my go to is for teaching.
• 35:07
  And then I think my first workshop with you, I build a bow
• 35:10
  for my wife, which is one of the bows I use a lot for for
• 35:14
  teaching also because it's a bit lighter weight.
• 35:16
  Yep, absolutely. Oh, that's cool.
• 35:19
  I always enjoy hearing, you know, where the bows end up
• 35:22
  because we make them and people take them away or we send them
• 35:24
  out. And often, you know, you just
• 35:27
  don't hear what the life of that bow looks like.
• 35:31
  Yeah. And then if you recall, I think
• 35:34
  the second retreat that I brought meant to you, we built a
• 35:39
  well, long ago for my son, who was probably at the time like, I
• 35:43
  don't know, 5 or 6. And we we named that one Cothet,
• 35:47
  which I I had asked you, I'm like everyone who was there at
• 35:50
  the retreat helped to make this bow.
• 35:52
  And I was like, I want to name it something that kind of means
• 35:55
  people working together. And then you and then you said,
• 35:58
  well, how about cothet? It's actually the the First
• 36:01
  Nation's name for Powell River, the indigenous name, so that.
• 36:04
  Was perfect. Not specifically the the town of
• 36:07
  Powell River. OK, the region.
• 36:10
  Yeah. People working together.
• 36:12
  Great name. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:14
  So we still have cough that too so.
• 36:17
  That's. Cool.
• 36:18
  Your bows are incredible. They're so beautiful.
• 36:20
  Every single one of them is an amazing work of art.
• 36:23
  And as I travel around meeting with other Bowers and all the
• 36:26
  research I've done for this book, I'm still blown away by
• 36:30
  the bows that you make. They're they're absolutely
• 36:32
  stunning. Recently you started making, or
• 36:36
  you said experimenting with a new arrow pass inlay, which
• 36:40
  looks incredible. What is that?
• 36:42
  Yeah, so a lot of my learning, you know, comes from working
• 36:47
  with people. So I had a fellow come up and do
• 36:49
  a workshop. I believe he was from Texas and
• 36:53
  he was into knife making as well.
• 36:56
  And he was telling me about a product called a mosaic knife
• 36:59
  handle pin. So I started looking into it.
• 37:04
  Yeah. So you buy them from a full
• 37:06
  supply, like a knife supply store, and it's a pin, sort of a
• 37:11
  rod that you can get in different diameters and
• 37:14
  different lengths. And it turns out they make them
• 37:17
  in all sorts of different patterns.
• 37:19
  So they'll have different material in it.
• 37:22
  You know, they'll have sometimes brass, sometimes stainless, some
• 37:27
  sort of epoxy, different epoxy resins, Reds and blacks, but you
• 37:31
  can get all sorts of different yeah, patterns to it.
• 37:34
  So I really like the Celtics or the not work Mosaic stuff.
• 37:39
  So yeah, I started buying these pins and I think I'm getting
• 37:42
  them in. I forget if it's seven or eight
• 37:45
  mil. I get them in, they come a
• 37:48
  couple inches long, and then I drill out the bow with a nice
• 37:54
  sharp Brad point bit to get a real nice clean edged hole.
• 37:58
  Cut that pin down the hacksaw so it's a little bit proud, Set it
• 38:03
  in with glue, tap it in, let it harden up, and then, you know,
• 38:06
  file it down flush. But beautiful patterns.
• 38:10
  Yeah. And super durable.
• 38:12
  You know, for years I was doing a lot of stone inlay.
• 38:16
  So I'd use various stone powders mixed with different resins,
• 38:20
  which was decent. A lot of them turned out good.
• 38:23
  Every once in a while, I'd get, you know, chipping and cracking
• 38:26
  and air bubbles and whatnot. So I've switched more into these
• 38:30
  mosaic pins and also doing a bit more horn plug.
• 38:35
  So to use a dowel cutter on a drill press and drill out an
• 38:39
  actual horn, either, you know, whatever color horn generally
• 38:42
  matches the and set that in arrow pass.
• 38:46
  You know, a lot of the long bows are shot without a handle.
• 38:49
  So it's nice to have some reference to, you know, on this
• 38:52
  6 foot bow where should the arrow go?
• 38:55
  So, and something durable, you know, 'cause even though you do
• 38:59
  your best to make the arrows as smooth and frictionless as
• 39:02
  possible, every time an arrow passes the bow, there's a little
• 39:06
  little kick, little friction there.
• 39:08
  So if you can put a little piece of hard material in that exact
• 39:11
  right spot, you're just not asking the wood to do that work.
• 39:16
  Yeah, All I got to say is like one of the things that I'm most
• 39:19
  excited about putting into the new bow that I carved with you
• 39:23
  after I saw those photos, I was like, that's what I want.
• 39:25
  I want a bow at that. That's so cool.
• 39:28
  Yeah, well, if you, if you look them up, if you have a chance,
• 39:31
  it's called a mosaic knife. What do they call it?
• 39:35
  Mosaic pin? Yeah, knife pin.
• 39:39
  Yeah. Because there's all sorts of
• 39:41
  different patterns there. There's I've actually been
• 39:44
  thinking, I saw one recently. It's that Drassel that the Tree
• 39:48
  of Life, which I thought would make a cool little inlay pin
• 39:52
  there too. So, yeah, take a look at.
• 39:55
  I didn't need specific pattern. I didn't realize there were
• 39:59
  knife supply places for making knives, but.
• 40:03
  Yeah, I guess there is for everything, yeah.
• 40:06
  I mean, they sell steel, these knife pins, scales they call
• 40:09
  them, which are like the handle blanks, yeah.
• 40:13
  When Ella and I were just after we finished up in Salt Lake
• 40:16
  City, carving at Heartwood Bows, we went to Park City.
• 40:20
  So we have some friends there and we were just walking
• 40:22
  downtown Park City and there's a knife store there.
• 40:26
  Like that? Just.
• 40:27
  Blew me away. I, I couldn't believe like for
• 40:31
  one thing, the cost of everything was like, Oh my God,
• 40:35
  like $1000. You're lucky to get even a, a
• 40:38
  little pruning paring knife with, but you know, some of
• 40:41
  these knives were like five, $6000 and everything was so
• 40:44
  gorgeous. But the store was packed with
• 40:47
  people. The walls were lined with
• 40:49
  thousands and thousands of knives.
• 40:51
  And I was just like, wouldn't this be a cool thing for like
• 40:53
  traditional primitive bows, like to have a place like this where
• 40:57
  a bunch of artisans had their bows?
• 40:59
  Cause and that was the thing about these knives.
• 41:01
  They were just so stunning to look at.
• 41:03
  I'm sure they're good to use too.
• 41:04
  But yeah, it was, it was interesting.
• 41:08
  But yeah, I guess knife supply stores as you were talking, you
• 41:13
  mentioned, I don't know, but the naming came to my mind.
• 41:19
  You guys name every bow that you've ever made, right?
• 41:22
  Yeah, yeah, right from the get go, you know, even my first bow
• 41:27
  before I way before we were doing it as a business, there
• 41:31
  was an old website, Primitive Archer that when I started was a
• 41:35
  big resource back in the day, a forum message board where people
• 41:39
  were posting, you know, what they were building and must have
• 41:41
  been on. I saw someone naming a bow and
• 41:45
  some reason it just hit me and stuck because especially with
• 41:49
  the self bows, you know, because it's coming straight out of a
• 41:52
  tree. Every tree is different, every
• 41:54
  stave is different. They're so unique.
• 41:57
  It's like they deserve to name them by a model with just the I
• 42:01
  don't know, it wouldn't capture sort of who they are.
• 42:04
  So at first I was into a lot of the the names that sort of had a
• 42:10
  reference to the, you know, the wood character like I remember
• 42:14
  like Lumpy and sort of yeah, that sort of sounds.
• 42:19
  Sounds like the dwarfs, lumpy and naughty and whippy.
• 42:23
  Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, over time, you
• 42:29
  know, Jenna definitely took over the naming front.
• 42:32
  She's a bit of a mythology history sort of buff and.
• 42:37
  And yeah, so everything gets named.
• 42:40
  The names come from all over the place.
• 42:42
  You know, sometimes we're travelling mountain ranges,
• 42:45
  rivers, but most of our names come from history mythology,
• 42:52
  trying to focus, you know, primarily more where the areas
• 42:55
  where the bows were coming from. British Isles.
• 43:00
  Yeah, try not to use, I don't know, trying to not use like
• 43:07
  local First Nations names necessarily for our bows.
• 43:11
  But yeah, a lot of history, mythology, and we got a
• 43:14
  spreadsheet, Google Spreadsheet Jenna's got, and there are
• 43:18
  hundreds of names on there. Wow, have you recycled any of
• 43:22
  them or are they all unique? We have not recycled any of
• 43:25
  them. Nope, Nope.
• 43:27
  And it's when you're here, I'll, I'll read you our first our list
• 43:31
  because we also collect all the names of the finished bows as
• 43:34
  well. And because we've built so many
• 43:37
  bows now there's probably 200 bows that have been named with
• 43:41
  like the letter A and you know, 100 with the letter B.
• 43:45
  When customers order their own custom bow, they can name it
• 43:49
  whatever they want. We all they can name it a name
• 43:51
  that's been used. That's totally fine, it's their
• 43:53
  bow. But when we are producing our
• 43:56
  own bows now, once the name is used, it goes to the other side
• 43:59
  of the spreadsheet and. That's it.
• 44:03
  Yeah. And it was a, a technique I
• 44:07
  picked up from you guys and all the original bows that I made, I
• 44:09
  gave names to. And what I found is really
• 44:12
  helpful for me is when I'm teaching archery in Costa Rica
• 44:15
  and often my son is helping me, is that we can actually have a
• 44:19
  dialogue. Like what bow do you think is
• 44:20
  going to be best for this person?
• 44:21
  Or I can be someone can be shooting.
• 44:24
  I can be like, hey, Ollie, can you go get talent and bring it
• 44:27
  over here? And so we have a way of knowing
• 44:29
  what bow and, and that that's really helps now that I'm now
• 44:33
  that we're doing this journey with this book, I'm, I'm doing
• 44:36
  only what the bowyers do traditionally with their own
• 44:38
  bow. So, so far, the three, the three
• 44:41
  that I've made have been unnamed and that's the way they'll
• 44:43
  remain. But.
• 44:44
  Yeah, well, I'm sure we'll fix that.
• 44:49
  And then Jenna, like I always remember how beautiful her
• 44:53
  penmanship is. Does she do wood burning or is
• 44:57
  she using like archival ink and pen?
• 45:00
  No, it's all wood burned. Amazing, yeah.
• 45:03
  There's a company, you know, a lot of people try and do the
• 45:05
  wood burning with those, like almost like a soldering iron,
• 45:09
  yeah. That was me.
• 45:11
  Yeah, no, it's not the ticket, no.
• 45:15
  I look like I had arthritis and I'd come out with no
• 45:17
  fingerprints on my index finger because I kept getting burnt.
• 45:20
  Yeah. Now every once in a while,
• 45:22
  someone on will request, oh, I really want the bow, you know,
• 45:25
  signed by Jamie. And I'll be like, oh, Are you
• 45:27
  sure? Like be forewarned, like it is a
• 45:30
  different product altogether. But yeah, Jenna's got that the,
• 45:35
  you know, the gift of the script.
• 45:36
  She has a very steady hand. There's a different wood burner
• 45:40
  we use called the razor strip. So it's got like a separate
• 45:44
  power supply to a corded. The burning pen itself is not
• 45:48
  much bigger than a Sharpie, so you can hold hold it like a
• 45:51
  normal pen. And with that you can really,
• 45:55
  yeah, super fine. The pens come with a like a tiny
• 46:00
  little welded stainless ball on the end of them.
• 46:03
  So you've got a certain life where they sort of do melt
• 46:06
  themselves out. So I think Jenna's probably got
• 46:10
  5 or 6 pens that she'll go through and then when they sort
• 46:14
  of get burnt out, you just new ball on and send them back.
• 46:17
  Yeah. So it's, yeah, it is the tool
• 46:20
  for that depending on, you know, the complexity generally with
• 46:25
  the names, she'll freehand all of the like the names and the
• 46:29
  weights and signatures and whatnot.
• 46:32
  I believe she pencils it on 1st. But we also do a decent amount
• 46:37
  of, you know, burnings, whether it's, you know, people have
• 46:42
  symbols or emblems that they want on the bows.
• 46:45
  Sometimes a bit of not work war bows, we burn all the arrow
• 46:48
  passes. So with that, sometimes I know
• 46:51
  she will print it out on just standard paper and then transfer
• 46:56
  it to the bow with like a carbon transfer paper.
• 47:01
  Yeah. So people will send you their
• 47:03
  image and then she can. Basically anyway, kind of
• 47:06
  freehand that on to the bow using that carbon transfer.
• 47:09
  Yeah, yeah, we get quite a lot of that.
• 47:11
  You know, people have. Yeah, family crests or Yeah, all
• 47:16
  sorts, Yeah. I just ordered a stamp because
• 47:21
  when I was at Swiftwood bows with Waylon Olive, he has his
• 47:25
  stamp that he does Swiftwood on his his Swiftwood logo.
• 47:29
  And so I learned about that and it's just a stamp you can get
• 47:32
  off of Amazon and then use archival ink.
• 47:36
  I just ordered that with. My logo and.
• 47:38
  Then that goes on before any of the finishing.
• 47:41
  Is my understanding. Interesting, interesting years
• 47:44
  ago. Oh go ahead, he just uses
• 47:47
  archival ink and is. For writing anything on it too
• 47:50
  so in a pen with archival ink says it works great so
• 47:54
  interesting yeah yeah years ago we had.
• 47:58
  A little branding iron made with our logo on it.
• 48:02
  Yeah. And but it was a bit
• 48:06
  intimidating because here you've got this beautifully finished
• 48:09
  sanded bow and you're trying to, like, heat up this branding iron
• 48:12
  with a torch. And is it hot enough?
• 48:15
  Is it too hot? Like?
• 48:16
  And then you, you know, touch it and all of a sudden it either
• 48:20
  looks great or it doesn't. But if it doesn't, it's hard to
• 48:22
  touch up. And yeah, so we let go of that
• 48:25
  one. Speaking of, the brand can.
• 48:28
  You tell us the genesis of the Ravenbeek brand.
• 48:33
  You got a cool story with that. Yeah.
• 48:35
  So this was years before. We ever, you know, as a
• 48:39
  business, but when Jen and I met, do you want the elevator
• 48:45
  version or the slightly longer version?
• 48:48
  You got as much time as you want.
• 48:50
  OK, so when we met, we were. Both interested in plant
• 48:55
  identification. So we live in Pacific Northwest,
• 48:58
  West Coast of Canada. And yeah, there's some really
• 49:02
  good tree identification books. So we're interested in, you
• 49:06
  know, local trees, fauna, and we were out one day in a north of
• 49:12
  Campbell River and we found a tree that neither of us knew and
• 49:17
  it was this straggly little conifer with almost an orange
• 49:22
  looking needle to it. So we were stumped.
• 49:26
  We brought it home, little piece of it, pulled out our plant
• 49:29
  book, the Pojar McKinnon, and looked it up.
• 49:33
  And that was the first time we, you know, positively identified
• 49:36
  the Pacific U. It looks a lot like a hemlock,
• 49:41
  kind of a scraggly. It's got a green needle.
• 49:45
  And, you know, EU often looks, I want to say, half dead.
• 49:49
  They're sort of, you know, people say they've got 1 foot in
• 49:52
  this world and 1 foot in the other world, often covered in
• 49:55
  Moss. They grow super slow.
• 49:59
  So with EU, you can positively identify it because the tip of
• 50:02
  the needle will come to a very distinct point versus the
• 50:05
  hemlock which will have a rounded tip.
• 50:08
  So it was the first time we identified EU.
• 50:11
  So probably, I don't know, Fast forward couple weeks, couple
• 50:15
  months, doesn't matter. We were exploring an area in up
• 50:19
  above Cumberland on Vancouver Island, an area known as Devil's
• 50:23
  Ladder. And we're up in that area and
• 50:26
  there was this big tree that came out of the hillside, but it
• 50:30
  came out and it almost swooped down and then started swooping
• 50:33
  up and branched out into these sort of big wide branches.
• 50:37
  And there was something magical about it because we walked past
• 50:41
  it and we sort of both looked at each other, looked back at the
• 50:46
  tree. And then we went back to it and
• 50:50
  it turned out to be a huge Yew Tree, this grandmother yew that
• 50:55
  was growing out of this hillside.
• 50:57
  And though the way it was sort of growing out of the hillside,
• 51:01
  you could almost, you could walk up the trunk of the tree and
• 51:04
  then it had these sort of big long branches that came out.
• 51:07
  So you could climb up into this tree pretty easy.
• 51:10
  And we ended up sort of sitting down in there hanging out.
• 51:13
  And then we actually, it was sort of so cradling, you could
• 51:16
  actually lay, lay down in the tree and it would sort of hold
• 51:19
  you upon all these branches. So spent some time and then we
• 51:25
  came out of the tree and we went down below it.
• 51:28
  So we sort of scrambled down the hillside tucked under, and it
• 51:33
  was this really mossy, almost like an old boulder field.
• 51:36
  And right under the tree was a perfectly preserved top and
• 51:42
  bottom raven's beak. So the bird had obviously died
• 51:47
  in the tree, fallen to the ground, and the body seemed to
• 51:50
  rot away, but the beak was still there.
• 51:53
  So yeah, we sort of. Made our offerings.
• 51:57
  And asked to take this beak with us and left a little gift and
• 52:03
  yeah, it came with us. So from that point, the Raven
• 52:05
  Beak and the Yew Tree sort of became, you know, intricately
• 52:10
  connected. And then the the story actually
• 52:13
  continued years later. So years later, we we're up and
• 52:19
  running. We just had our business going
• 52:22
  and and. Then so my.
• 52:28
  Father passed away unexpectedly, have a heart condition.
• 52:32
  And for whatever reason, I had a feeling that that tree had blown
• 52:39
  over, fallen over. So I went out there, I drove
• 52:43
  out, I hiked up the slope and I walked up to this tree and it
• 52:48
  had ripped out of the side of the mountain, was lying on the
• 52:51
  ground. And yeah, so for whatever
• 52:56
  reason, it's been standing there for, gosh, I don't even know how
• 52:59
  long, 600 years, 800 years, but I just had the feeling that the
• 53:04
  tree had come down and sure enough, it had.
• 53:08
  So all those parts are sort of connected and wrapped up into
• 53:11
  that story. And then the other part, you
• 53:15
  know. With the Raven.
• 53:16
  Beak that I always liked or connected to was the Ravens, one
• 53:20
  of the few birds that will build a tool.
• 53:22
  So the Raven will, you know, he'll build the stick to reach
• 53:25
  into the nest. And he's a, he is a bit of a
• 53:28
  tool maker as well. So yeah, I've always liked that,
• 53:32
  that connection to it. And we got a lot of Ravens
• 53:35
  around here where we live, big, beautiful black Ravens.
• 53:38
  And yeah, so they. Often I'll be out, you know.
• 53:42
  Chasing you wood or shooting bows and I'll get that Raven
• 53:45
  come and sit on the tree and say hi.
• 53:48
  So that's such a cool story. Did you harvest any of the tree
• 53:54
  that it after it blew blew over? Yeah, I took a couple little
• 53:58
  branches it. Was it was not specifically
• 54:02
  great for bow making, you know, But yeah, I took some little
• 54:06
  pieces, sort of little carving wood, but nothing major out of
• 54:10
  it. Yeah, it's almost like it.
• 54:13
  I almost felt like it had already given me the beak, you
• 54:16
  know? Yeah, it was a beautiful story.
• 54:19
  So you has definitely been. Your main.
• 54:21
  Wood of choice, right? Yeah, yeah, right from the get.
• 54:25
  Go, you know, right from that first time we found the Yew Tree
• 54:29
  and started reading, reading about sort of its traditional
• 54:33
  uses, the importance of it for the local First Nations all
• 54:37
  along the coast. Yeah.
• 54:40
  To be honest, I have built very few bows out of anything.
• 54:44
  But you would. It's almost like I'm not that
• 54:48
  interested in it. And even when I started building
• 54:52
  the bows, you know, right from the time I found that Yew Tree.
• 54:56
  And then once you can identify the Yew Tree, you start to see
• 55:00
  them everywhere. You've been walking past these
• 55:02
  trees for your whole life. And now that you know it, what
• 55:05
  they look like, you say, oh, there's one.
• 55:07
  There's one, yeah. So I started collecting wood.
• 55:10
  I was down in Victoria at the time, a lot around Mount Doug
• 55:14
  area and there's a ton of wood in there.
• 55:17
  So I started collecting blow downs and pieces and started
• 55:21
  carving stuff out of out of their Pacific U.
• 55:26
  So I was into, I've always been into like 3 dimensional
• 55:29
  carvings, you know, like the spirals.
• 55:33
  I like making spirals, the four posts, the cage with the ball
• 55:37
  inside that can't come out. That stuff I've always found
• 55:41
  soothing to make, so I can envision what.
• 55:46
  You're talking about do you carve the ball inside it?
• 55:49
  Yeah. Wow.
• 55:50
  Yeah, it's like a. Cage.
• 55:52
  It's about a top plate, bottom plate, 4 corner posts, and then
• 55:56
  the ball inside is big enough that it can't come out, but it
• 55:59
  you know, it's free to roll around.
• 56:02
  That's cool, I've like 3 dimensional.
• 56:04
  Carvings. I had a years ago and her dad
• 56:08
  made a a piece of chain, chain link, all these chain links that
• 56:13
  were carved on one piece that just blew me away.
• 56:17
  Like, that's so cool. Yeah.
• 56:20
  So it wasn't until I found the right piece of wood that I even
• 56:24
  thought about making a bow. Like I didn't say, oh, I want to
• 56:27
  make a bow. Let's go find wood.
• 56:29
  I was walking in the Bush one day and there was this big fur
• 56:34
  that had come down in the windstorm and it destroyed this
• 56:37
  Yew Tree and it took the top right off of it.
• 56:39
  But there was a perfectly straight 6 inch diameter
• 56:42
  stovepipe, 6 feet tall that was just crying to be made into a
• 56:47
  bow. So then yeah, how?
• 56:52
  How did you even have the wherewithal to?
• 56:53
  Know that a bow could be made out of that.
• 56:55
  You must have had some knowledge of of bow at that point.
• 57:00
  I mean. At that point I.
• 57:02
  Had done a bit of reading around once we started identifying the
• 57:05
  you starting to read, you know what were the local uses of it
• 57:10
  and I'd heard about you bows before so we found that first
• 57:14
  Yew Tree that led. You down a bit of a rabbit hole?
• 57:16
  Yeah, basically I the. Rabbit hole involved hunting.
• 57:20
  I when Jen and I first met, she was not eating sort of farmed
• 57:27
  meat, so chickens, pigs, cows were not on her plate.
• 57:32
  So I wanted to start hunting our local black tailed deer.
• 57:37
  We got into crabbing, clamming, sort of more of the wild meats.
• 57:42
  I grew up with archery, though my dad was an Archer.
• 57:44
  My dad built a ton of arrows at our kitchen table all the time.
• 57:48
  He was more into the fiberglass bows like the old Ben Pearson's
• 57:52
  and stuff. So I grew up shooting.
• 57:56
  I remember him like, I still have a clear memory in my mind
• 57:59
  of watching my dad shoot the first arrow.
• 58:02
  So and it involved us driving out to the farm and buying a
• 58:05
  straw Bale and coming to the yard and setting up a target.
• 58:09
  And I still remember the arrow and just the speed of the arrow.
• 58:12
  Like to me, it looked like a gunshot.
• 58:14
  It was just he shot and then it was in the target and there was
• 58:17
  nothing in between. And yeah, so then I started
• 58:21
  shooting. I shot a 60 LB glass bow, which
• 58:25
  was way too heavy for me at the time, but grew into it and we
• 58:29
  would go shooting together out at our local Fish and Game club,
• 58:33
  not really with a hunting focus at that point, but just sort of
• 58:36
  the the archery focus. So archery had always been there
• 58:40
  for me right from a young age. But the bow building sort of
• 58:44
  came when I found this tree and said, well, what can I do with
• 58:48
  this beautiful piece of you? And.
• 58:52
  What did you do with it? Yeah.
• 58:55
  So I don't. Yeah.
• 58:56
  Well, I went where I was working at the time.
• 58:58
  There was a fellow there who was into archery as well.
• 59:02
  So I talked to him and he told me about the book, you know, the
• 59:05
  Traditional Boyers Bible, Volume 1.
• 59:07
  So after work I drove down to the bookstore and they ordered
• 59:11
  it in for me and I bought this book and I just read it friend
• 59:14
  to cover. And then I flipped it over and
• 59:16
  started again and friends cover and read it a few times.
• 59:20
  And to start with, I remember thinking just I'm just going to
• 59:24
  carve. Something that looks.
• 59:26
  Like a bow. Like to me that that seemed
• 59:28
  doable, like as long as it looks like a bow.
• 59:32
  Let's let's start there. So started carving and yeah, I
• 59:36
  was trying to build a hunting bow.
• 59:37
  I was aiming for 50 pound, 28 inch draw, stiff handled, no
• 59:43
  recurves, flat limb, sort of pyramid shaped, 68 inches long.
• 59:49
  Yeah. So that's where it started.
• 59:51
  Yeah. How did, how did it turn out?
• 59:53
  Well, what I did was I built the first one sort of to those
• 59:58
  specs, but I built it to a point where it was starting to bend.
• 1:00:03
  And then I got intimidated and I was like, oh, let let's slow
• 1:00:06
  down a bit here. So that first tree, I split it
• 1:00:10
  with wedges. So I halved it and then I
• 1:00:12
  quartered it. And I remember I started with
• 1:00:15
  the nicest piece and I got it to the sort of a floor tiller
• 1:00:19
  stage. And then I put it aside because
• 1:00:21
  I didn't want to screw it up. And then I took the worst piece
• 1:00:25
  out of the quarters and then I built it and started bending it.
• 1:00:29
  And so I built the tiller stick just like in the book with the,
• 1:00:33
  the post with the notches cut out where you pull the string
• 1:00:36
  down and lock it in. And it was a bit shorter because
• 1:00:39
  I think it had a big knot at one end.
• 1:00:41
  And I, it was short enough that I remember I named it walking
• 1:00:44
  stick because it sort of looked the bow, but it sort of looked
• 1:00:47
  like a walking stick. And then I got it shooting and I
• 1:00:52
  remember I was shooting it in the field one time and I had it
• 1:00:55
  back at full draw and it just the 1 tip just blew off and
• 1:00:58
  exploded and then I was like shit, never name of a walking
• 1:01:02
  stick. Because then it was a walking
• 1:01:07
  stick. Oh man, did you?
• 1:01:13
  Were you successful with the other two staves out of it?
• 1:01:16
  Yeah, I'm trying to remember. I know I had.
• 1:01:17
  I ended. Up with the light one that
• 1:01:19
  because I left it long and I was like, go light like 3540 and I
• 1:01:25
  built one that would shoot and then I remember finishing up my
• 1:01:29
  5050 or 55 as sort of geared towards the hunting bow and it
• 1:01:33
  did turn out and I shot that one for years.
• 1:01:36
  Wasn't the greatest tiller. You know, in hindsight, I think
• 1:01:38
  the handle riser was too long and probably had a bit of a
• 1:01:41
  hinge in the upper limb and whatnot.
• 1:01:43
  But yeah, it turned out and I shot it.
• 1:01:48
  But for me it was always. You know, I'd build a bow.
• 1:01:50
  I'd. Shoot it a bit, but I'm I'm
• 1:01:53
  definitely more of a Boyer than I am an Archer because I shoot
• 1:01:56
  it a few times and I'm already thinking about my next bow
• 1:01:59
  rather than shooting more. I'm thinking about the next tree
• 1:02:02
  or the next staves or Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:05
  Have you had many teachers along the way?
• 1:02:08
  Have you been self-taught with books?
• 1:02:10
  I mean, in hindsight, I definitely.
• 1:02:13
  You know, could have benefited from more teachers.
• 1:02:16
  So no, I had very few. We're pretty isolated here.
• 1:02:20
  So we're now we're up in Pell River, so we're landlocked where
• 1:02:25
  we are. I don't know really anyone
• 1:02:28
  locally who builds bows so much. I have people in town who I've,
• 1:02:33
  you know, taught courses to and have built a bow.
• 1:02:38
  There was one friend I had in. Victoria when?
• 1:02:40
  I was working down there because I was working do an airplane
• 1:02:43
  maintenance and building bows in my spare time.
• 1:02:47
  And I did meet one friend down there, fellow named Jeff who was
• 1:02:51
  building bows. He was into vine Maple bows.
• 1:02:54
  But he was the first person who really, you know, I geeked out
• 1:02:58
  on sort of in person. But no, most of my bow making
• 1:03:01
  was online or most of my bow making sort of dialogue was
• 1:03:05
  online through that primitive Archer website, the Boyer's
• 1:03:09
  Bible books, and really trial and error, like most of my
• 1:03:13
  experience has been trial and error.
• 1:03:15
  I did do one workshop years. We'd already started our
• 1:03:21
  business and we're sort of building those at that point.
• 1:03:23
  But I did do one workshop with John Strunk in.
• 1:03:28
  He came up to the North American Longbow Safari in Comox one year
• 1:03:34
  and I hopped on his bow making class.
• 1:03:37
  So that was pretty cool. But it was good.
• 1:03:40
  But at that point I was sort of already a little bit, you know,
• 1:03:43
  set in my ways. Like I I had my tools that I
• 1:03:46
  like tonight at my tiller stick. And yeah, he had a great system
• 1:03:53
  that worked for him. But yeah, I had John.
• 1:03:58
  John was Waylon's first teacher, Yeah, No, no, he is a absolute
• 1:04:03
  wealth of information. Hands down, yeah.
• 1:04:05
  I mean, as far as teachers go, he wrote the chapter Hugh
• 1:04:08
  Longbow in the first four years. So that is literally where I
• 1:04:13
  started. So in a sense, he was my teacher
• 1:04:15
  there as well. That's cool.
• 1:04:17
  But there were some things, you know, when he was tillering in
• 1:04:20
  the class, he would get everyone to just pull on their bow and he
• 1:04:23
  would look at it and sort of say, you know, work the lower
• 1:04:26
  limb or work the upper tip. Where as I was so set on having
• 1:04:30
  a tiller stick where I could stand back and see it
• 1:04:32
  personally. Right.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah. But no, he builds fantastic
• 1:04:38
  stuff. Yeah, I.
• 1:04:41
  Lost the question. I was going to just ask you.
• 1:04:44
  What was? Oh yeah.
• 1:04:45
  So you started Ravenbeak in around 2011.
• 1:04:48
  How long had you been carving before you kind of had a that
• 1:04:52
  full time operation as a Bowyer? So I started I.
• 1:04:56
  Remember we found our first Yew Tree in 2006, very early 2006.
• 1:05:01
  And then shortly after that I moved to Victoria and that's
• 1:05:04
  when I really started getting into it, started collecting
• 1:05:07
  wood. I found a couple big blow downs,
• 1:05:10
  so big yew trees that had blown over, windstorms that I had, you
• 1:05:16
  know, cut up into 6 foot sections and split stays out.
• 1:05:19
  And I remember one tree and I think I got like 23 staves out
• 1:05:24
  of it. So all of a sudden I went from
• 1:05:27
  having very little wood to, like, a lot of wood and nicer
• 1:05:31
  wood too, which is helpful. So I started building, you know,
• 1:05:35
  my own stuff. And I was, yeah, exploring, I
• 1:05:40
  want to say the intricacies of it, like shorter and wider,
• 1:05:43
  longer and skinnier, more rounded, more flat.
• 1:05:46
  Like I was really interested in, you know, what sort of designs
• 1:05:50
  worked and didn't work. So I started building bows,
• 1:05:54
  building bows. And then I'd probably been
• 1:05:58
  building for maybe must only been a year or two and there was
• 1:06:03
  a primitive skills gathering on Vancouver Island that Jen and I
• 1:06:06
  would go to called fire maker. So it was a week long gathering
• 1:06:13
  primitive skills. So people were teaching, you
• 1:06:16
  know, wild edible plants, plant medicines, high tanning, animal
• 1:06:20
  processing, Flint napping. And so I showed up to one year
• 1:06:24
  with a truck load of you wood and said we're teaching Bo
• 1:06:26
  Macon. So didn't have much in the way
• 1:06:29
  of tools. We were using a lot of probably
• 1:06:32
  in hindsight, not very sharp hatchets and pocket knives.
• 1:06:36
  I had my tools, you know, I settled pretty quick on a
• 1:06:40
  hatchet, A rasp and a scraper. I could build pretty much
• 1:06:43
  anything with those three tools. So showed up for the week and
• 1:06:49
  people loved it. People were working their butts
• 1:06:51
  off carving these staves out. In hindsight, you know, I don't
• 1:06:55
  know if we actually finished a bow or not, to be honest.
• 1:07:00
  But just there's something about helping people find the bow,
• 1:07:04
  seeing people's connection to the piece of wood that really, I
• 1:07:09
  don't know, filled me up on some level.
• 1:07:11
  So through that, I, I remember asking for a tool donation.
• 1:07:15
  I said, hey, if people want to pitch in, I'll come back next
• 1:07:17
  year with more tools. So next year came back with
• 1:07:21
  sharp hatchets and rasps and scrapers.
• 1:07:23
  And so I taught there for a few years just volunteering and then
• 1:07:30
  did that for a couple years. And then there was a fellow
• 1:07:33
  named Grant and he was running a little workshop on Salt Spring
• 1:07:36
  Island at the time and he called the Woodland Workshop.
• 1:07:39
  He had a great little outdoor space under an old military
• 1:07:42
  parachute. And he came up to me after the
• 1:07:45
  fire maker and he said, hey, Jamie, you know, I run this
• 1:07:49
  workshop. If you ever want to come teach a
• 1:07:51
  bow class on Salt Spring, let me know.
• 1:07:54
  So we were kept in touch and I said, hey, let's give it a shot.
• 1:07:58
  So he organized it and arranged he had, he had five people
• 1:08:03
  signed up for it. So he called me up and said
• 1:08:06
  we're good to go. So I remember packing up my
• 1:08:09
  truck full of tools and wood, phoning in sick to work and
• 1:08:12
  saying can't make it in this week and driving down to the
• 1:08:15
  Salt Spring. And that was my first sort of, I
• 1:08:18
  want to say real bow class I taught.
• 1:08:22
  So we did that and it was great. Everyone built beautiful little
• 1:08:25
  bows and super happy. And I remember getting home and
• 1:08:29
  had a great time. And then a check showed up in
• 1:08:31
  the mail for 700 bucks. And I thought, damn, that's
• 1:08:33
  pretty cool. So that was the first time we,
• 1:08:36
  you know, ran that like an official workshop and that that
• 1:08:40
  was definitely a motivating force.
• 1:08:41
  And, you know, is it possible for us to, you know, create this
• 1:08:45
  little bow business here tucked away on the West Coast?
• 1:08:50
  Yeah. How did you get?
• 1:08:52
  Away with full time from the beginning yeah we.
• 1:08:56
  Lucked out in certain ways. So I was working in Victoria at
• 1:09:00
  the time and Jenna was working locally here when my daughter
• 1:09:06
  was born. I'm trying to think of this the.
• 1:09:09
  Exact sequence here. The work that I was doing in
• 1:09:12
  Victoria at the time, they had a plant in Calgary as well and the
• 1:09:16
  Vic group was ahead and Calgary was behind.
• 1:09:20
  So they offered us in Victoria a temporary layoff for a few
• 1:09:25
  months. So I took the temporary layoff
• 1:09:29
  which gave me some spare time. Jenna.
• 1:09:37
  This would have been all been right around the time my
• 1:09:39
  daughter. Was born and Feather was born.
• 1:09:41
  I don't remember the exact sequence, but we got, Jenna got
• 1:09:47
  on the EI program to sort of start your small business
• 1:09:50
  through the community futures. So you write up a business plan,
• 1:09:54
  submit it, you get approved and they give you a bit of business
• 1:09:56
  coaching and funding for your first year.
• 1:09:59
  So we wrote up a little business on bow and arrows, selling bows,
• 1:10:05
  selling arrows, teaching classes.
• 1:10:08
  So we got that approved. So she got a bit of start up
• 1:10:11
  funding through that. We already had a sort of
• 1:10:13
  detached garage at our place here where we converted to a
• 1:10:17
  little workshop. I had tools so we didn't really
• 1:10:20
  need much money to get going. And then when my daughter was
• 1:10:24
  born, I got the nine month paternity leave through work,
• 1:10:30
  which was great because we were all at home, gave me some time.
• 1:10:34
  And then the work I was doing, we were unionized shop.
• 1:10:38
  So I applied for a six month parental leave and and then I
• 1:10:43
  got another six month extended parental.
• 1:10:46
  So basically I had 21 months off of work, not all paid, but with
• 1:10:52
  job security and that gave us a bit of time and space to get the
• 1:10:56
  business up and rolling. So the early days, I remember we
• 1:11:01
  applied and did the BC hunting and fishing show down in the
• 1:11:05
  Lower mainland. So we did a trade show and sort
• 1:11:10
  of sold some workshop spots, made some connections for places
• 1:11:14
  to run, you know, classes in Vancouver and Fraser Valley.
• 1:11:19
  So we are, yeah, got our courses up, started selling bows and we
• 1:11:24
  did OK our first year. I don't remember our exact sort
• 1:11:26
  of income, but it was half decent.
• 1:11:29
  And then there was a big question at the end of all my
• 1:11:31
  leaves of, you know, do we, do I let go of my full time job and
• 1:11:37
  are we giving this a legitimate go or do I go back to work for a
• 1:11:40
  bit, try and save up some cash? But we went all in and called up
• 1:11:46
  work and said I'm not coming back.
• 1:11:48
  And yeah, we had our business rolling at that point.
• 1:11:51
  And so we were teaching classes. I would often do a spring and a
• 1:11:57
  fall workshop tour. So I'd load up the truck and I
• 1:12:00
  was teaching a class in Courtney, class in Victoria, one
• 1:12:04
  or two classes in Vancouver and doing that, teaching little
• 1:12:09
  three day bow, making workshops, selling bows.
• 1:12:13
  And then did that for probably a couple years and things were
• 1:12:17
  sort of slowly picking up for us.
• 1:12:20
  And then we there was a group in England called Archer's Review
• 1:12:24
  at the time and it was a website that would test Archer
• 1:12:27
  equipment. So I forget how we found them,
• 1:12:30
  but Jenna wrote him an e-mail and the deal was he would send
• 1:12:34
  them a bow, they would test it out, and then they would write a
• 1:12:37
  review online for it. And then they got to keep the
• 1:12:40
  bow. So we sent him a real nice, I
• 1:12:43
  remember named Brevi, this 6529, real beautiful English Longbow,
• 1:12:50
  one piece of you. And the fellow wrote us just the
• 1:12:54
  most smashing review you could possibly hope for.
• 1:12:58
  Yeah. Saying that, you know, this
• 1:13:00
  quality of you is so hard to find and the craftsmanship is
• 1:13:04
  top notch. And basically saying every
• 1:13:07
  Archer of moderate intelligence should go order one ASAP because
• 1:13:12
  Ravenbeak's going to get super busy and their prices are going
• 1:13:15
  to go up. So from that, we started
• 1:13:18
  getting, you know, interest in borders from all over the world.
• 1:13:21
  I remember getting an order from like Kuwait and I, yeah, all
• 1:13:26
  sorts of places. And then through that we got
• 1:13:30
  picked up by a shop in England called the Longbow Shop.
• 1:13:34
  Couple nice fellows over there, Graham and Jason and they
• 1:13:39
  basically ordered some bows and offered to sell our stuff over
• 1:13:43
  there. So we started selling through
• 1:13:45
  them and yeah, they they moved a lot of bows for that shop and we
• 1:13:51
  were obviously selling to them at sort of wholesale pricing.
• 1:13:54
  But the the advertising and marketing that we got through
• 1:13:59
  that in them what for us as a small business was huge.
• 1:14:02
  So that grew. And then in 20 must be 2015
• 1:14:10
  crazy 10 years ago there was the 600 year anniversary of the
• 1:14:16
  Battle of Agincourt that I really wanted to go to.
• 1:14:20
  So there was a big archery events in London at the time, so
• 1:14:24
  I reached out to the Longbow shop and said hey, maybe we
• 1:14:27
  should look at teaching a couple view bow making workshops in
• 1:14:31
  England leading up to this event.
• 1:14:33
  So they thought that was a great idea.
• 1:14:36
  So they did all the registrations and had a real
• 1:14:39
  nice workshop space for us there.
• 1:14:41
  So that was the first time I shipped all my wooden tools over
• 1:14:45
  to England, flew over and taught a couple classes in England and
• 1:14:50
  then got to go to the events down in London, which was, yeah,
• 1:14:55
  pretty cool. Shooting with the old Fraternity
• 1:14:57
  of Saint George, really old English Longbow Club over there
• 1:15:02
  and shooting at very fancy historic.
• 1:15:07
  Sites like we are. Shooting at Windsor Castle, we
• 1:15:09
  shot on the Saturday and then the Sunday we shot at the
• 1:15:13
  Artillery Company, which is right downtown London.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah. So then that went well and then
• 1:15:20
  we did forget how many years, must be 5 years.
• 1:15:24
  I would go to England in October and teach some classes over
• 1:15:27
  there. And then we did that right up
• 1:15:29
  until COVID and then that sort of settled out And then I went
• 1:15:33
  back one year after COVID and did it again.
• 1:15:36
  But at that point, our boat sales at home were doing pretty
• 1:15:40
  good and our workshops were pretty strong.
• 1:15:43
  Kids are getting older and the traveling and setting up a
• 1:15:47
  temporary workshop just felt like a lot of work for the
• 1:15:51
  return. So focusing more on our stuff
• 1:15:53
  here, you know, getting people to my shop, it's a different
• 1:15:56
  experience. You know, I got all the tools,
• 1:16:00
  endless wood supply. Yeah.
• 1:16:03
  So it's a different, I think it's a better, more full
• 1:16:05
  experience when people come to my shop.
• 1:16:08
  So that's what we've been focusing on here lately.
• 1:16:12
  What a great journey. So happy for you guys and I
• 1:16:16
  don't remember how I came upon you, but I know that I had this
• 1:16:21
  calling to get into archery for my daily Qigong practice and I
• 1:16:25
  knew I wanted something not modern.
• 1:16:28
  I didn't know what that. Was because I knew.
• 1:16:29
  Nothing about archery and, and I remember looking and looking and
• 1:16:34
  looking and having no idea what I was getting into and thinking
• 1:16:37
  I would spend a few $100 on a bow and that would be the
• 1:16:40
  beginning of my my archery journey.
• 1:16:42
  And I don't remember how I came across you, you as in YOU and
• 1:16:49
  then your U bow's and instantly fell in love with with your
• 1:16:53
  products. I remember I ordered Bailey's my
• 1:16:56
  first one from you and yeah, that was like as soon as I got
• 1:17:00
  it, I was like, Oh yeah, this is this is it.
• 1:17:03
  And it turned out you weren't that far away from me, just
• 1:17:08
  little two or three hour drive up the island and then a ferry
• 1:17:11
  crossing. So I brought a few different
• 1:17:14
  men's retreats to carve bows with you.
• 1:17:15
  So it was an amazing experience. Yeah.
• 1:17:18
  Yeah. Once you've shot.
• 1:17:20
  Once you've shot a natural bow, like to me, there's a, there's a
• 1:17:23
  live connection there. The bow's alive.
• 1:17:26
  That's yeah, there's a it's. Different, you know.
• 1:17:30
  And I've never shot an unnatural 1.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah, Only ever shot primitive bows.
• 1:17:35
  Yeah, No, when I shoot glass bows, it's.
• 1:17:37
  Just there's, there's no life to them the same way there, you
• 1:17:40
  know, So it's hard to go back. I often think of archery as a
• 1:17:44
  spectrum. You know, on the one end you got
• 1:17:46
  the Super simple stick and string.
• 1:17:48
  On the other end, you got the compound composite comp Kevlar,
• 1:17:55
  and people often find a spot on that archery spectrum wherever
• 1:17:58
  it seems comfortable, but then you start drifting and you
• 1:18:01
  either start drifting more primitive or more techie.
• 1:18:04
  So I started pretty primitive to start, but I've definitely,
• 1:18:08
  yeah, that's my end of the spectrum.
• 1:18:10
  And that's been my game is what is the sort of nicest,
• 1:18:14
  beautiful, best shooting bows you can make using as much
• 1:18:19
  natural material as possible. Yeah.
• 1:18:21
  So I've always drawn, drawn the line at fiberglass.
• 1:18:23
  That's been the that line that I haven't crossed yet.
• 1:18:27
  What was your first bow sale? My first.
• 1:18:30
  Bow Sale. Was just down the road from my
• 1:18:36
  shop. So on Lang Bay Rd. at the end of
• 1:18:39
  the street here there's a little Regional Park and every spring
• 1:18:43
  and no no, every Labor Day weekend there's a Sunshine Coast
• 1:18:47
  music fest and we set up a booth there years ago, probably our
• 1:18:53
  first year with just a couple bows I had kicking around and a
• 1:18:59
  local fellow in town bought a it was an all heartwood English
• 1:19:05
  Longbow off of me and that was lumpy.
• 1:19:08
  It had this one little like real nice lump right on the one limb.
• 1:19:11
  I don't remember what I charged, probably 150 bucks at the time,
• 1:19:16
  but that was my first bow. We're really there mostly trying
• 1:19:19
  to sell workshop spots for our first, probably our first bow
• 1:19:24
  making workshop really. But he.
• 1:19:27
  Yeah, he bought this. Bought a bow off us.
• 1:19:30
  I didn't know a Longbow. Could be all heartwood from you.
• 1:19:35
  Generally it's not, you know. Generally like when we prefer
• 1:19:39
  long Longbow. So archery's funny because
• 1:19:42
  there's so many different namings and classifications.
• 1:19:45
  So when someone says a Longbow it doesn't actually tell you
• 1:19:49
  what they're talking about because a Longbow can either be
• 1:19:53
  a bow where just the string doesn't touch the recurve will
• 1:19:56
  be called a Longbow. A Longbow can also refer to an
• 1:20:00
  English Longbow, which is its own style and a Longbow and then
• 1:20:05
  the American like American Longbow.
• 1:20:09
  So I would say it was built in a English Longbow style.
• 1:20:13
  But had a tip overlay versus a horn cap.
• 1:20:18
  And yeah, so it's interesting because, you know, in England,
• 1:20:22
  all of the long bows generally have a bit of sapwood on them.
• 1:20:25
  So the whole story, you'll hear it.
• 1:20:28
  Sapwood is stronger intention, heartwood, stronger compression.
• 1:20:31
  It's almost a natural laminate in a way.
• 1:20:34
  But all up and down the West Coast, if you check out the old
• 1:20:37
  bows in the museums, 99% of them are all heartwood.
• 1:20:41
  There's very, very little sapwood in any of the museum
• 1:20:45
  pieces I've visited. And I've, I haven't been to a
• 1:20:49
  lot, but I've been to the Victoria Museum and Seattle at
• 1:20:53
  the Burt and pretty much all heartwood bows.
• 1:20:56
  So I couldn't figure it out. For years I thought, why the
• 1:20:59
  heck are the First Nations on the West Coast building
• 1:21:01
  heartwood bows out of you? And then in England they swear
• 1:21:05
  by the importance of the sapwood.
• 1:21:08
  And then one day I was in. Victoria Teaching.
• 1:21:10
  A workshop and I had a fellow there, a real high end native
• 1:21:15
  woodworker Carver and really interesting to watch because in
• 1:21:20
  my world I'm working all rasps and scrapers and hatchets.
• 1:21:26
  And but in the native world it's all the little hook knife,
• 1:21:30
  right? It's little hook knife, just
• 1:21:32
  chip, chip, chip, chip, chip. And he was telling me, he said,
• 1:21:35
  as a Carver on the West Coast, the first thing you're taught,
• 1:21:40
  whatever project you're working on is get rid of the SAP wood.
• 1:21:43
  I said, OK, well, that's interesting.
• 1:21:45
  And he said in a wet. Climate, the SAP wood is going
• 1:21:48
  to rot quicker than the heart wood, so we got to get rid of
• 1:21:51
  it. So I thought, man, there you go.
• 1:21:54
  If you're living in a wet West Coast, climate decomposition is.
• 1:22:00
  A major factor in your. Archery equipment.
• 1:22:02
  So if your bow is all heart wood and it's going to last longer,
• 1:22:05
  there you go. So.
• 1:22:08
  So then I got interested in, yeah, the heartwood stuff.
• 1:22:12
  And sometimes in a tree, especially in the bigger trees,
• 1:22:15
  when you split them out, you'll get a weak year, whether it's,
• 1:22:19
  you know, fire, whether it's drought, whether it's wind
• 1:22:21
  shake. But there'll be one year where
• 1:22:23
  there is no adhesion between the layers of heartwood.
• 1:22:27
  So I remember the tree because I split it out into these staves.
• 1:22:31
  But then the stave would separate and you get the belly
• 1:22:33
  split and the outer split. So I always call them piggyback
• 1:22:36
  staves, but you'd get a stave that had basically a perfect
• 1:22:40
  year of heartwood. So that's where that all
• 1:22:46
  heartwood longo would have come from.
• 1:22:47
  Not traditionally accurate, but sort of a cross between taking
• 1:22:52
  pieces of the English and taking pieces off the West Coast.
• 1:22:56
  And you mentioned Victoria Museum.
• 1:22:58
  Do they have a? Nice archery collection.
• 1:23:01
  Yeah, so the trick to the? Victoria Museum is just send
• 1:23:05
  them an e-mail ahead of time and arrange a tour into the archives
• 1:23:09
  because when you go into the standard museum, fantastic
• 1:23:13
  museum, all sorts of stuff. I think they had two bows on
• 1:23:16
  display and you can't really get clipped like they're behind
• 1:23:20
  glass. But when we arranged a tour
• 1:23:25
  ahead of time, one they gave us free tickets.
• 1:23:27
  Museum and two, they get you into the archives and they
• 1:23:30
  probably had 50 bows in the in the cases back there and they
• 1:23:36
  were pulling them out let you look at them.
• 1:23:38
  Everything in the museum is documented online, so you can
• 1:23:42
  look at the bows ahead of time and they've got really good
• 1:23:44
  pictures of them. So they'll ask you like, hey,
• 1:23:46
  are there specific ones you want to look at?
• 1:23:50
  And there are because some of them, some of the First Nations
• 1:23:55
  bows are fascinating because one, they're super short and
• 1:23:59
  super wide, what we would call a paddle bow.
• 1:24:02
  But some of the belly, the belly shape to them, they're not a lot
• 1:24:06
  of them are not flat belly like you'll get into a call it like
• 1:24:11
  it's scalloped like a concave curvature.
• 1:24:15
  But the one bow in particular has basically a triple concave
• 1:24:20
  running down the belly of it. So it's got two big concaves
• 1:24:23
  that go up to the edges and then like a mini little concave
• 1:24:27
  running down the center. Like fascinating to think people
• 1:24:31
  carving these with, I don't know, Beaver teeth and muscle
• 1:24:34
  shells or like, phenomenal. Phenomenal.
• 1:24:38
  Woodwork, considering that you know, realistically these bows
• 1:24:42
  were likely produced without iron tools and I know like even
• 1:24:47
  using gosh tempered steel rasps and hardened scrapers like how
• 1:24:53
  dense dry wood can be, but to think of building these, you
• 1:24:57
  know pre contact is absolutely phenomenal that's incredible I
• 1:25:02
  thank you for that I. Am going to look into that.
• 1:25:04
  Maybe my kids and I can go. We're only here for a few more
• 1:25:08
  weeks before we come to see you and kind of head back out again.
• 1:25:12
  But I would love to see that collection.
• 1:25:13
  I think you know, just tell them you're doing a research.
• 1:25:16
  Project and yeah, I'll just, I'll just tell them Jamie
• 1:25:20
  McDonald sent me. There, you do the trick.
• 1:25:23
  I was with Pete Woodland yesterday and I think he was
• 1:25:25
  talking to me about that particular bow style because
• 1:25:28
  he's making a lot of these concave belly Ridge bows right
• 1:25:31
  now. But he was talking to me about
• 1:25:34
  this First Nations bow that had like a, a, a channel carved
• 1:25:38
  through the belly Ridge, which kind of sounds like what you
• 1:25:40
  were just describing. Yeah, well, there's one in the.
• 1:25:44
  Boyer's Bible. I think it's the first volume.
• 1:25:46
  There's a chapter, I don't know I forget what it's called, but
• 1:25:52
  they have a. Bunch of pictures of.
• 1:25:55
  You bows and the one is from Nutka Island and it might be the
• 1:26:01
  bow that's in that book because the the book has a good picture
• 1:26:05
  of it, but then to see it in real life is a whole nother
• 1:26:08
  layer. Wow.
• 1:26:10
  Yeah, very good advice. Thank you, I'll check it out.
• 1:26:13
  You've managed to like build this building empire without any
• 1:26:18
  social media presence, Is that correct?
• 1:26:20
  Or at least you're not on Instagram?
• 1:26:22
  Or are you guys on any social media?
• 1:26:26
  Knock on wood, we have been very fortunate.
• 1:26:31
  I actually joke. It's funny you said empire
• 1:26:34
  because I actually joke and say we're building a lifestyle and
• 1:26:36
  not an empire. So it's funny to hear it
• 1:26:39
  referenced as an empire. Just the first word that came to
• 1:26:42
  mind. Totally.
• 1:26:43
  No, no, it's to represent your. Success you guys are.
• 1:26:46
  Doing well. Yeah, we have been very
• 1:26:48
  fortunate. I remember years ago there was a
• 1:26:52
  fellow not too far from us who had a website and was selling
• 1:26:57
  you bows as well and reached out to us and we got in contact.
• 1:27:03
  And I quickly realized that we would make better said
• 1:27:08
  competition than colleagues. And from that date, I remember
• 1:27:13
  Jen and I, our business meeting was simply, you know, believe in
• 1:27:17
  what you do and do it the best you can and don't worry what
• 1:27:21
  other people are doing. And that has been a bit of our
• 1:27:24
  motto. We take a lot of pride in what
• 1:27:27
  we do. You know, we really do the best
• 1:27:29
  we can. We have been fortunate with sort
• 1:27:34
  of that Archers review working with the Longbow shop, which I
• 1:27:39
  think has helped raise a bit of our our profile.
• 1:27:43
  But no, we have not done any marketing or advertising really.
• 1:27:49
  Years ago, years ago, we ran a little classified ad in the back
• 1:27:54
  of Primitive Archer, just a little text ad, partly because
• 1:27:58
  we just wanted a link to their website for our SEO stuff.
• 1:28:03
  And then really what we have sort of focused on was on our
• 1:28:08
  website we for years. And it was Jenna's idea is we
• 1:28:12
  just want to collect e-mail addresses so people can sign up
• 1:28:17
  to be on our bow list. So when we build a new batch of
• 1:28:23
  bows, we'll finish them up, take pictures of them, and we will
• 1:28:27
  e-mail them the new bows out to our bow list.
• 1:28:31
  So those people on the list will get to see the new bows they a
• 1:28:36
  week before they go up on the website.
• 1:28:38
  So even if you're not interested in buying a bow and just want to
• 1:28:42
  see pictures of nice bows coming out, if you get on our list, you
• 1:28:46
  get to see the bows. So we do that and a lot of our
• 1:28:50
  bows get sold, you know, through that process before they ever
• 1:28:54
  make it onto the website. And then we do the same with our
• 1:28:57
  staves we sell, you know, over the years I have been actively
• 1:29:02
  collecting wood for ever since I started.
• 1:29:06
  And part of that is buying a lot of wood, but I also sell it
• 1:29:12
  quite a bit of wood. So I have a list of e-mail
• 1:29:15
  people who are interested in wood and our workshops.
• 1:29:18
  So a lot of our outreach to customers is sort of direct
• 1:29:21
  through e-mail and it's all totally, I like it because it's
• 1:29:27
  very straight up and you know, very clearly if you don't want
• 1:29:30
  to be in our list, just ask to be removed and they'll take you
• 1:29:32
  off our list. So I know that the people on the
• 1:29:34
  list want to be there and appreciate getting the updates.
• 1:29:39
  Instagram haven't done. No, we sometimes do a little bit
• 1:29:44
  of Facebook. There's some of the bow building
• 1:29:48
  sites on there. Sometimes I think, man, should
• 1:29:50
  we be doing Instagram? But I often think our time is
• 1:29:54
  better spent in the shop doing what we do and sort of doing it
• 1:29:58
  well then, yeah, the outreach. But the world, it's changed a
• 1:30:03
  lot too, though. You know, when we started, there
• 1:30:05
  was hard to find a ubo on the Internet.
• 1:30:08
  And so when we started, we sort of jumped into that niche and
• 1:30:13
  sort of filled it up. But we have definitely over the
• 1:30:17
  years seen businesses coming online who I want to say bear a
• 1:30:22
  striking resemblance to what we're doing, right?
• 1:30:26
  Well, whatever you guys, whatever set up, you have it.
• 1:30:28
  Seems to be working. And yeah, social medias can be a
• 1:30:32
  bit of an evil. So it's, let's say if you're
• 1:30:35
  doing well without it, you're better off without it.
• 1:30:37
  Yeah, that's for sure. But I could talk to you all day,
• 1:30:41
  so I'm excited that. I get to come and spend some
• 1:30:43
  more time with you and your workshop.
• 1:30:45
  I do. I just have one more question I
• 1:30:47
  want to wrap up with. You talked about you're building
• 1:30:50
  a lot of war bows lately. How's the tillering process of
• 1:30:54
  those? Because I ask because I'm always
• 1:30:57
  like hearts up in my throat when I'm going through the the first
• 1:31:01
  pulls on the on the tiller. Like when you're drawing back
• 1:31:04
  these 140 LB bows like wow. Like yeah, yeah, in.
• 1:31:10
  A lot of ways it is exactly the same, everything is just scaled
• 1:31:13
  up. So, you know, when I'm
• 1:31:15
  processing wood, I try and keep the wood as long as I can
• 1:31:20
  because when I so I cut up a lot of wood, like quite a bit of
• 1:31:24
  wood and I'm going through it. And I'm just saying first round
• 1:31:28
  is what's a possible war bow, possible war bow, possible war
• 1:31:31
  bow. And just trying to collect a
• 1:31:34
  collection of the longest, straightest, cleanest, nicest
• 1:31:38
  stay as possible because you can't build war bows with, you
• 1:31:42
  know, crummy wood. It's just not not the ticket.
• 1:31:47
  So a lot of times the war bows will.
• 1:31:50
  Be sort of choice. Wood hands down.
• 1:31:53
  And then as you sort your wood, your next is like what sort of
• 1:31:56
  full, like Longbow, like 30 inch dry 176.
• 1:31:59
  So then you go through and find that and then what's your
• 1:32:02
  Longbow wood? And then what's your flat bow
• 1:32:04
  wood? And then what's your billet wood
• 1:32:06
  And then what's basically junk. So the war bows definitely start
• 1:32:11
  with the choices wood, so that helps.
• 1:32:15
  Basically I like to get everything on the tiller stick
• 1:32:18
  as early as possible. You know, I watched some people
• 1:32:22
  build bows and you know they'll get the bow strung and tillered
• 1:32:26
  and like basically almost finished before they put their
• 1:32:29
  horn caps on. I'm exactly the opposite.
• 1:32:32
  I put my horn caps on super early in the process because I
• 1:32:36
  want to get it on the tiller stick.
• 1:32:38
  My tiller stick, I have a pulley at the top so I've got 2 to one
• 1:32:42
  mechanical advantage. So if I'm building 100 LB bow,
• 1:32:46
  I'm still only pulling 50 on the stick or I'm on the rope, sorry.
• 1:32:50
  So yeah. But the real trick I find with
• 1:32:55
  the war bows is get them on the stick early and then you got to
• 1:32:58
  get them strong as early as possible.
• 1:33:01
  Because by the time you can string the bow, you have very
• 1:33:04
  little room to tiller it to adjust the shape before you get
• 1:33:09
  out to full draw. So get them strong as early as
• 1:33:12
  possible. So for stringing early on, I
• 1:33:16
  often actually string them on the tiller stick.
• 1:33:19
  So I'll put the bow up on the tiller stick with the string and
• 1:33:22
  the Stringer. I'll hook my like my tillering
• 1:33:25
  rope up to the Stringer. So I can get, you know, 100 and
• 1:33:30
  3000 and 40 lbs on the Stringer to get it strung.
• 1:33:35
  Or I need a help in the shop. I need to, I need to deadlift
• 1:33:39
  the bow. I have to two, two feet on the
• 1:33:41
  string, two hands on the bow, and get someone else to put the
• 1:33:45
  string on because getting them strung early is utmost
• 1:33:50
  importance. Have you doing that deadlift?
• 1:33:54
  Style, as you call it. Have you had any explode on you?
• 1:33:57
  I've built enough bows that I've seen.
• 1:33:59
  A lot of things. So yeah, I've had bows just just
• 1:34:04
  blow to splinters. Yeah, yeah, I had one last year.
• 1:34:08
  A friend of mine from England came over and he was building a
• 1:34:11
  real nice piece and we knew there was something wrong.
• 1:34:14
  It had a little sort of that ring separation right out at the
• 1:34:18
  tip and we shortened it down to inches.
• 1:34:20
  So we were building like 31 inch draw and I thought we were good,
• 1:34:24
  but it must have just extended just past the horn cap because
• 1:34:28
  we had it on the tiller stick and we were stringing it.
• 1:34:30
  We probably had it cold at 140 and that tip blew off on the
• 1:34:35
  stick and pieces everywhere. And it happens, right?
• 1:34:40
  Yep, Yep. And I'll I.
• 1:34:43
  I always. Say, you know better now than
• 1:34:45
  later, because the last thing I want is that to happen out in
• 1:34:48
  the world at some archery event. If it blows up in my shop on the
• 1:34:53
  tiller stick, which is, you know, tiller sticks 6 or 8 feet
• 1:34:56
  away from me, that's the best place it could possibly happen.
• 1:34:59
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:35:02
  Yeah. One thing I wanted to mention,
• 1:35:04
  which you haven't asked, is that for early in our business, we
• 1:35:11
  were building bows and arrows. And then as the bows got really
• 1:35:16
  busy, I outsource the arrows to a buddy of mine who built arrows
• 1:35:20
  for us for a few years, built a ton of arrows.
• 1:35:23
  Beautiful stuff. He then moved away up to
• 1:35:26
  Haidegwai. So then for years we were not
• 1:35:29
  building arrows, but we're sending our customers up to him.
• 1:35:33
  Is that Blaine? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:36
  So Blaine is built. That's some money.
• 1:35:39
  Yeah, my understanding is Blaine is not building arrows at the
• 1:35:42
  moment. So then for a few years there we
• 1:35:46
  didn't weren't doing any arrows and we're sending customers to
• 1:35:50
  various places. And then in the last year or so
• 1:35:56
  I have been training my children on building arrows.
• 1:35:59
  That's awesome. Yeah.
• 1:36:01
  So. We have now started up.
• 1:36:03
  Our Arrow side of our business again and my kids are building
• 1:36:07
  real nice self knocked bamboo arrows.
• 1:36:11
  Yeah, with my help, but they're doing great and learning fast.
• 1:36:15
  So at this moment the kids are building our arrows for us.
• 1:36:19
  That is beautiful, dude. Yeah.
• 1:36:21
  I'm glad you shared that. I yeah, I didn't circle back
• 1:36:25
  around to them. I did want to ask if they're
• 1:36:27
  making bows with you at all, but sounds like they're doing some
• 1:36:30
  arrows. Are they carving bows as well?
• 1:36:32
  Not really, no. They have built.
• 1:36:34
  I've built. Bows with their homeschool
• 1:36:36
  groups, Yeah, so they have bows and they both shoot a bit, but
• 1:36:40
  no, at this point they are not really building so much bows.
• 1:36:44
  They help around the shop, they help me package staves, they
• 1:36:46
  help move wood around. They help with a lot of that
• 1:36:48
  stuff. But and are you guys selling
• 1:36:51
  those arrows? Yeah, at this point we are now
• 1:36:54
  they. Built a bunch, sort of.
• 1:36:56
  I would always QC check them and give them tips and advice, but
• 1:37:01
  at this point they are building our our air orders.
• 1:37:04
  Yeah, and that's on your website as well.
• 1:37:06
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:37:08
  Can you give? The.
• 1:37:09
  Audience that domain our website.
• 1:37:14
  Is www.ravenbeak.com and it's all on them.
• 1:37:18
  Our bows, our arrows, our staves, our workshops and then
• 1:37:23
  our other side businesses we started doing with the kids.
• 1:37:26
  Some of that has funded our travelling is we're building you
• 1:37:31
  would dice out of some of our off cuts, so real nice little
• 1:37:35
  wooden dice that are all drilled so the holes are drilled out,
• 1:37:38
  oiled up doing that. And buttons.
• 1:37:43
  You would buttons out of branches, so supporting
• 1:37:47
  clothing. Yeah, really.
• 1:37:50
  Yeah. That's great.
• 1:37:52
  Yeah. So those are on the.
• 1:37:53
  Website too. Yeah, nice.
• 1:37:55
  I love to hear. About these family operations,
• 1:37:58
  you guys are full all in on the family.
• 1:38:00
  That's amazing. Yeah, no, it's been this is.
• 1:38:03
  All they know, right? They grew up in the archery
• 1:38:05
  shop. They were crawling around here
• 1:38:07
  on the floor as babies. And yeah, that is, we have been
• 1:38:11
  doing this for both of them their whole life.
• 1:38:15
  Yeah. Wow.
• 1:38:17
  So good. Oh man, I appreciate you and
• 1:38:20
  all. The work that you're doing.
• 1:38:21
  Your bows are. They changed my life.
• 1:38:23
  So thank you so much for introducing me to the world of
• 1:38:28
  primitive bows and your beautiful long bows.
• 1:38:31
  Really excited to be coming back to build another one with you in
• 1:38:34
  a few weeks and get to see your property again and hang out with
• 1:38:38
  you and Jenna and the kids. Yeah, well, we're super excited
• 1:38:41
  to have you up here. Your project you're working on
• 1:38:44
  sounds really cool. Excited to get to work with you
• 1:38:47
  in the shop and then, you know, excited to see or and hear sort
• 1:38:51
  of. Insights into other.
• 1:38:52
  Bow makers, shops and spaces as well.
• 1:38:55
  Yeah, I'm happy to share everything with you.
• 1:38:57
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:38:59
  Appreciate it. Thanks.
• 1:39:11
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