Latest / Salish Wolf / #76 Steven Bieber on Project Quiver

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#76 Steven Bieber on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

• 0:06
  Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
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  the globe to capture the artistry and spirit of the
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  world's finest traditional bow carvers.
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  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
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  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
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  on the Salish Wolf podcast. The book is called Quiver the
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  art of life through bow craft and this journey, our living
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  story is Project Quiver. So I heard about you.
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  A couple is between one and two years ago.
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  My mom lives in my parents live in Sebring in Florida.
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  And she came, she messaged me one day or called me saying that
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  she was at the hairdresser and our hairdresser was telling they
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  were chatting and they were talking about bows because of, I
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  guess because of me. And then our hairdresser said
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  she knew of a Bowyer who lived nearby and maybe it's related to
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  you or something. I don't.
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  I don't. Know sounds like my wife's
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  sister. OK, yeah.
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  And so my mom told me about it. What's that?
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  Who? What's your mom's name if you
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  don't mind me asking? Karen.
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  Karen Howard. Karen Howard, it sounds
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  familiar. I'm sure my wife would know, but
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  she's in the the main part of the house with the boys.
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  But yeah, small world, man. That's crazy.
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  Crazy. Yeah.
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  So then I checked you out and I was like, Oh yeah, he's legit.
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  He makes some really good stuff. So.
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  Oh. Yeah, I appreciate it man,
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  really cool story behind how this all happened but.
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  We'll jump. Let's do it.
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  Oh, absolutely. So, you know, when I started, it
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  pretty much started for me when I was a young kid.
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  And you know, I've always had that fascination and interest in
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  bow and arrows. My dad used to watch these
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  Westerns growing up and I was always fascinated by the Native
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  Americans in there and the bow and arrows they had in the
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  shows. And so that's kind of what
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  inspired me to kind of get into it.
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  And as a kid, we would whittle down these cabbage palm branches
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  and if you want to call them that.
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  And they were super easy to work with a knife because they're
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  green and they're very soft wood.
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  And so my brothers and I, we would whittle those down.
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  And at the time we were drying our clothes on a clothesline.
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  And so we would cut my mom's clothesline and we would get the
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  nice braided cordage inside, like the outside part of the
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  rope, and we would make our bows from there.
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  And we did that for many years. And after that, you know, we, I
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  mean, I took a break from that. I kind of stopped for a while
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  and my grandmother bought me this solid fiberglass kids bow
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  and I still have that to this day.
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  By the way, it's about 25 or 26 years old now.
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  And so I shot with that. And at the time I didn't know
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  they were cedar arrow shafts, that it came with it.
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  But they were just these super light wooden arrows.
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  And I probably lost them all within the first month of having
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  the bow, just shooting them into the woods, just missing my
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  target. And Tyler just put everything
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  away for many, many years. And a little over 9 years ago, I
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  had the urge to, to get into bow making again.
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  And I specifically wanted to get into the bow making for hunting.
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  And one day I just told my wife was like, I want to make a bow
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  and arrow. And she just kind of looked at
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  me like, what what are you talking about?
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  I was like, no, like a legit bow and arrow.
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  Like I want to make a bow and arrow and I want to go hunting
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  with it. And she's like, sure, yeah, if
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  that's what you want to do. And so then, you know, I hopped
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  on YouTube University, as I like to call it and started looking
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  into bow making. Found a video of Billy Berger.
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  I'm not sure if you're familiar with him or not, but he has a
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  phenomenal it's a 3 or 4 part series on bow making.
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  And I was just kind of blown away by what he was doing.
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  He was working with Osage. I had no idea Osage was even a
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  thing and come to find out, doesn't grow in Florida.
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  So my, oh, that sucks, you know, and when you're when you're
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  watching these videos, and I mean, I probably watched that
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  series more than any other bow making series ever to this day.
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  I was just really intrigued by what he was doing.
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  And I thought it was a very well designed format that he used and
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  how he went about the process and everything.
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  And as I kept watching them, the algorithm would put other bow
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  makers into the, IT would put them in there at the end of the
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  videos where I would see them. And I saw all Pine Hall long
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  bows on there and it said Master Bullier and then something else
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  on there. So I clicked on it and I delve
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  into that. And at the end of the video, the
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  first part of that series, it had Mike Yancey's website on
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  there. And so I looked into it and saw
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  he was selling both Daves and did a little bit of research,
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  found out that Hickory was kind of a really good beginner
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  bullier wood. And the rest is history.
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  I purchased my first day from there, got some string wax and
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  green and black spool of B-55 and I the original beeswax that
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  I bought 9 years ago. I have a tiny piece left of it
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  but I'm keeping that just as like a little souvenir, you
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  know, And I kind of delve into that from that point on and I
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  was just addicted right away. I was gifted a very old antique
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  draw knife from one of my Co workers at the time, but I was
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  too scared to use it. I didn't know how to use it.
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  And so that very first build I did was with a really cheap set
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  of wood rafts from harbor freight, which is like a local
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  hardware store where I live. And I probably spent well over
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  100 hours on my first bow and it was a it was a broomstick.
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  I wish I had pictures. I'll have to look and tell me I
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  can send them to you. But my handle was still not
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  finished. It had really sharp edges on it.
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  There was no shelf on this bow. And my tips were, I'm not even
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  joking when I say they were still probably about an inch
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  thick at at the last inches, they're about an inch thick.
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  And the tiller was terrible. It shot bows and I mean that
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  sucker had to be in the upper 60s pounds wise.
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  And I didn't know anything about arrows.
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  And so I went to Walmart and bought compound arrows and I'm,
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  I'm shooting them with the veins and the flight on these arrows
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  are just so crazy. And like it was just insane.
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  But I was just so proud of that bow.
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  And I wish I still had it, but I left it in the shed from a place
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  where we're renting at that time.
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  And we went away for about a week.
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  And I didn't realize there was holes in the shed.
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  And I left it on the little countertop where I was working
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  on bows. And it rained for like a week
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  straight. And when I came back, the bow
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  was just soaking wet and I thought it was ruined.
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  And so I just do it in the fire. But the real interesting part
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  that I really wanted to get to it was just kind of like what I
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  call like a God link or just it was just something that, you
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  know, told me I was on the right path with this bow making.
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  I had no idea who Ed Scott was. And at the time I had no idea
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  that I knew some of his relatives who live in the same
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  time I currently live in now, which is Avon Park.
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  And my wife and I, we moved to this piece of property where her
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  dad owned about 20 acres. And later on, throughout the
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  years of bow making, I found out that Ed Scott would have
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  technically been the neighbor to where my wife's father lives.
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  And I started finding, I found a video of him on YouTube and he
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  talked about how he would hunt rabbits.
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  And then I got into contact with one of his, I think he's like
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  great, great nephew or something like that.
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  But a little further along the line, he's like, you know, I
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  have these bows that, that Scott made.
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  And, you know, at first I didn't think it was the real Ed Scott
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  and never put anything together. And turns out I, you know, I go
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  over to his house, I meet him and he pulls out these bows.
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  And it's literally the identical type of drawing that Ed Scott
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  did, had a signature on there and everything.
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  It was a hackberry bow and it was about 2 1/4 inches wide.
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  And it was similar to a mogul of bet on the tips and he strung it
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  and I noticed it was lifting a splinter on it.
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  And so, well, don't try it. And turns out I ended up doing a
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  repair on that bow for him. And I actually got to shoot that
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  bow. So I actually literally shoot
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  one at Scott's bows. And turns out, you know, the
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  saying I always say is like he can pretty much you can say that
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  I've, I've walked in at Scott's footsteps truly because we were
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  hunting the same piece of property and it was just a
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  really, really cool, like I, I just felt like I was truly on
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  the right path from that moment on.
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  And you know, that's my all time favorite Bowyer.
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  If you ever get a chance to look at his stuff, I mean, it's truly
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  incredible craftsmanship. And it seemed like he was really
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  into the Native American just ways of life, but also, you
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  know, he used a lot of their styles of bows in his
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  construction, the way he would do it.
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  So just super, super cool, you know, and then from that point
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  on, you know, I just kind of gathered inspiration from a lot
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  of these really well known bowyers and, you know, just
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  learned a lot of these cool tips and tricks along the way.
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  But I later, you know, I would say maybe about four years ago,
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  I kind of just started diving into my personal self in my life
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  and started doing a lot of reflecting.
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  And so that's when I feel like my bow making really truly
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  stand, like stood out and kind of just developed from there
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  because it was truly coming from within and the art was truly
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  coming out and the flow was just happening.
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  And, you know, I try to operate in that space when it comes to
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  my bow making quite regularly. But I'm very grateful for, you
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  know, the Internet and having access to all these other just
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  phenomenal bow ears who are so willing to share their knowledge
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  and the way they do things. That's so cool man, thank you
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  for sharing that. Absolutely.
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  Yeah. And the the work of the heart
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  coming out, it's such a beautiful thing.
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  And so many Bowers experience that.
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  And I think it would be really hard for people who haven't
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  carved a bow to actually even understand what that is.
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  But the therapeutic impact of carving a bow, it's tremendous.
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  Seriously. Yeah, that's that's my go to.
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  But I learned very quickly on, you know, if I was not in the
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  right state of mind or if I was stressed.
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  I've learned from past bows that I've ruined, you know, I've,
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  I've learned when to step away, when to just put in a corner and
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  when to come back. You know, when the right time is
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  to come back and truly allow that wood to be utilized for
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  many, many years down the road instead of just diving in and
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  trying to force this thing to be what I want it to be.
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  I learned to that there's a relationship between the Bowyer
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  and the, and the tree in the wood, you know, and that tree
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  has spirit just as much as we do.
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  And so just having that constant communication back and forth
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  through the entire process like that is what truly draws me to
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  bow making so much. And I found so much about myself
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  in making self bows. And so the art of the self bow
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  to me is like the art of self reflection, but there's just
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  this beautiful relationship between humans and and that
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  aspect of bow making. Yeah, the very first bow I
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  carved was on a men's retreat. I bought my first bow from Jamie
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  MacDonald, a Ravenbeak. Oh, Ravenbeak Nature Works and
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  British Columbia. And at the same time, I was
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  creating curriculum, I guess, for men's retreats.
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  And I got this bow and I started shooting and fell in love with
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  them. Like, I need to learn how to
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  make this. And so I reached out to Jamie to
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  see if you'd be willing to have me bring like, my men's retreat
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  there. And, and my idea was during the
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  day, we would carve bows and then at night we would do some
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  of the other, you know, internal work that we are going to be
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  doing. And Jamie was up for it.
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  And so I ended up doing a few retreats there before COVID
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  happened. And the men, you know, had such
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  an incredible experience being able to carve bows and a lot of
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  them were, as we were peeling away layers of our psyche at
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  night, we would then go into the workshop in the morning and like
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  peel away layers of the wood. And so it was kind of like a
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  self discovery. At the same time, we were
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  discovering how to work with this wood and create these bows
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  that we could then keep as beautiful mementos and of the
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  experience and just obviously so much more than that.
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  So. It.
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  Was really a great experience for.
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  That that's, that's beautiful, man.
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  Yeah. So you're at Avon Park, so
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  that's in what, Central Florida? Yep, Yep.
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  Pretty much. Almost like kind of close to
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  dead center. Yeah, and what do you, what do
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  you hunt there? Specifically whitetail.
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  That's like my primary. That's been my primary goal
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  since I started. Occasionally I've taken a couple
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  hogs here, lots of rabbits. When I first started out, that
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  was like the primary thing I haunted.
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  I had a Beagle and he was the coolest dog ever and I had a
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  really cool experience with him. The first time we went hunting
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  and ended up missing that rabbit when I shot.
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  But it was just such a cool experience.
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  The dog ran around and I thought he was going to run across the
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  street into the dairy and he literally found a scent and
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  brought the rabbit to me. Like he brought the rabbit right
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  to me and I just couldn't believe it.
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  I had, I just literally cannot believe there's a rabbit 10
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  yards in front of me and I drew back on it, shot right over his
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  head, missed. But I, I mean, I was hooked from
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  that point on. I actually just finally got my
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  first whitetail deer December 16th.
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  And it was with this bow behind me here.
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  I made that bow a little over three years ago in the same
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  arrow that's on that Clipper right now is the same exact
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  arrow I shot that deer with. He's a little 4 points, but I
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  got him at about 10 yards sitting up on the tree and so
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  there's no tree stand there. The tree just grew at a perfect
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  angle to where you can walk right up the side about 16 feet
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  up. There's a perfect tree branch
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  about 10 inches in diameter that I could sit on.
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  And I had a 8 or 9 inch diameter tree where my feet just fit
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  perfectly on like a seat. And then there was a branch that
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  just comes right around my back. And so the only thing is, was
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  that it's at an angle. So it'll hurt your back.
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  And, you know, yeah, a couple hours of sitting there.
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  But it was a really cool experience.
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  And I just could not believe the arrow was like went completely
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  to this deer was stuck in the ground.
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  And you know, I just watched the deer as he ran off and once the
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  nerve settled and I realized what was going on, I looked down
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  and there's just an arrow in the ground just covered in blood.
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  He went about 60 yards. So but I was able to get my
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  first one. Then it was, man, that was such
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  a great experience. And the cool thing is, is I've
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  got that deer on the property where I teach at.
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  There's it's a 40 acre campus and 15 of it's like dedicated to
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  the school. And the other is just
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  undeveloped and it's still very natural oak hammock.
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  It borders a really big swamp that just runs North and South
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  of the property. And so those bucks were coming
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  in from the swamp. And we had an unusual season
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  this year because I mean, they were like literally every oak
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  tree dropped acorns at the same time.
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  That typically doesn't happen. It's like a couple drop every
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  other year or so. But I mean, it was just the
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  property was littered with acorns.
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  It was. It was really cool.
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  So what do you teach at this school?
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  My first two years there, I taught first grade and now I'm
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  the agriculture teacher this year.
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  Agriculture. Yep.
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  So I teach agriculture. We have practical arts at that
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  place as well. There's industrial woodworking
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  and we also have orchestra as well.
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  Wow, Yeah. What?
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  What is your background with agriculture?
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  So I actually worked in industrial AG, industrialized AG
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  for 10 years. And so I guess you could say I
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  have 10 years of experience on what not to do.
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  Yeah. So, you know, I learned the hard
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  way. And my wife's dad owns a company
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  where, you know, they spread fertilizer.
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  And these trucks, they're highway trucks we converted into
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  the spreader trucks. And, you know, I learned a lot
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  of mechanic work, fabricating, welding, a lot of those stuff
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  along the way, fence building repairs for farm animals.
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  But yeah, so I have about 10 years of experience in
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  industrialized AG, and this is my first year teaching it in
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  school in a sustainable way. So when you say it's
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  sustainable, are you teaching permaculture practices or?
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  Still, there are some areas on the property that are somewhat
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  permaculture style of of agriculture, but it's mainly
• 16:57
  just conventional gardening right now.
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  But we also have farm animals on the property.
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  We have goats, rabbits, pigs and chickens, lots and lots of
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  chickens. And so we've we actually
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  processed quite a bit of rabbits this year with the students.
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  Yeah. So about straight up, in what
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  way is it sustainable what you're teaching?
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  How does it differ from the industrial AG?
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  So, you know, with industrialized AG, you're
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  constantly consuming, you're constantly having to buy, and it
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  turns out you're actually spraying a lot of the medicine
• 17:34
  that's out in the pastures. And so you're constantly going
• 17:38
  to have to rebuy your fertilizer every year to fertilize your
• 17:42
  pastures. And that fertilizer only lasts
• 17:44
  about 30 days and then it's pretty much as gone.
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  Whereas what we're trying to do is we're composting all of our
• 17:51
  vegetables that are finished off.
• 17:54
  We start our own compost piles. We just try to use the poop and
• 17:58
  maneuver from the animals and we incorporate that into our
• 18:00
  compost and we kind of take somewhat of a biodynamic farming
• 18:06
  approach to it. So yeah, we're just mainly
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  trying to reuse everything and try to, we're trying to the
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  things we are using, we're trying to accumulate off of that
• 18:15
  property alone. We're trying our best not to
• 18:17
  resource compost from other places.
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  We're trying to utilize everything that's on the
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  property and then just have it all in one big cycle where we
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  add the farm animals into that. And again, just doing our
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  absolute best not to outsource anything off of the property.
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  So it's been, it's, it's been a struggle for sure, but we've
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  done, we've done everything we could this year.
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  And you know, this being my first time teaching it, there's
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  been a lot of the huge learning curve to it.
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  I'm very passionate about it. And so when I first started
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  teaching, I was a little naive and thought, well, if I'm
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  passionate about, you know, these kids are going to love it
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  too. And that's not the case.
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  And so it's been a struggle trying to express the importance
• 19:00
  of of sustainable agriculture and why it means so much not
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  only for us, but for them as well.
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  Yeah, you know, because we don't want them to grow up and just
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  consume and consume and consume and just source everything from
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  big box stores and Walmart and Costco and all these places.
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  To me, it's trying to just express that importance of
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  everyone should know this. Everyone should be doing these
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  things naturally, you know? And it's usually mean.
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  Exactly. You know, it's a good way for
• 19:34
  you to sustain yourself and your family.
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  Yeah. You know, where your food's
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  coming from. And, you know, it's a really
• 19:41
  beautiful thing because it's like you start to understand
• 19:43
  when the time is to plant. And it almost just becomes
• 19:46
  instinctual where you don't have to look at calendars.
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  You just know. And you're so present with the
• 19:51
  land and you're there. You're barefoot.
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  You're, you're in the soil and you're working with it, but it
• 19:58
  just becomes a part of who you are, you know, when you pay
• 20:00
  attention to the cycles of nature, you know, and to me,
• 20:03
  that's one of the truest forms of a healthy human being is, you
• 20:07
  know, people always ask me that all that question all the time,
• 20:10
  you know, about health and stuff.
• 20:11
  I was like, to me, to be truly healthy, you know, plants have
• 20:16
  their own intelligence, you know, and it's like they know
• 20:19
  when it's time to bloom. They know when it's time to go
• 20:21
  dormant. They know when it's time for
• 20:22
  regrowth. Because there's a relationship
• 20:25
  between the cosmos or the heavens or the skies with earth,
• 20:29
  you know, and it's, it's, it's speaking to us.
• 20:32
  You can see it if you pay attention.
• 20:34
  But that relationship has always been there.
• 20:36
  And so for me, trying to teach them to tune into that, you
• 20:39
  know, and see that there's always this conversation going.
• 20:43
  But to be truly healthy, you're eating what is growing in your,
• 20:47
  in your specific area at a specific time, because that is
• 20:50
  truly what the body needs. In my opinion.
• 20:52
  That's the way I like to look at it.
• 20:55
  That's so rewarding, man. That's awesome that you're doing
• 20:57
  that. I have, my wife and I have a 10
• 20:59
  acre organic farm on Vancouver Island.
• 21:02
  We've had that for like probably a dozen or so years and just
• 21:07
  being able to grow food for our family and our, you know, our
• 21:10
  friends around us. It's been so incredible.
• 21:12
  And I used to, we don't spend as much time there anymore.
• 21:16
  But when I'm there, like every meal begins by me walking
• 21:19
  through the garden and just see what's available.
• 21:23
  What, what am I going to use today?
• 21:24
  So. Absolutely.
• 21:26
  How old are the kids who you're teaching?
• 21:28
  So I teach all I teach from first grade all the way up until
• 21:32
  high school, Yeah. Do you find the high school kids
• 21:35
  are more interested in the younger kids or?
• 21:38
  Absolutely not complete office though, yeah.
• 21:42
  And so my experience is the 1st and 2nd graders who are
• 21:45
  interested in absolutely everything, the older you get up
• 21:50
  into the grades, the more backlash you get, the more it's
• 21:54
  like, why are we doing this today?
• 21:55
  Not again, but with first and second, you know, they're so
• 21:58
  willing to learn and they're, they're such a sponge at that
• 22:02
  age, but you could literally go in trouble, go poop, and they
• 22:06
  would be totally content with that and super excited.
• 22:09
  And they do a great job at at it as well.
• 22:13
  So yeah, I would say the younger kids are more teachable because
• 22:20
  I feel like the older they get, they kind of get stuck in their
• 22:22
  ways a little bit, you know? Yeah, wow, wow.
• 22:27
  It's so cool what you're teaching and so important.
• 22:29
  So at least you're getting them at a young age, so hopefully
• 22:32
  when they get to be in high school and it'll be something
• 22:34
  they're still interested and curious about.
• 22:37
  Absolutely. And, you know, we're such a a
• 22:39
  new school that, you know, a lot of our students came from public
• 22:43
  schooling and. So it's a private school where
• 22:47
  you are? Yep, Yep.
• 22:49
  OK. And so, yeah, but again, a lot
• 22:52
  of these older kids have come from public schooling.
• 22:54
  And, you know, from my understanding, everything's done
• 22:57
  on laptops these days, and they're still confined in these
• 23:00
  tiny little rooms with artificial air, artificial
• 23:03
  lighting. Yeah.
• 23:04
  They're not really taught much, they're just taught how to
• 23:08
  recite and how to remember and just repeat what they've been
• 23:11
  told, like with our approach. So we're a Waldorf inspired
• 23:14
  school. Nice.
• 23:15
  OK. And so we, we kind of rely on
• 23:18
  Rudolf Steiner's philosophies and stuff quite, quite heavily.
• 23:22
  My wife and I especially, you know, it's pretty much what we
• 23:25
  were already doing with our kids before I found the school.
• 23:29
  But, you know, just, again, trying to just teach them at a
• 23:33
  very young age how to think for themselves, you know, instead of
• 23:37
  just doing what they're told. I think that's very, very
• 23:40
  important in today's day and age.
• 23:42
  And, you know, that's how we build.
• 23:45
  That's how we, you know, build a strong generation that's coming
• 23:49
  up. You know, we want a generation
• 23:51
  of thinkers and not just doers, people who just do, do, do, do,
• 23:55
  do what they're told. So again, really, really cool
• 23:59
  experience for us and my family and it's been a blessing because
• 24:02
  my whole family goes there. My wife is an early childhood
• 24:04
  teacher which is pre-K and so both of our boys are in there
• 24:09
  with her as well. How old are they so?
• 24:12
  5 and 2 1/2 Wow. Yep.
• 24:15
  So we're, we're still a young family and, you know, we're
• 24:18
  figuring it all out, but it's been so good for our, our
• 24:22
  oldest. When he was born, we found out
• 24:26
  about about 3 days later that he had bacterial meningitis.
• 24:30
  And so it was already in his brain and in his spine at a
• 24:33
  time. And he was pretty much
• 24:35
  lethargic. And, you know, we thought we
• 24:36
  were going to lose him. You know, Long story short, that
• 24:40
  was November of 2020. So that's kind of like peak
• 24:44
  COVID, you know, and everyone's wearing masks and it's just,
• 24:47
  it's crazy around this time. And we end up spending the next
• 24:52
  two weeks of his life back in the same hospital he was born
• 24:54
  at. And then turns out he had a
• 24:56
  tongue tie. So we had to get that taken care
• 24:58
  of later on. I mean, we just, we learned so
• 25:00
  much from that. They told us he would be on the
• 25:04
  spectrum, he'd have autism and just all these ailments, you
• 25:10
  know, as young parents, we just chose not to believe it.
• 25:12
  And we just kind of followed our our gut and our intuition, you
• 25:17
  know, And of course, they wanted us to take the pharmaceutical
• 25:19
  route. Pharmaceutical route, but my
• 25:22
  wife found out about a woman who does acupuncture in Winter
• 25:26
  Haven, which is about 45 minutes northwest of us.
• 25:29
  And we tried that for the first time.
• 25:32
  And just hearing all the stuff she had to say, we're like,
• 25:34
  whoa, this is like, I'm never knew any of the stuff.
• 25:37
  And, you know, we, we were a surrogate for him.
• 25:39
  So they would give us the needles.
• 25:42
  He would just have to be within 10 feet of us.
• 25:44
  And at first this is like crazy, you know, And prior to that for
• 25:49
  about two months, he stopped like communicating and
• 25:52
  everything was bus, everything was bus, who would point at
• 25:55
  everything and everything was just bus.
• 25:57
  And so that's when we started to get a little worried.
• 25:59
  And so we kind of got desperate and that's when my wife found
• 26:03
  about found out about the acupuncture.
• 26:06
  We go for a 45 minute treatment and on the ride home, it was on
• 26:09
  a full moon too. And it was fairly late because
• 26:13
  our appointment started at about 5:00 or 5:30 or something like
• 26:16
  that. And so we're heading home, you
• 26:18
  know, I'm driving in the car, my wife's in the passenger seat and
• 26:21
  my son Hopi is behind us. And he just randomly said mom,
• 26:25
  dad, moon. And I like I literally almost
• 26:28
  cried. Like I mean I was just so blown
• 26:31
  away. And I was just like what?
• 26:32
  Like this is like that's the first 3 words he had you know
• 26:35
  what said and months. And so we went back a week
• 26:39
  later, did another treatment and then we went back a week after
• 26:42
  that, we found out my wife was pregnant.
• 26:44
  So she can no longer be the surrogate because I have a huge
• 26:46
  phobia of needles. Like I am absolutely terrified
• 26:49
  of needles. And so I had to start doing the
• 26:52
  treatments and he just kept getting better and better over
• 26:56
  the, the course of a month and then two months and he just got
• 27:01
  so well. We just haven't been back since.
• 27:04
  And so, but now it's like you can, we can't even tell.
• 27:07
  I mean, he's super healthy. He's climbing trees all day at
• 27:10
  school and just monkey bars and like, he's just a full-fledged
• 27:13
  just free spirit now. I'm just it's, it's truly was
• 27:17
  one of the most magical moments of my life experiencing.
• 27:21
  I got chills. What a story.
• 27:23
  Yeah, we've had a lot of a lot of those moments in our life and
• 27:28
  just always try to be very grateful, you know, because you
• 27:31
  just never know, you know, when it's your time.
• 27:33
  And just do our best to be grateful and try to give back to
• 27:38
  the community as much as possible.
• 27:41
  In a former life, I did podcasting about holistic
• 27:43
  medicine. I am an acupuncturist and I had
• 27:45
  a college this. Is an intro.
• 27:48
  This is so crazy. Like how much is life?
• 27:50
  Just it's, it's so amazing. Yeah.
• 27:53
  And so I had, this is, I had a College in Canada where we
• 27:55
  taught holistic medicines. But I'm at here in Costa Rica, I
• 27:59
  do acupuncture on a daily basis and it's, I am still after 25
• 28:07
  years of doing it, I'm blown away pretty much on a daily
• 28:09
  basis by the results that I get. And I'm just like, how that, how
• 28:12
  did that just happen? Like I, I, I've seen it before.
• 28:15
  I kind of expected it, but still I'm like, how did that happen?
• 28:18
  I don't even know. Absolutely.
• 28:20
  The story that the woman who did the acupuncture, her, her story
• 28:26
  was just incredible. I'll just, I'll make this very
• 28:28
  brief, but her daughter was in a severe accident and they told
• 28:33
  her she'd be a vegetable the rest of her life.
• 28:35
  She'd need you to drive, you know, like he would have to go
• 28:37
  get her grocery. She'll never be able to cook.
• 28:39
  She'll never be able to have kids.
• 28:41
  Like she would just need to be cared for.
• 28:43
  And so this woman was a delivery nurse for 20 something years at
• 28:49
  a hospital. And, you know, she was going to
• 28:51
  all these specialists trying to find all these top guys or
• 28:55
  whatever, and they were all saying the same thing.
• 28:58
  And she just would not accept that as the reality.
• 29:01
  And so she found out about acupuncture.
• 29:04
  I think she even went to China, if I'm not mistaken.
• 29:07
  And so that she went somewhere over in that area and they
• 29:11
  started doing acupuncture on their her daughter.
• 29:14
  And her daughter has like a couple kids now.
• 29:15
  She's driving, she's taking care of herself.
• 29:18
  And she said when that happened, she quit the job working in the
• 29:21
  hospital and she started up that practice and she's been doing it
• 29:24
  ever since. And she's never.
• 29:26
  Yeah. So when she told us that story,
• 29:29
  I was just like blown away as a oh, my gosh.
• 29:31
  And then for us to actually experience that, wow.
• 29:34
  I mean, what a what a blessing. You know, there's so much wisdom
• 29:38
  in the ancients that has been pushed away or buried, you know,
• 29:43
  for so long. And I truly believe we're at a
• 29:47
  turning point in humanity where the pendulum is now coming back
• 29:51
  and people are starting to wake up to this reality that we're
• 29:54
  in. And I think before too long, you
• 30:00
  know, I think we're going to experience a beautiful time in
• 30:04
  our lives. You know, I think you and I will
• 30:07
  get an opportunity to experience that.
• 30:09
  And that's the goal, anyhow. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:14
  My daughter, who is writing this Co wrote this book with me and
• 30:17
  took all the photographs. She's 15 and when she was born
• 30:22
  she had an umbilical prolapse and she didn't breathe for the
• 30:27
  1st 11 minutes of her life. They actually pronounced her
• 30:29
  dead before she started breathing.
• 30:32
  And then similar to what you just said, we were told she was
• 30:35
  going to be a vegetable. She would never function.
• 30:37
  She was on what they called life support at the time.
• 30:40
  They told us just pull the plug. There's no point in trying to
• 30:43
  save her. But my wife and I just like,
• 30:46
  like you said with your son, my wife and I just knew like in in
• 30:50
  our very core, we knew she was perfectly healthy individual and
• 30:54
  we just wanted to give her a chance.
• 30:56
  And so we kind of busted her out of the hospital and just went
• 31:00
  our own route and did holistic things.
• 31:02
  And she's brilliant, perfect human being.
• 31:07
  Like at 15, she travelled the world with me taking photographs
• 31:09
  for this book. Like there's but it's people
• 31:13
  have to. I think people need to hear
• 31:16
  these stories so they know like don't just take the, the word of
• 31:21
  the so-called experts from the medical system, because the
• 31:25
  medical system, for all its great strengths, it's, it's
• 31:28
  incredibly flawed and it is a money based machine.
• 31:32
  And so everything around that is about how do we make more money,
• 31:35
  which means keeping people sick because healthy people don't
• 31:38
  make money for the the medical system.
• 31:41
  Absolutely. So, well, I'm so happy you're
• 31:44
  being able to impact lives this way, helping your students to to
• 31:48
  see different ways and helping, you know, having that impact in
• 31:51
  your family too. I feel like there there needs to
• 31:54
  be more of us. So keep up the good.
• 31:57
  The good fight To make this more interesting, my wife is actually
• 32:01
  a professional photographer. Oh yeah, nice.
• 32:04
  Yeah, I feel crazy how our stories are so intertwined.
• 32:08
  It's giving me the bills now. Yeah, but I tend to meet people
• 32:12
  like this very often. Yeah.
• 32:14
  Where this. Our stories are very similar and
• 32:19
  yeah, it's just that's been the story of my life since as far as
• 32:22
  I can remember, from the time I was a little kid, you know, I've
• 32:24
  always had these really amazing experiences where I'd meet
• 32:28
  random people within 5 minutes. They're literally just telling
• 32:32
  me their life story. And like, we just become such
• 32:34
  great friends and normally just always having very deep intimate
• 32:39
  conversations with people. You know, I, I try, I'm, I'm
• 32:43
  just not the type of person who's into the really shallow
• 32:46
  stuff, you know, I just, I just love, I love life so much.
• 32:50
  And my mentality is it's either 100% yes to life or nothing at
• 32:54
  all, you know, So you take all your wins, your losses, all the
• 32:57
  good, the bad, however you want to look at it, you know?
• 33:00
  And to me, it's such a blessing to be able to feel happy, sad,
• 33:05
  you know, all those things. Because think about it, I think
• 33:08
  about it this way, like we're so finely created by the Creator or
• 33:12
  the universe or God or whatever it is you believe in.
• 33:15
  You know, I think we're all talking about the same thing.
• 33:17
  Or some people just call it the source.
• 33:19
  Yeah. How just divinely made, well
• 33:23
  made that we are, you know, and so I like to think of it in this
• 33:27
  way too, is, you know, I'm, I'm not a very religious person, you
• 33:31
  know, I, I consider myself more spiritual, but you hear in the
• 33:37
  Bible often, you know, about you die and go to heaven.
• 33:41
  And my, my saying is like, how is it that we don't know we're
• 33:44
  in heaven now because we have the ability to think, to feel,
• 33:47
  to create and to live here in a physical body, you know, and so
• 33:52
  I, I always try to wake up with that mentality, You know, what
• 33:55
  is it that we could do today to make this place better than what
• 33:59
  it was yesterday? You know, and often times, you
• 34:02
  know, it's not about going out and giving these big
• 34:05
  motivational speeches and trying to change people.
• 34:08
  All you have to do is live that within yourself and people can
• 34:11
  truly feel that. And that is how we change the
• 34:14
  world. It's not always all we got to go
• 34:16
  and we got to talk to this person, this person, we got to
• 34:18
  do all these events. I don't think it's like that.
• 34:21
  I think how you feel on the inside is projected outwards.
• 34:24
  And people, as human beings, we have that ability to pick that
• 34:27
  up within each other, you know, And so again, that is how I, how
• 34:32
  I, that's how my mentality is and how we can better the world.
• 34:36
  Beautiful. Yeah.
• 34:37
  And it begins from within. We've got to look after
• 34:39
  ourselves. And I don't think there was
• 34:42
  really such a thing as being selfish when it comes to
• 34:45
  improving yourself, because only when we've really done the work
• 34:48
  and have done the inner reflection and made the changes
• 34:51
  are we capable of really having a positive impact outward.
• 34:56
  So my wife and daughter and I were talking the other day and
• 34:59
  my wife was just starting a sentence by saying in a perfect
• 35:02
  world. And then she went on to say
• 35:04
  whatever she was saying. And my daughter said, mom, it is
• 35:07
  a perfect world. So let's just make that happen.
• 35:09
  It's like, that's right. It's like, this is our world.
• 35:12
  Like this is what we're given. This is our opportunity.
• 35:15
  So I'm with you. I'm not waiting for something
• 35:18
  better on the other side, whatever that may be.
• 35:20
  I'm making the best of every moment, every day.
• 35:23
  Absolutely. And believe it or not, my, my
• 35:26
  children are the one who made me really come to these
• 35:28
  realizations, you know? Oh.
• 35:30
  I believe it, yeah. And I think that, you know,
• 35:34
  we're all born with gifts and we come into this world and because
• 35:38
  of the old paradigm, you know, I believe that we pass our traumas
• 35:43
  on to our kids and the way we think the world is.
• 35:46
  But we are the ones who are dumbing them down.
• 35:48
  You know, they're already smart, they're already brilliant, and
• 35:51
  they come with such. Well, they're fully beautiful,
• 35:53
  fully connected and absolutely it's.
• 35:56
  It's like they become more detached as they get older.
• 35:59
  Yeah, if they're in wrong environment.
• 36:01
  Yeah. Which is the case has been for
• 36:04
  most of us most, you know, but I think our parents did their
• 36:07
  absolute best with what they knew or they thought they knew.
• 36:10
  But again, that's what I mean when I say we're we're on that
• 36:12
  tipping point where people are waking up to this realization.
• 36:16
  I think we're probably going to have more homeschool children
• 36:18
  than ever and in the years to come.
• 36:21
  Yeah, You know, I was shocked and devastated when we were
• 36:24
  traveling through Europe to find out homeschooling is illegal in
• 36:26
  most countries. Like fully illegal.
• 36:30
  Kids have to be in the public school system, otherwise you run
• 36:33
  the risk of losing your kids. I was just like.
• 36:37
  Yeah, beating the machine over there, apparently.
• 36:41
  It was so sad, saddening to hear that it's just country after
• 36:44
  country. We want to so.
• 36:46
  I I had no idea. Yeah, I didn't either.
• 36:48
  And you can't bow hunt in most of those places either.
• 36:51
  So there you go. It's like they're, they're truly
• 36:54
  trying to control everything and control the food, control the
• 36:57
  education, control the way we think and.
• 36:59
  Yeah, I'm starting to like America a little bit more now.
• 37:02
  It does have some good points. Yeah.
• 37:05
  Yeah. I could talk all day with you
• 37:06
  about this, but why don't we bring it back to bows and
• 37:09
  archery? Because I think the audience
• 37:10
  probably is pretty excited about that.
• 37:13
  OK. You said you you shot your first
• 37:16
  deer with a bow behind you. What is it?
• 37:19
  So this bow here, I can actually probably pull it off the wall
• 37:22
  real quick. I don't know how well it'll show
• 37:23
  up in the screen, but. So this piece is made from a
• 37:27
  single piece of Osage orange. Yeah.
• 37:30
  I got some black walnut tip overlays on there.
• 37:33
  This is what I call my reflex deflux design.
• 37:36
  And you can still see how, you know, fairly reflex these limb
• 37:40
  tips are. And I bought this bow probably
• 37:42
  more than any bow I've ever owned.
• 37:46
  I've had it strung on some days for 10 hours at a time.
• 37:50
  And, you know, if you're familiar with Florida, it's hot,
• 37:52
  it's humid, but it's it's a really good design.
• 37:56
  This is this used to be one of the fastest bows I ever made for
• 38:00
  like a 10 grand per pound arrows.
• 38:02
  When I first made it, it was shooting at like 173 feet per
• 38:05
  second, but I got it's some I think it's like alligator print
• 38:11
  leather on there for the wrap, but a fairly small handle.
• 38:15
  You can see how narrow that handle is.
• 38:18
  Again, I didn't have a ton of knowledge on how to deflex the
• 38:20
  handles back then, so I thought I had to make them with less
• 38:25
  material so I could actually get them to bend properly.
• 38:27
  But turns out I figured out a new way to do that.
• 38:31
  But again, it's a beautiful piece of wood.
• 38:33
  There's no cracks or anything like that, no defects on there.
• 38:36
  It's a phenomenal shooting bow. If you're familiar with like the
• 38:40
  fiberglass laminated deflex reflexes, I think those ones are
• 38:44
  a little faster. But for all natural piece of
• 38:46
  wood, that's that's plenty. It's £45 at 28, if I didn't say
• 38:50
  that already, which to me is plenty for Florida for what I'm
• 38:54
  trying to do, I would have no issues or I would not doubt that
• 38:58
  bow at all. Shooting a hog with it.
• 39:02
  But yeah, beautiful bow. I love it.
• 39:04
  Probably one of my, well the one behind me is now my new all time
• 39:07
  favorite, but this used to used to be that one.
• 39:11
  What is the one behind you? That one is what I call.
• 39:14
  So again, I call this one just a deep flex reflex.
• 39:18
  Most people call it a reflex D flex, but I always D flex the
• 39:22
  handle 1st and then reflex a tip.
• 39:24
  So that's why I'm always saying D flex reflex.
• 39:28
  But yeah, a lot of guys are just like, no, it's reflex D flex
• 39:31
  online. But I'm just like, well, we're
• 39:33
  talking about the same thing. You know, if I didn't mention
• 39:37
  earlier, this is the same exact arrow before I get to that bow,
• 39:40
  this is the same exact arrow that I shot that deer with.
• 39:45
  There's a tiny bit of blood on the feather still.
• 39:47
  So this was one of my favorite designs at the time.
• 39:50
  You know, I felt really proud of this when I first made it.
• 39:56
  It took a couple of years to develop the right amount of
• 39:59
  reflex in it. And it turns out it was my
• 40:02
  kitchen table the entire time. Like it was a circular table.
• 40:06
  And so I just kind of made a form out of a 2 by 6 the first
• 40:10
  couple attempts and the tips would be way behind the handle
• 40:13
  after I tiller them out. And I just wasn't getting the
• 40:16
  performance that I wanted. And I really wanted those tips
• 40:18
  to sit forward of the handle. And I had a bow that's, you
• 40:24
  know, I shot in. And like I said, the tips when
• 40:26
  I'm stronger, the tips were not where I wanted them to be.
• 40:28
  So I brought the bow inside. We went to go eat lunch and I
• 40:31
  sat the bow on the table and I'm just sitting there eating my
• 40:34
  lunch. And I happened just look back
• 40:36
  and I look at the table and see the curve in it.
• 40:39
  And then I look at the bow and I look at the table again.
• 40:41
  I was like, that's interesting. I grabbed it and I put it up
• 40:44
  against the table and it literally had what I thought was
• 40:48
  like the perfect amount of reflex.
• 40:50
  And so I ended up asking my wife.
• 40:54
  And that table was there when I moved into the house, by the
• 40:56
  way. So it's just we didn't buy it or
• 40:58
  anything. And I asked her, can I use this
• 41:01
  for a form? And she's like, yeah, sure.
• 41:03
  And you know, at the time, I didn't take into consideration
• 41:05
  using a heat gun and that varnish being on the table.
• 41:07
  So it stunk up the entire house. But I I was able to get one limb
• 41:11
  wrapped around. There was no Terra outs on the
• 41:13
  belly. And I was like, I think this is
• 41:14
  going to be the one. And so I let it cool, do the
• 41:18
  other limb, tiller it out and long behold, that became the new
• 41:22
  design. So I grabbed a form, put it
• 41:24
  under the table, I traced, I can't remember how long it is,
• 41:27
  but I trace a certain piece off of there and that's the form I
• 41:30
  use for all these bows and I've I've used that ever since.
• 41:34
  So phenomenal, phenomenal shooting bow.
• 41:37
  You know, a lot of people were telling me the the the limbs
• 41:40
  were going to give back and they would straighten out.
• 41:42
  But this is a true testament. You know, that Osage is just a
• 41:45
  phenomenal bow wood and if it's tillered correctly, it will keep
• 41:49
  majority of that reflex in there.
• 41:51
  This one's about three quarter inches wide and it just tapers
• 41:54
  down to about I think it's about quarter inch knocks.
• 41:58
  So all my styles of bows that I do when when it comes to the
• 42:02
  limbs, I always do pyramid. That has been my all time
• 42:05
  favorite. I feel like I get my better
• 42:09
  tillers on that style. And I also have some of my and
• 42:13
  again, I know speed isn't everything, but when I do the
• 42:16
  pyramid design on the limbs, I always get phenomenal performing
• 42:20
  those. I heard you say 3/4 inch wide
• 42:24
  but you must have said inch and 3/4 right?
• 42:26
  That's what I meant. Yeah, sorry.
• 42:27
  Yeah, inch and three quarters wide and it tapers down to
• 42:32
  quarter inch knock. Sorry.
• 42:33
  Yeah. But that's kind of been my go to
• 42:37
  with Osage. You know a lot of people that I
• 42:39
  know, they build them really narrow, about an inch and a
• 42:42
  quarter wide or so. For whatever reason, I've always
• 42:45
  wanted to build them wider, but they still perform well.
• 42:48
  They hold up well, and I don't remember exactly how thin the
• 42:52
  the limbs are. I don't know how well it's going
• 42:54
  to show in there, but these are really thin.
• 42:55
  Yeah, you know, lips. But again, phenomenal shooting
• 42:59
  bow. I love it.
• 43:00
  I know I'm rambling, but again. Sorry, rambling about bows,
• 43:04
  that's what we're here for. Oh yeah.
• 43:07
  And so this is what I call my Kate Buffalo.
• 43:11
  And so over the years, when I, it was about 2019 when I really
• 43:16
  started diving into MyHeritage and wanted to know more about
• 43:21
  Native Americans and stuff. And, you know, just spent a fair
• 43:25
  amount of time doing research online and watching YouTube
• 43:28
  videos. And, you know, pretty much just
• 43:31
  about every tribe just has a relationship with animals.
• 43:34
  And so I was like, I want to, you know, make a bow, but I want
• 43:38
  to name it after an animal. And so I kind of just started
• 43:41
  looking around, looking around, and I think I was actually
• 43:45
  watching a video of somebody doing a Cape Buffalo hunt online
• 43:50
  or on YouTube. And I was like, wow, that's
• 43:52
  pretty cool. And then I saw the horns.
• 43:53
  And it's like, I want to try to design A bow after the horns of
• 43:57
  the Cape Buffalo. Granted, you know, on a Cape
• 43:59
  Buffalo, the ends of their horns are very drastic, you know, and
• 44:02
  that's not realistic to put on a functional bow.
• 44:06
  But that's how this bow's birth was after the horns of the Cape
• 44:11
  Buffalo. So if he held it this way, it
• 44:13
  would look like. I can see that.
• 44:16
  But I also was, you know, again, I'm, I'm not very educated when
• 44:21
  it comes to bow making like a, you know, those guys who can
• 44:24
  recite word for word the Bowyer's Bible.
• 44:26
  I think I own volume 1 and maybe 2.
• 44:29
  But I would just always look up what I needed at the time, the
• 44:32
  information that I wanted. I'm honestly not a big reader at
• 44:36
  all. I'm a visual learner.
• 44:38
  And so watching YouTube videos has been the biggest benefit for
• 44:42
  me. But yeah, just kind of just
• 44:47
  trying to figure all this out, you know, and what truly worked
• 44:49
  for me versus what everyone else was doing.
• 44:52
  And, you know, I, I really had no intentions of trying to be
• 44:56
  different. But I just felt that calling
• 44:58
  like this, this can be done differently, you know, and we
• 45:01
  can make self bows that are going to perform just as good as
• 45:04
  glass bows, if not a little better.
• 45:06
  And that's kind of, you know, how I, how I think when it comes
• 45:10
  to this, what I had to learn from trial and error because I
• 45:13
  don't know anybody who's making anything remotely like this with
• 45:17
  the amount of D flex and the recurve in there.
• 45:20
  But the other thing is I used to have like a 68 inch Longbow that
• 45:25
  I would hunt with. It was made from Osage and it
• 45:27
  would get caught on everything here in Florida, the saw,
• 45:29
  palmettos, you name it, oak tree limbs, it would smack those.
• 45:32
  And I've actually lost opportunities on game shooting
• 45:36
  at them and then the limb smacking tree branches and
• 45:38
  stuff. So I was like, how can we make
• 45:40
  these smaller, you know? And everyone was saying, well,
• 45:43
  you can just do a bend to the handle bow, but I don't
• 45:45
  personally, I don't like the feeling of shooting a bend to
• 45:47
  the handle bow. I've never shot an English song
• 45:50
  though before, so I don't know if that would be different.
• 45:54
  But I didn't want to have that. And so I kind of just like,
• 45:57
  well, what, how is it that we can make this shorter without
• 46:00
  stressing the limbs too much, you know?
• 46:03
  And then I started looking into the stuff about fiber laminated
• 46:06
  bows and it talked about having the deflects in the handle,
• 46:08
  having the forward handle and just kind of put a little of all
• 46:13
  this together. But the big thing was trying to
• 46:15
  figure out how to get this huge section to bend without tearing
• 46:19
  out or cracking or braking. But the heat bending honestly
• 46:23
  came from a different trade. And so we were building, we're
• 46:28
  not building, but we would heat bend 2 and 2 1/2 inch conduit
• 46:34
  when I was in solar. And we would have to do this
• 46:36
  inside of people's attics. And so I'm not sure if you're
• 46:40
  familiar with wire electrical or whatever, but if you have any
• 46:43
  kinks or whatever in your pipe you're not getting, you're not
• 46:47
  getting that wire through, it'll get hung up in that area.
• 46:51
  So there were times where we had to bend 90° angles with this 2
• 46:54
  1/2 inch conduit, right And keep mine is Florida.
• 46:57
  So we had to, I had to figure it out fast and how to do it
• 47:00
  efficiently. And those skills kind of just
• 47:02
  translated over into the heat bending with the Osage.
• 47:07
  So that's why I prefer a heat gun over steam, over boiling.
• 47:12
  I just wipe the lens down with vegetable oil.
• 47:16
  And then I think the rest is just more of an an intuition.
• 47:20
  So it's knowing where to put the heat, how long to keep it there,
• 47:25
  when to back it off. And if you put too much, you
• 47:27
  need to let it cool for a minute or two before you actually try
• 47:30
  bending it. Because then you're going to get
• 47:31
  your tear outs and you're going to get all you're going to run
• 47:34
  into all your problems where you'll get delaminations at the
• 47:37
  early growth rings. But very rarely do I ever get
• 47:40
  any tear out on the recurves. And I used to try to chase it
• 47:46
  down to the single growth ring on the belly to bend it to try
• 47:49
  to avoid that. But just over time I've learned
• 47:51
  and just figured it out, especially with with the
• 47:54
  recurving, you know, it's just, you just have to kind of be
• 47:57
  really present, paying attention to what it is you're doing,
• 48:00
  knowing where to put the heat. And then, you know, some people
• 48:04
  tie like a weight to the end of the bow.
• 48:06
  I prefer to keep pressure on it with my hand because then I'm in
• 48:09
  tune with the wood and I can feel it and putting heat in
• 48:13
  certain spots. I can tell, you know, I can tell
• 48:15
  it's going to bend there when I go to pull it, you know.
• 48:18
  And so if you heat like too much of an area at one time, you
• 48:21
  know, you'll get your lift out, your splinters, all those
• 48:23
  things. So again, it's just, I don't
• 48:26
  really know how else to explain it.
• 48:28
  I could teach it and I could show you what to feel for if I'm
• 48:32
  I feel, I feel I'm there with you.
• 48:34
  But again, you know, just to me, bow making is a lot about
• 48:38
  intuition. And so just getting getting in
• 48:41
  tune with what it is that you're doing and you know, what's in
• 48:44
  front of you, how to be present with that, having that
• 48:46
  relationship and that conversation with the wood.
• 48:50
  To me that's that's how I was able to pick up on all this, if
• 48:53
  that makes sense. That's cool.
• 48:56
  What are some of the other unique features or trademarks of
• 49:00
  your bows? I mean, I, I try to use as much
• 49:06
  like natural materials as possible in my bows.
• 49:12
  Again, I, I would say that one of the biggest things is just
• 49:14
  the heat bending aspect, But you're, you're getting smooth
• 49:19
  draws out of these things. You're getting very, you know,
• 49:22
  high aero speeds. But the rest, I think it's just
• 49:27
  all love, you know? Do you put arrow shelves on most
• 49:31
  of your bows or all of your bows?
• 49:33
  No, I've always been had mixed feelings about that.
• 49:40
  I try to get away from it for a while and then it was just hard
• 49:43
  to, to not do that because, you know, I, I didn't want to spend
• 49:46
  a ton of money on all these different spine arrows.
• 49:49
  And so cutting a shelf in was always just the easiest way for
• 49:52
  me to tune arrows. And I kind of did things
• 49:56
  backwards when I, when I made my bows, I would actually tune the
• 50:02
  bow to the arrow. And so like just cutting in a
• 50:06
  little bit out of time until I got the perfect arrow flight
• 50:08
  because I only had a certain amount of arrows.
• 50:10
  And so I was just trying to get those arrows to fly.
• 50:12
  And I'm typically for me, I normally stay around the £45 at
• 50:16
  28 inch mark. And so I think in doing that I
• 50:21
  learned how to time the limbs without using like I don't like
• 50:24
  to use pulley systems at all. So maybe that's one thing we can
• 50:28
  talk about as to like what I think is different about mine is
• 50:32
  I haven't used a pulley system in probably 3 or 4 years now.
• 50:35
  What do you mean? I've actually always what?
• 50:37
  Do you mean a pulley? System, see now people have it's
• 50:42
  a pulley on the bottom of rope. They connect it to the bow and
• 50:44
  it's mounted to a wall to the chiller tree.
• 50:45
  They got all chilling tree. Yes, exactly.
• 50:48
  All right, so I so I don't use tillering trees at all.
• 50:51
  OK, I've bend everything over my knee, but it's all about feel.
• 50:55
  And so I think what again, my, my mentality is so different.
• 50:59
  Like I typically don't even like to use the word stress when it
• 51:03
  comes to bow making because to me it's it's about balance, the
• 51:06
  balance between the tension, the tension and then the
• 51:10
  compression. To me, every time I hear the
• 51:12
  word stress, that's a hinge I. Lost your image?
• 51:16
  Yeah, something just popped up on my phone.
• 51:19
  Well, that's that's that takes a lot of sensitivity and skill,
• 51:25
  I'd imagine, to not tell her about the normal way.
• 51:28
  Absolutely. And you know, again, I, I
• 51:30
  struggle with that so much in the beginning.
• 51:33
  And what I noticed is one most of us use a small little hook
• 51:39
  and we put it, we used to put it right in the center of the bow,
• 51:41
  but that's not even where you're going to be pulling it from when
• 51:43
  it's finished. And I noticed my tiller would
• 51:45
  change, my poundage would drop within the first couple hundred
• 51:48
  shots. But I just over time kind of
• 51:52
  just started leaning more towards no pulley systems at
• 51:55
  all. I use them only absolutely when
• 51:58
  necessary. But then when I gained the
• 51:59
  experience, I haven't looked back since and I don't use them
• 52:02
  anymore. To me, I feel like, again, I
• 52:08
  think you could design them in a way to where it would make sense
• 52:11
  to where it'd be easier to tiller them and that you won't
• 52:14
  get much change or a poundage drop on them.
• 52:16
  But again, it's just going back to that intuition and seeing
• 52:22
  what's in front of you and just feeling it out, feeling out how
• 52:25
  that it's like you can feel the energy in the wood, you know,
• 52:28
  and how it's dispersed over the the the lens.
• 52:31
  And I think just having that understanding, I've been able to
• 52:36
  develop and produce very consistent performing bows over
• 52:40
  the years. But yeah, that's.
• 52:44
  So is this just kind of our? It would be harder than for you
• 52:48
  to make a heavier bow I would imagine, if that's the way
• 52:51
  you're bending them. Yes and no again, because I, you
• 52:58
  know, I do the 45 lbs majority. I've done it for several years
• 53:01
  before I actually like got into really trying to sell them.
• 53:05
  It was mainly because people will reach out and they were Hey
• 53:08
  man, will you build me a bow? And I wanted to be this poundage
• 53:10
  and, but I actually did 45 lbs for so long that it's like I
• 53:16
  could just tell, you know, I could tell when it was really
• 53:18
  close and I'd be very spot on with, I'm not trying to brag or
• 53:23
  anything, but it's like I really miss my target weight.
• 53:25
  It happens occasionally, but it's very, very rare.
• 53:30
  But with the heavier poundage bows, yes, that is a, it's a bit
• 53:33
  more challenging to hit that draw weight.
• 53:36
  But again, it's just going back to the feel, feel of it and just
• 53:42
  kind of just paying attention to everything.
• 53:43
  Yeah. What type of what is that bow
• 53:46
  that you're holding the cable? This one here O save March OK.
• 53:50
  What do you use mostly? Osage orange.
• 53:53
  Oh yeah, absolutely. I, I really love black locust.
• 53:57
  If it's, if it's good quality black locust, to me, it's it's
• 54:00
  hard to get the crystalline on the belly.
• 54:03
  It's just as dense as Osage. And to me it's, it's a bit
• 54:07
  stiffer. When you shoot, you can actually
• 54:09
  feel it more. I feel like Osage is a lot more
• 54:11
  elastic and that's good quality. Locust is just when it hits, it
• 54:17
  hits it's obviously Osage is a lot more forgiving, but I
• 54:21
  primarily use Osage orange. That's like my go to.
• 54:25
  I really enjoy the fire hardening process as well if
• 54:28
  you're familiar with that and Hickory is probably one of my
• 54:32
  favorite white woods to work with.
• 54:34
  Believe it or not, you know, it's so it's very difficult for
• 54:37
  me to find good quality bow wood in the area that I live is just
• 54:41
  a giant stand knob and majority of the majority of the property
• 54:46
  that has the perfect bowood or are state parks.
• 54:49
  So you know, you can't harvest off of them.
• 54:51
  And the rest is just ranches. And so it's quite difficult to
• 54:56
  get permission from ranchers to go in and cut the wood.
• 54:59
  So I I get a lot of my stuff imported mainly from Missouri,
• 55:05
  my Osage anyway, phenomenal bowood.
• 55:09
  That's my probably my absolute favorite.
• 55:11
  Yeah. Is there any black locust
• 55:13
  growing in your area? No, not not that I've seen.
• 55:16
  I can imagine it grows in the northern parts of Florida closer
• 55:20
  to Alabama, but again, I've I've never seen it here where I live.
• 55:25
  And then what about the oaks? You ever use oak?
• 55:29
  I have not messed with oak. Yeah, I think I may have cut one
• 55:34
  down a small tree down many, many years ago and left the bark
• 55:39
  on sealed. The ends came back to it like a
• 55:42
  year later and it just had checks all on the back of the
• 55:45
  bow when I removed the bark. And so I never messed with it
• 55:48
  from that point on. Yeah, I've worked with White Oak
• 55:51
  once. OK.
• 55:53
  What do you think or do you know the historical bows from your
• 55:56
  area from kind of Florida or the Southeast were made from?
• 56:02
  No, I mean, I've never really looked into it, but if I had to
• 56:05
  guess, you know, a lot of people say Cyprus, but to me I feel
• 56:11
  like why would they use the site?
• 56:12
  I mean, I get Cypress is a softwood.
• 56:14
  It's A and I have heard people making war bows like war bow
• 56:18
  weight, you know, 100 plus pound pools, but they were like 6 1/2
• 56:23
  seven foot tall hose. But the way I look at it, I
• 56:28
  would think they would use Hickory and the Elm because we
• 56:30
  do have some Elm here. I think it's a red Elm.
• 56:33
  I don't think it means the best performing bow, but it's
• 56:37
  something you can definitely fire harden in use.
• 56:41
  So I have a student at the school who made a bow from one
• 56:44
  of the red Elms that I cut down like 7 years ago.
• 56:48
  And there's no, there's no fire hardening on it.
• 56:52
  But we used the heat gun and just kind of heat treated the
• 56:55
  wood a little bit. But I mean, it makes a good bow.
• 56:58
  It did take a lot of set, but I mean, it held together just
• 57:02
  fine. They still use it so.
• 57:04
  I think for project quiver I made 3 Elm bows.
• 57:06
  I think 2 are which Elm and I'm trying to remember maybe the
• 57:12
  other one was red Elm but they are all beautiful bows and I
• 57:16
  made three with black locusts as well.
• 57:17
  I really enjoy black locusts and that's one of those I made with
• 57:21
  Nacho Marco of In Spain I. Think I'm from.
• 57:26
  Yeah, and he loves black locust and he just it says it's such a
• 57:29
  good teacher because it it doesn't till her as easily
• 57:33
  easily as Osage orange. But if you do a good job right,
• 57:35
  it's a good bow. But I've learned a lot.
• 57:38
  It's cool with what I've learned in this, this whole experience,
• 57:41
  but a lot of the best bow woods are commonly used as fence
• 57:45
  boasts. And so black locust,
• 57:48
  heartbreaking Osage orange like there's, there's so many.
• 57:51
  I think it's like half a dozen of them that are common and more
• 57:54
  than that, probably lemon wood here in Central America, they're
• 57:56
  all used as fence boasts. So that's that's pretty cool.
• 58:00
  And then black locust is great because it's it's also such a
• 58:04
  fast growing tree and and it's very easy to farm or to to raise
• 58:09
  black locusts to big enough size to to make bows with.
• 58:12
  I got you. So it's a pretty good
• 58:14
  sustainable bow wood if you got yourself some land, can wait a
• 58:18
  few years while you're growing some.
• 58:21
  Absolutely. What are your?
• 58:22
  What are your go to? Tools go to tools to in today's
• 58:26
  world. I mean, I did get me a really
• 58:28
  nice grizzly industrial Sander. It's like a 6 by 80.
• 58:33
  I use that often but the draw knife for sure and a fairs
• 58:37
  rasper still like my go to and I probably use a card scraper more
• 58:41
  than I should on a bow build but I'm just very particular.
• 58:45
  Why do you say more than you should?
• 58:48
  Because I could totally use a rasp for if you.
• 58:50
  Go faster or something else you mean?
• 58:52
  Absolutely. But you know, I, I love to slow
• 58:55
  down and like I'm very meticulous with my work and I'm
• 58:58
  very just, I don't know if you want to say OCD or whatever, but
• 59:02
  like if I can't sell a bow, if it has any defect in the growth
• 59:05
  ring or you know, when I say defect in the growth rings are
• 59:09
  just like a nick or something like the back has to be
• 59:11
  absolutely pristine when I chase them.
• 59:14
  So the draw knife is the way to go for me.
• 59:17
  But if I see a scratch in there like I will, I will freak out,
• 59:21
  you know, so I, I want them to be completely just 100% just
• 59:25
  perfect, you know, because I warranty my bows for five years.
• 59:28
  And so for me is I don't want them coming back because of
• 59:33
  something I overlooked. You know, you can't always tell
• 59:36
  what's going on inside the wood. But you know, but to me that's
• 59:39
  very rare. And I have a really good stave
• 59:41
  dealer who's been doing this for so many years.
• 59:43
  And I was called, call him a wood wizard.
• 59:46
  But to me, I feel like he has a very good relationship with the
• 59:49
  trees. And there's no, no person that
• 59:52
  knows Bo would like him. And so, you know, I, I kind of
• 59:57
  rely on him and he's pretty much like my grandfather.
• 1:00:02
  I didn't get a chance to meet a lot of my grandparents.
• 1:00:04
  They all died when I was a really, a really young age.
• 1:00:06
  So there was really no grandfather figure in my life.
• 1:00:09
  And when I met Jim at the Tennessee Classic many years
• 1:00:13
  ago, I mean, we just. Instantly went into deep
• 1:00:16
  conversation and every time I call him to order wood, we
• 1:00:19
  always have it minimum like a 2 hour conversation and then he's
• 1:00:22
  like hey, what were you calling for?
• 1:00:23
  Bow wood again? Absolutely.
• 1:00:25
  You know, I just tell him what I'm looking for and I just trust
• 1:00:28
  him. You know, he doesn't send any
• 1:00:29
  pictures, he just sends me the wood and then I just go from
• 1:00:32
  there. That's beautiful.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 1:00:35
  So just having those good quality relationships with
• 1:00:38
  people too, it's, you know, so important.
• 1:00:40
  Yeah. And it's I learned too, as far
• 1:00:43
  as the tools go, you say you probably use a card scraper more
• 1:00:46
  than you should, but I carved when I was with paraffried and
• 1:00:49
  in Sweden, I carved an Elm sapling bow and used almost
• 1:00:54
  entirely a card scraper. And that's his go to jewel.
• 1:00:57
  And it was just like, you know, a little bits at a time.
• 1:00:59
  But it's, it's a great, great way to to really stay connected
• 1:01:03
  to the bow and to shape it. And then I don't know if you
• 1:01:06
  know Chuck Loffler in Salt Lake City with heartwood bows.
• 1:01:08
  He makes beautiful Native American replica bows.
• 1:01:12
  He uses, he uses a razor blade, you know, the little disposable
• 1:01:16
  ones. He holds them in his finger
• 1:01:18
  because he's carving mostly juniper, so it's a softer wood.
• 1:01:22
  He doesn't even, he doesn't use card scrapers.
• 1:01:24
  I don't even know if he touches a draw knife.
• 1:01:26
  It's like this little razor blade that he's shaping his
• 1:01:29
  bows. So yeah.
• 1:01:31
  That's dedicated. Each to their own, and his bows
• 1:01:33
  are gorgeous and they're amazing replicas.
• 1:01:36
  Oh yeah. So like by the time I finish a
• 1:01:38
  bow, you know, and I do use a bandsaw occasionally.
• 1:01:41
  I have a really it's, it's old to me, but I bought a Harbor
• 1:01:45
  Freight bandsaws like 8 years ago.
• 1:01:49
  And so it's not, it's very underpowered.
• 1:01:51
  It's like a three quarter horsepower.
• 1:01:55
  It's just like a very cheap basic entry level 1.
• 1:01:58
  So I, I use that, but honestly, I can use, you know, if I
• 1:02:03
  establish my back, I can take a saw and just cut about 8 inch
• 1:02:07
  sections down to roughly where the line I want and then take a
• 1:02:11
  hat or hatchet and another big piece of wood and I can pop off
• 1:02:15
  huge chunks. And so I can pretty much get my,
• 1:02:19
  my stave roughed out quicker. And then I can use it on my
• 1:02:23
  actual bandsaw that I have. But again, just going back to
• 1:02:28
  the card scraper, like I have to feel the wood and my fingers are
• 1:02:31
  constantly on the back of the bow.
• 1:02:33
  And so my main goal is to match the back as closely as possible
• 1:02:37
  to the belly. And so once I established that
• 1:02:39
  the back of the bow after it's chased, everything is based off
• 1:02:43
  of that, that back everything is in relation to that.
• 1:02:46
  And like if I have dips everything, whatever, I try to
• 1:02:49
  match it as closely as possible. And so to me, from my
• 1:02:53
  experience, like using a wood rasp, like it's, it's very easy
• 1:02:57
  to go past the marker, you know, or, or change the contour or the
• 1:03:01
  tape. Whereas if I have that card
• 1:03:03
  scraper, you know, and that's probably going to be hard to see
• 1:03:06
  and my fingers are always on the back of the bow.
• 1:03:08
  I'm using that in relation this. Is like your calipers.
• 1:03:12
  Absolutely, yeah. And so that's why what I mean
• 1:03:15
  when I say I probably use it a little more than I should.
• 1:03:17
  But again, I have to have it a specific way in order for it to
• 1:03:22
  bend the way I want and maintain a lot of that reflex without,
• 1:03:26
  you know, getting too much said or string follow, whatever you
• 1:03:31
  want to call it. And one thing I did notice too
• 1:03:35
  about the way other people do their bows is, you know, they'll
• 1:03:37
  have have their bow on that tilling tree to have it pulled.
• 1:03:41
  And then they have like a elliptical shape that they blew
• 1:03:44
  up. You know, they try to match it
• 1:03:46
  to that. And so like, I don't think of it
• 1:03:47
  in that term because if you have reflex or a straight limbo,
• 1:03:50
  you're taking something straight and you're trying to make it
• 1:03:53
  distribute the forces of tension and compression evenly
• 1:03:57
  throughout the lens. In nine times out of 10, they
• 1:04:02
  pop back straight for me and they stay that way for years.
• 1:04:05
  But I feel like people try to shape them a certain way.
• 1:04:09
  And when they have a finished bow, it already has string
• 1:04:12
  follow, you know, So it's not going to last as long in my
• 1:04:15
  opinion. But again, just trying to take
• 1:04:19
  like, I mean, this is obviously not a straight shape and it's a
• 1:04:21
  little more sophisticated, but I try not to use anything other
• 1:04:27
  than what's in front of me and what I'm feeling and what I'm
• 1:04:29
  seeing with my hands. But again, it's just about that
• 1:04:31
  balance of that force, the forces of tension and
• 1:04:34
  compression distributed to the entire piece of wood.
• 1:04:37
  So every time you drop the string, the limbs are always in
• 1:04:40
  time together, but you get consistent performance similar
• 1:04:43
  to a fiberglass laminated bow, if that makes sense.
• 1:04:47
  It does. Are you mostly making like the
• 1:04:50
  Cape Buffalo type of bow or do you every time you make a bow or
• 1:04:53
  are you making different styles? As of late, everybody's wanting
• 1:04:58
  a Cape Buffalo now and so that's been like the hot, the hot bow
• 1:05:02
  on the shelf right now. And just back-to-back, customers
• 1:05:06
  are asking specifically for this model.
• 1:05:10
  So they seem they see something in it that they truly like.
• 1:05:12
  But you know, this bows only 60 inches tip to tip.
• 1:05:17
  So it's a fairly sort of bow, but I mean, I've I've made this
• 1:05:20
  style 55 inches tip to tip and I've tilted them out to 29
• 1:05:25
  inches. And one of those bows was black
• 1:05:26
  locust. I had to send you the reel about
• 1:05:30
  how defective that back was. It was, it had a huge wave in it
• 1:05:35
  and I'm still able to make the night like almost 90° curb in
• 1:05:38
  it. There's no chrysalis in it.
• 1:05:40
  And it was for a left-handed shooter.
• 1:05:42
  But that was a really good quality of black locusts from
• 1:05:46
  from what my, my mentor told me. And Jim, if black locust has
• 1:05:51
  black streaks running up and down the grain, that's the
• 1:05:54
  sought after black locusts. That's the really good stuff.
• 1:05:57
  And it's the, and it's dark, darker black locusts.
• 1:05:59
  The brown color is dark and it has these beautiful black
• 1:06:02
  streaks in the grain. That's the really good dense
• 1:06:04
  stuff. But the lighter color stuff,
• 1:06:06
  that's where you're going to start seeing all your problems
• 1:06:08
  with the compression issues. And it's it's physically lighter
• 1:06:11
  in the hand. The wood is actually lighter.
• 1:06:13
  So whoever you know is using that black locus, you're looking
• 1:06:16
  for the heavy dense stuff. All right, just thought I'd
• 1:06:21
  throw that out there. Yeah, I'm, I'm still all over
• 1:06:24
  the place. And so I apologize.
• 1:06:26
  It was been a long day at school.
• 1:06:27
  And oh man, this is great. It's it's hard for me to stay
• 1:06:31
  very on track so please reel me back in because I could be here
• 1:06:35
  talking for hours. How do your customers find you?
• 1:06:39
  Mainly on right now they're finding me on Instagram, but my
• 1:06:43
  Facebook. So my Facebook is linked to my
• 1:06:45
  Instagram. So every time I upload a post or
• 1:06:47
  video to my Instagram, it goes straight to my Facebook.
• 1:06:50
  And as of late, the Facebook has been like just outperforming the
• 1:06:54
  Instagram and I'm getting more reached through Facebook.
• 1:06:57
  And so I have a repeat customer from Switzerland.
• 1:07:02
  He, he wants this model now, but a two piece.
• 1:07:05
  And so that's going to be a, a challenge.
• 1:07:08
  I've only ever made one two piece before.
• 1:07:10
  But anyway, so mainly Facebook and Instagram right now.
• 1:07:15
  And my YouTube channel has kind of been very dormant lately.
• 1:07:18
  I, I just recently started posting back on there again, but
• 1:07:22
  I would say within the last month, Facebook has been where
• 1:07:26
  everyone's been just messaging me and just wanting information
• 1:07:29
  and hey, I want, I want, I want the pre curve like, you know,
• 1:07:33
  how much was it and everything. And so I think, you know, I've
• 1:07:36
  been very fortunate, but I think I'll have, you know, three or
• 1:07:39
  four of these builds in the near future.
• 1:07:42
  Nice do how much time do you spend carving bows on a like a
• 1:07:46
  weekly basis? Honestly, not a lot, especially
• 1:07:52
  now having kids and just working full time at the school.
• 1:07:55
  The school pretty much consumes majority of my time.
• 1:07:58
  And because I am the AG teacher, like I'm literally there seven
• 1:08:01
  days a week and on the weekends I'm still tending to the farm
• 1:08:03
  animals, feeding them, cleaning enclosures, just addressing
• 1:08:07
  anything. But I would say on average, I'm
• 1:08:10
  probably getting about 5 to 6 hours in a seven day week a week
• 1:08:15
  or, you know, a full 7 day week less than I want.
• 1:08:21
  But you know, if, if the universe allows it, I would love
• 1:08:25
  to do this more for my primary job just so I could be home with
• 1:08:30
  my kids. We could home school and just
• 1:08:31
  have slower mornings. And you know, so that's the
• 1:08:35
  goal, trying to work towards that for sure.
• 1:08:38
  But I could do this all day every day.
• 1:08:41
  Like this is the one thing that it never gets boring to me.
• 1:08:46
  I'm always so just involved with what it is I'm doing, and I
• 1:08:51
  could wake up every day and be so happy knowing that this is
• 1:08:54
  what I'm going to do for the majority of my work day is
• 1:08:57
  working on bows, crafting it, working with natural materials
• 1:09:01
  as much as possible, and still incorporating nature into my
• 1:09:06
  daily life, you know, through the bow making.
• 1:09:09
  But again, yeah, I would, I would so love for that to become
• 1:09:12
  a reality. And that's what we're slowly but
• 1:09:15
  steadily working on as you, as I told you in the beginning of
• 1:09:18
  this, like I'm like one of the worst people when it comes to
• 1:09:21
  technology. So a website has been something
• 1:09:24
  on my radar for literally, I don't know, the past five years.
• 1:09:28
  And I just don't have the, the, what's the right word I'm
• 1:09:37
  looking for? I don't have it in me to just
• 1:09:39
  kind of go research. How do I make a website?
• 1:09:41
  You know, and I think I'm just about to get to the point where
• 1:09:43
  I'm just about to hire somebody to make the website for me.
• 1:09:47
  But that would be ideal, you know, to have the website up and
• 1:09:50
  running in the near future. It's it's shockingly easy now
• 1:09:54
  with the technology that's out there to make one so we can chat
• 1:09:58
  about that later. But it's there's a lot of
• 1:10:01
  platforms that make it pretty much just pick your pick the
• 1:10:04
  style that you like and start adding in your content and
• 1:10:07
  photos. And it's within an hour you you
• 1:10:09
  can have something that's up and running.
• 1:10:11
  Man, that makes me feel very lazy now.
• 1:10:13
  Well. It's, it's the reality of it and
• 1:10:15
  it's, it's, I'm always amazed at how much people charge to build
• 1:10:18
  websites. So I'm like, what?
• 1:10:20
  Like who's paying you really kind of money?
• 1:10:22
  I haven't been lurked into that aspect yet.
• 1:10:24
  Yeah, I only what do it cost? I was thinking 200 bucks.
• 1:10:27
  Man, I've, I've spent for my previous businesses in holistic
• 1:10:32
  medicine. I've yeah, there was, there was
• 1:10:35
  one that was over over 100K. Oh my, yes.
• 1:10:39
  And I was like, oh, man, how did this happen?
• 1:10:42
  And it still wasn't functioning the way we wanted it to.
• 1:10:44
  Still had all sorts of issues. But yeah, right.
• 1:10:48
  Do it yourself. You don't need anything fancy.
• 1:10:50
  And if your wife's a photographer, you'll have
• 1:10:52
  beautiful images. Oh, absolutely, yeah.
• 1:10:54
  She normally dares my finished products, you know, and I just
• 1:10:59
  record with my iPhone throughout the process whenever I remember
• 1:11:02
  to. And a lot of times I I don't
• 1:11:05
  record just because I'm so involved with what I'm doing and
• 1:11:08
  I'm trying to connect with nature and stay away from the
• 1:11:10
  technology of. Course, yeah.
• 1:11:13
  You know, as much as possible, but you know we have to use it.
• 1:11:16
  So it's not like I'm against it, but I'm I try to use it as
• 1:11:19
  minimal. As possible, I understand
• 1:11:21
  completely. Yeah, I'm the same as same way
• 1:11:24
  and but I wouldn't be having conversations with people like
• 1:11:28
  you if I wasn't using some technology.
• 1:11:31
  Yeah. Oh, for sure.
• 1:11:32
  Yeah, yeah. Bows are.
• 1:11:33
  They're a challenging thing to photograph.
• 1:11:34
  My daughter learned the hard way that's like it's, Oh yeah, it is
• 1:11:37
  a hard subject to photograph. So.
• 1:11:40
  Well, she took, well, the picture, that scene look
• 1:11:42
  amazing. Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  Specifically the one where you had kind of all the bows in a
• 1:11:46
  circle and it was like just the tips or maybe the first.
• 1:11:48
  Yeah, yeah. Third of them.
• 1:11:50
  Yeah, yeah, that was pretty cool.
• 1:11:51
  I have to take credit. That was my idea.
• 1:11:53
  She she didn't, she didn't think it was a good idea, but there
• 1:11:56
  were. No, I thought it.
• 1:11:57
  Was there were a number of those where she was like why are we
• 1:12:00
  doing this? And then after she's like, oh, I
• 1:12:01
  get it. Yeah, but that credit goes to
• 1:12:06
  Simon Sace and Germany. He has a beautiful website.
• 1:12:10
  What is he something primitive. Let me see if I can find him.
• 1:12:17
  Primitive stone like another stone Hill primitive.
• 1:12:22
  OK, yeah, I've seen work. So beautiful work.
• 1:12:25
  Yeah, he's, in my opinion, he's one of the best bowyers in the
• 1:12:29
  world. And unfortunately we couldn't
• 1:12:31
  get him for the book. Talk to him a number of times
• 1:12:33
  about it, but he just wouldn't do it.
• 1:12:35
  But got some inspiration from some of his photos and that was
• 1:12:39
  one of those that was inspired by his.
• 1:12:41
  Absolutely I I if I remember reading he like fumes his bows
• 1:12:45
  to get some of the colours that he has in them.
• 1:12:48
  He's a. Whatever that means.
• 1:12:49
  I mean, he's German, so, you know, those guys are super,
• 1:12:52
  super smart, crafty guys and. He's a wizard.
• 1:12:55
  He's he's meant, Yeah, he served as a mentor to a few of the
• 1:12:58
  people who are in featured in the book.
• 1:13:00
  But yeah, he just, he said he just wasn't looking to take on
• 1:13:06
  any new projects. So but.
• 1:13:08
  I got you. Yeah, he's an incredible Boyer.
• 1:13:11
  But yeah, my daughter did a wonderful job with the photos
• 1:13:13
  and yeah, we, we learned the, you know, it took a while.
• 1:13:17
  I think she probably averaged around 2000 photos per Bowyer
• 1:13:22
  times 14 Bowyer. So yeah, she was up in the
• 1:13:26
  somewhere around 30,000 photos that we had to go through every
• 1:13:30
  single one and pick our favourites and whittle it down
• 1:13:33
  to like, you know, our top 10% and then down to our top like 2%
• 1:13:37
  for the book. So, and everything we're showing
• 1:13:39
  on social media, none of those are in the book.
• 1:13:41
  They're all those are all kind of like our B grade ones.
• 1:13:44
  We're keeping all the best, all the best ones for the book.
• 1:13:47
  The only exception of that is the most recent like 5 posts
• 1:13:50
  I've done with black backgrounds of bows.
• 1:13:52
  OK, those are like a sneak peek of the of kind of the museum
• 1:13:57
  style photos that we have of the bows that I made while I was on
• 1:14:00
  the journey. Yeah.
• 1:14:02
  So that's awesome, man. That's super.
• 1:14:04
  Cool that you're doing this too. You know, I think it gives a lot
• 1:14:08
  of exposure to these phenomenal Craftsman and bowyers in
• 1:14:11
  general. And who will you get to?
• 1:14:13
  Some of the best people in the world?
• 1:14:15
  Yeah. You know, so it's it's hard to
• 1:14:17
  beat that, man. You're living the dream.
• 1:14:18
  It's been a win, win, win, that's for sure.
• 1:14:20
  I hope we get to do again. I'm already like hell.
• 1:14:22
  Volume two, yeah, that's we got to get, we got to get the first
• 1:14:26
  one out on the market 1st, but first for sure.
• 1:14:29
  It's been such a such a joy to be able to do it.
• 1:14:33
  Absolutely. Thanks for doing this, Steven.
• 1:14:35
  I feel like we could talk and talk and talk, which we'll have
• 1:14:38
  to do that some more. Where can people find more about
• 1:14:42
  you and your work? So like I was saying earlier,
• 1:14:45
  mainly on Instagram and YouTube. So those are both under
• 1:14:51
  provision Longbows. And then my Facebook is just my
• 1:14:55
  name, Steven Bieber. OK.
• 1:14:57
  No relation with Justin, just want to throw that out there.
• 1:15:00
  And and why I get? Asked that a lot.
• 1:15:03
  You look somewhere. Yeah, I, I I get it right.
• 1:15:07
  Yeah. Why?
• 1:15:08
  Provision. Where did that name come?
• 1:15:10
  Last name that my wife came up with.
• 1:15:12
  OK. And so I asked her the same
• 1:15:14
  thing. And it's because, you know, if
• 1:15:17
  I'm not mistaken, this was many years ago, but the conversation
• 1:15:21
  we had, I remember we lived in the fifth wheel at the time and
• 1:15:25
  doing the whole tiny living thing.
• 1:15:27
  But it is to provide something of use.
• 1:15:30
  And so to me, just having these and providing something that not
• 1:15:34
  only is, you know, has a lot of artwork involved in it, it's
• 1:15:39
  just fully functional. And it's something that they
• 1:15:41
  could use to provide for their family if they chose to hunt
• 1:15:43
  with it. So it's just kind of that's how
• 1:15:46
  that came along. But that was my wife gets to
• 1:15:48
  take all the credit for that. OK, I have, I would have
• 1:15:52
  probably said Bieber bows or something, you know, something
• 1:15:55
  very generic and just basic. But yeah, so my my wife came up
• 1:16:01
  with that name and the the whole reasoning behind that was just
• 1:16:04
  to provide something of abuse or value.
• 1:16:06
  I like that. Yeah, you'll appreciate probably
• 1:16:09
  you might be one of the few in the in the back of the book, I
• 1:16:12
  have an appendix on the different bow woods that we use
• 1:16:15
  to carve bows on our journey. And I also talk about the
• 1:16:17
  medicinal properties of those, OK, the bow woods when there are
• 1:16:21
  no medicinal properties. So you might find that
• 1:16:23
  interesting. Yeah, man, whenever is that book
• 1:16:27
  already published or are you? No.
• 1:16:28
  October, October, it's released. Yeah, we're still working with
• 1:16:32
  the publisher, kind of. I think we're probably only a
• 1:16:35
  we're less than a month away, I think from having it off to the
• 1:16:37
  printers that's at. Least.
• 1:16:39
  Absolutely. We're we're mostly done, just
• 1:16:42
  final edits and tweaks, and so can.
• 1:16:45
  You can you pre-order those or just waiting till?
• 1:16:48
  No, there will be pre ordering Yeah, we're going to be doing a
• 1:16:51
  campaign through our Instagram and website.
• 1:16:54
  We're, we're waiting till we got some proofs from the publisher
• 1:16:58
  so we could actually show some actual pages and the cover.
• 1:17:02
  And then just, we had our Instagram slowly growing, but
• 1:17:06
  then I got cancelled back in January.
• 1:17:07
  We just went on there one day and I was like, yeah, it's gone.
• 1:17:10
  And we're like, what the hell? And so we had to rebuild, still
• 1:17:13
  rebuilding. So anyway, it kind of, it backed
• 1:17:17
  everything off for us a little bit.
• 1:17:18
  But I, I don't want to give a date.
• 1:17:20
  Originally we thought it would be February for the pre sale,
• 1:17:22
  but I'm thinking it's going to be May, June probably before we
• 1:17:26
  do the pre sale, but we will. Very interested in getting
• 1:17:29
  myself a coffee. Awesome.
• 1:17:32
  So I'll, I'll keep up with the page and wait for the post for
• 1:17:35
  the pre-order or just whatever, whenever you guys get it.
• 1:17:38
  Thank you. You know, going I'd love to have
• 1:17:40
  a copy of that. Yeah, it's going to be.
• 1:17:42
  It's gorgeous. I've I've seen the proofs of it.
• 1:17:44
  It's it blows me away. It's like 350 pages too.
• 1:17:47
  So wow. Yeah, it's a man.
• 1:17:49
  It's a big, beautiful book. It's like a lot of knowledge and
• 1:17:53
  wisdom from a bunch of different guys from around the world.
• 1:17:56
  And yeah, I think I think a lot of people will find that even
• 1:18:01
  though we're from different parts of the world, we're still
• 1:18:04
  all very closely related, especially billiards, you know?
• 1:18:07
  Yeah. So I'm looking, I'm really
• 1:18:10
  looking forward to it, man. Thanks, Steve.
• 1:18:11
  I'm. I'm very right.
• 1:18:12
  You're doing that. So.
• 1:18:13
  Thank you. Well, I appreciate you taking
• 1:18:15
  the time to sit down with me today.
• 1:18:17
  It's really been cool talking to you.
• 1:18:19
  And keep up. Keep up the good Workman.
• 1:18:23
  Absolutely. Thank you so much.
• 1:18:24
  You're welcome. Thanks for listening to Project
• 1:18:35
  Quiver on Salish Wolf. Follow our journey on Instagram
• 1:18:38
  at Project Quiver as we seek out the world's most extraordinary
• 1:18:41
  traditional boat years and join our newsletter at
• 1:18:44
  projectquiver.com. Our coffee table book, Quiver,
• 1:18:48
  The Art of Life through Bow Craft, arrives in 2026.
• 1:18:52
  We are honored to share with you the beauty, history, and magic
• 1:18:56
  of traditional archery.