Latest / Salish Wolf / #57 Jake Fenwick on Project Quiver
Transcript
- 0:06Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
- 0:09the globe to capture the artistry and spirit of the
- 0:12world's finest traditional bow carvers.
- 0:14I'm Todd, the father. Ella is my daughter.
- 0:17Together we're on a mission to create a stunning coffee table
- 0:20book that profiles more than a dozen master bow years and their
- 0:23unparalleled skill. For each chapter, we travel to
- 0:26the Bow Years workshop. Carve a bow under his guidance,
- 0:29photograph his woodcraft in detail, and share his story here
- 0:32on the Salish Wolf Podcast. The book is called Quiver The
- 0:36Art of Life. Through bow craft and this
- 0:38journey, our living story is Project Quiver.
- 0:48We do. I think we made it.
- 0:51That took a while. All right, excellent.
- 0:53Yeah, Sorry about. All that, no worries.
- 0:56It's good to troubleshoot it all.
- 0:57Good to see you, good to meet you.
- 1:00Good to meet you too, Todd. Hey, thanks for having me on
- 1:03this podcast. I've been really interested in
- 1:07what you guys are doing. You're doing something really
- 1:09cool. Thanks, man.
- 1:11Yeah, it was before we even jumped on the call.
- 1:13I had this feeling like I already know you, which I don't.
- 1:16I know very little about you, but just kind of have that
- 1:18familiarity with you. So I'm really looking forward to
- 1:21this conversation. Radon.
- 1:23Excellent. Excellent.
- 1:24Well, I'm looking forward to it too.
- 1:26You weren't on my radar either, but as you, I started seeing,
- 1:31you know, other Boyers on your podcast and I had the pleasure
- 1:36of listening to the first few and I think it's really cool
- 1:39what you guys are doing. So happy to be a small part of
- 1:42it. Yeah, thank you.
- 1:44Yeah, it's been quite an adventure already and and we're
- 1:47just getting into the meat of the journey, so really loving
- 1:50it. It's been amazing.
- 1:52Well, by the. End of it, you're going.
- 1:54To have oops sorry. No, no, go ahead.
- 1:57I think we have a little delay. Yeah, go ahead.
- 2:00We're talking across the country.
- 2:02I was just saying by the end of it, I think you 2 are going to
- 2:05have just a wonderful kind of encapsulated wealth of
- 2:10information. And it's neat.
- 2:12You're talking to some really fascinating people.
- 2:14So I think that's really cool. Yeah, yeah, it's been so good.
- 2:18And we're just, we have 3 chapters worth of material right
- 2:21now and we're just in Indesign putting that all into a book
- 2:25format. And God, that's so exciting
- 2:27seeing it actually come to life and, and look like a book.
- 2:30So that's been a dream come true.
- 2:33So yeah, it's quite an adventure and.
- 2:37I. Support and thank you for
- 2:38currently seeing it. Come.
- 2:41Together. Yeah.
- 2:41Thank you for the invite to come and visit you.
- 2:44I'm definitely going to take you up on that.
- 2:46And you're in a, you're in a pretty cool part of the world.
- 2:50You want to tell the listeners a bit about where you are?
- 2:53Yeah. For sure.
- 2:54Well, when I saw you out in BC and I knew you're flying to
- 2:57Europe, I thought I'd just say, you know, if if you wanted to
- 3:00drop by because we get some pretty cheap flights to Europe
- 3:03because we're in Atlantic Canada and we're actually dead center.
- 3:07We're right at the very end of the Bay of Fundy.
- 3:10We're in New Brunswick, but you know, our view is Nova Scotia
- 3:14and we're about an hour to to Prince Edward Island.
- 3:17So and it's kind of a little corner off above Main and out in
- 3:22the Atlantic. But it's nice.
- 3:25It's a good place for us to escape to, you know?
- 3:29That's so cool. I've been wanting to come to
- 3:31Atlanta, Canada for years and years, really ever since my kids
- 3:34were born. My wife and I have been talking
- 3:36about it, but we have not yet. So yeah, you're, you're now on
- 3:41the map. We're coming.
- 3:42We're coming to see. You just have to figure out when
- 3:45that'll be. Right on Ron.
- 3:48Like I said, we, we've got some kind of nature retreat, B and BS
- 3:53kind of set up so you guys can have a, a place to stay and when
- 3:57you're not turning around, we can, we can make some bows.
- 4:01Yeah. So your house you said is 230
- 4:04plus years old? Yeah, yeah, it's pretty wild.
- 4:07So my my wife found it. So she's from Kentucky and she
- 4:12had never been to the Maritimes before.
- 4:14And we found this house on like TH pet Page 10 of Kijiji and we
- 4:21drove out and and bought it without really knowing the
- 4:23history. And it wasn't till we bought it,
- 4:25which is very maritimer way, that people started telling us
- 4:29all these stories about it. There used to be a shipbuilding
- 4:32yard on the Bay maybe 300 yards behind me.
- 4:36And so the house used to be an inn for a while.
- 4:39It was like a silver fox farm. It was.
- 4:42And in the 70s, there's a ended up being a kind of a famous
- 4:45hippie commune. And so there's all this like
- 4:48weird history that we've kind of learned since we've been able to
- 4:53steward it in the property. So we're, we feel very fortunate
- 4:57that we kind of just fell into it, you know?
- 5:00That's amazing. Are you from that area?
- 5:04No, I'm, I'm from Eastern Ontario, originally small town
- 5:08near Ottawa and I ended up kind of traveling on the road for
- 5:13about 6 years where I met my wife.
- 5:16And so this was, we were just kind of coming back to North
- 5:19America at that point and we were just kind of looking for a
- 5:22home base. So that's how we ended up here.
- 5:25That's so cool. Yeah, I have.
- 5:27There's not nearly as rich of a history on the farm that that I
- 5:31have in BC, But when we bought it about a decade ago, we
- 5:34started to dig into the history and we actually inherited a lot
- 5:37of historical photographs from the place and some information.
- 5:40And the previous owners were both prolific writers.
- 5:44And so we were able to put together a lot of information.
- 5:46And it's cool. There's four cookbooks that are
- 5:51written based on the farm here and a gardening book about the
- 5:54farm here. And so that's really cool.
- 5:57And then we also found out that the Westinghouse family, I don't
- 6:01know if you're familiar with the Westinghouse name, but George
- 6:07Westinghouse was one of the world's most famous inventors,
- 6:10major tycoon. He invented the railway air
- 6:13brake. He was involved in electricity.
- 6:17And they still have, they create, they still have a lot of
- 6:20products like ceiling fans and stuff for Westinghouse.
- 6:23But anyway, he was he was one of the wealthiest men in the world.
- 6:25And he bought this for his son as a wedding gift at one point.
- 6:29And so it was cool to dig into it and see all the history.
- 6:33Yeah, I'm hoping one day I uncover his his fortune buried
- 6:37somewhere. Are you guys on Vancouver
- 6:39Island? Is that where?
- 6:39You're based? Yeah, Yeah.
- 6:41All right on that is so cool. I mean, and that's just today
- 6:46you kind of when you move into a house, you kind of inherit this
- 6:50legacy in a way, you know, and you're just like you're the next
- 6:53people tending it, the next chapter.
- 6:55But if you can get that window into the past, I mean, what a
- 6:58treasure. Yeah, yeah.
- 7:00And there's a bunch. There are our the previous
- 7:03owners found a bunch of little broken glass bottles in the
- 7:07basement and learned that those were opium bottles.
- 7:10And the Chinese, A Chinese servant used to live in a cellar
- 7:13in the basement, and those were his opium bottles.
- 7:17Really. Oh, that's hilarious.
- 7:19Were they that in in our walls? I don't think they were opium.
- 7:22I don't I don't know. We're on the other side, but we
- 7:26found a bunch of old bottles and they were round.
- 7:29They used to keep them round so they'd be on their side to keep
- 7:32the cork always wet. And we've been actually trying
- 7:35to identify them because in our walls it was all Birch Park and
- 7:37Horsehair insulation and filled with these bottles.
- 7:41Wow, crazy. That is very, very cool.
- 7:47Yeah. We don't have much in writing
- 7:50for us. We get a lot of old folks
- 7:53wandering down the laneway reminiscing.
- 7:55That's that's generally it. Yeah, that's cool.
- 8:01Well, tell me, man, how did your archery career began and your
- 8:05your career as a Bowyer? And I'll, I'll preface that by
- 8:08saying since you started following us and I started
- 8:11seeing your work. Wow, like beautiful.
- 8:14Your your work's incredible. I think I watched a little short
- 8:18film that you had made about you and your workshop.
- 8:21So beautiful, high quality stuff, everything I've seen from
- 8:24you. Well, thanks, Todd.
- 8:26I really appreciate that. As far as getting into it, it,
- 8:31it was really a series of unexpected events for me.
- 8:36I think it started when I was around 13 and I was doing this
- 8:40deep dive into family history. And my mother's maiden name is
- 8:43Archer. And cool.
- 8:45We're really fortunate. I know weird, eh?
- 8:48But we were really fortunate where my, my grandfather's
- 8:51brother was the president of the University of Regina and at some
- 8:57point the history department there, the students did a, a
- 9:00project on him. There's a bit of brown nosing
- 9:04and who knows? But anyways, we ended up with
- 9:06this really comprehensive family history that goes back to 1038.
- 9:12And in that in the early parts of that, there's a lot of
- 9:15different references to archery. And so when I was 13, I was
- 9:20reading this and I was going, oh man, this was this is amazing.
- 9:23And you know, I was a nerdy kid, a history kid to begin with.
- 9:29And you know, it didn't take much research to realize the
- 9:31bows that they would have been using were the English long
- 9:34bows, English war bows. And so, you know, I did what any
- 9:40kid did at that point. I went on YouTube, and this was
- 9:42when YouTube was pretty new. Or if YouTube wasn't new, at
- 9:46least it wasn't really any videos of archery or not much.
- 9:50But the one guy who is posting videos on English long bows who
- 9:55have since had the pleasure to meet, he's a fantastic guy, is
- 9:57Nick Birmingham. And he made all these videos.
- 10:01And there's one in particular where he was shooting this big
- 10:06English war bow and I was captivated.
- 10:09You know, it looked like the Crescent moon.
- 10:10Everything was in balance. It was like this beautiful mix
- 10:14of power and art. And I was, I was fascinating,
- 10:20but fascinated by it. And so, you know, after that I
- 10:24kind of was looking around, I was trying to find where I could
- 10:28do something like this and I couldn't find anyone in Canada
- 10:32at that point doing it. I, I know now there's folks out
- 10:35in BC, but you know, in Eastern Canada.
- 10:37Anyways, I didn't know anyone doing this sort of thing.
- 10:43But my dad had told me that a neighbor of ours was into
- 10:46archery and he was really into horse archery, which is also
- 10:50amazing. And I, you know, would hang out
- 10:54with him and soak up as much knowledge as I could.
- 10:57And he invited me down to. Are you familiar with Etar
- 11:03Dental? Yeah.
- 11:05OK. So he invited me down there and
- 11:09it was kind of my first time away from home, really.
- 11:11That guy was a 14 year old kid, at least you know, that far
- 11:16away. And we drove all the way down
- 11:21and we ended up camping with this group of guys who were
- 11:24shooting English longbows. And I remember being like, this
- 11:27is amazing. And these guys ended up being
- 11:33just some of my best friends. One of them in particular, a
- 11:35real mentor in both bows, but also just life and philosophy.
- 11:42He's now since past, but his name is Jerry Lee.
- 11:44He was an amazing Fletcher and he's the one who, yeah, he, he
- 11:50just taught me an awful lot. We would later found the
- 11:54Canadian Warbo Society together. But you know, back then I was
- 11:57still, I was a little pimply kid and he got me turned on to the
- 12:02English Warbo Society in the UK. And I, I ended up joining that
- 12:10and they had a forum at that point, the English Warbo Society
- 12:15forum, and it was fantastic. There's so much good
- 12:19information. This is before the EWBS kind of
- 12:22imploded on itself. But you know, what was great
- 12:26about it is unlike today where everything's kind of Facebook
- 12:30and Instagram based, not trying to put shade on that, but
- 12:33everything's an algorithm. So amazing stuff gets posted but
- 12:38then lost. Whereas with forums, what was so
- 12:40good about them as you could, it was like a library, right?
- 12:44You could go through and and find information and the
- 12:48primitive Archer form too, of course, was amazing.
- 12:52But for the English war boats, for me, the WBS form was
- 12:57invaluable. So I, I, I realize that I'm
- 13:00talking a lot. You just cut me off from talking
- 13:03too much, but. No worries.
- 13:07So less work for me. If you just keep talking, I
- 13:09don't have to say anything. It's not, it's not good, though.
- 13:14It ends up being just a monologue, but I'll, I'll wrap
- 13:17it up. So at at that point I, you know,
- 13:19I came home and I was totally bitten by this whole thing and I
- 13:25really wanted the real deal. I really wanted like AU bow.
- 13:28I really wanted a heavy one, everything that meant a very
- 13:33expensive bow and U bows are expensive now, but back then
- 13:37they were like really expensive, especially for a high school
- 13:40kid. So I started making them because
- 13:43my, I grew up in the family business.
- 13:46My dad's business is making Shaker furniture.
- 13:49So I was really lucky I had access to a shop.
- 13:53I was still in high school at the time.
- 13:55And so I all of a sudden I, I was really not paying attention
- 14:00to school at all. And I would be barely in school
- 14:05and then I would be up at night studying and working on bows and
- 14:10the weekends I spent. Wow.
- 14:13I did completely high school was not my thing.
- 14:18I was, I really had a bad time there anyway.
- 14:21And so traditional school was never really my thing.
- 14:27And so it was actually a lifesaver.
- 14:30I think for me, it gave me something to focus on, to really
- 14:33build on. And what was great is, you know,
- 14:38the guys and in the, the UK with the time difference, often when
- 14:45I was kind of up at night, they'd still be awake.
- 14:48So there's a, there's a few of them who I, I really learned a
- 14:50lot from and we're really good at answering questions and, and
- 14:55that whole thing. And, and it was around then that
- 15:00we started the Canadian Warble Society, which was a lot of fun
- 15:05in those were just really, really fun times.
- 15:08And it was kind of a slow progression.
- 15:11I think by the time I was, want to say, 16, I started my
- 15:17business. And it was one of those things
- 15:21where I wasn't making a lot of money.
- 15:25But for a high school kid, I sure was, you know?
- 15:28Yeah. And I was still living at my
- 15:30parents house, so it's not like I had any expenditures.
- 15:35And so I, I saved and saved and saved then.
- 15:41And then what happened was I have to give a lot of credit to
- 15:46Ian Sturgis of Boston Bows. He came out around the time I
- 15:51think I was, yeah, I was 17 at the time.
- 15:55And he came over to Canada and he taught me an awful lot.
- 15:59We made a lot of bows together. And then I ended up going over
- 16:05to the UK after that and worked in his shop for quite a while.
- 16:10And I learned a lot from him. And that kind of started this
- 16:14whole thing where I ended up traveling around and kind of not
- 16:20really doing what you're doing is much lesser form than what
- 16:22you guys are doing, But similar where I got to meet an awful lot
- 16:25of lawyers in a number of different countries.
- 16:28And some of them, I got to spend a lot of time in their shop and
- 16:32work with them all the way down to others where we just got
- 16:35together for a shoot. But, you know, you still pick up
- 16:38these tidbits from them. So yeah, that's kind of, I
- 16:44suppose, the condensed version of it.
- 16:47Were you still a teenager at this time when you started
- 16:50traveling? Yeah, so I was, I was 17 when I
- 16:52took off and and I would work in different countries too.
- 16:59And actually it was great. I would, there's certain places
- 17:03like I, I ended up in New Zealand for a while and what was
- 17:07fantastic was at the time, nobody in New Zealand or
- 17:12Australia were making these types of boats.
- 17:14So I just got all these orders from people who were there would
- 17:18hook me up and I would take over.
- 17:21Like I think I took over. Was it 2530 bows?
- 17:25And, you know, essentially paid for a year of being over there.
- 17:31So I would travel and then I'd run out of money and I'd make
- 17:34bows and then I'd travel. I kept doing that for a while.
- 17:38So you took like 30 bows to New Zealand, You traveled there with
- 17:41those? Yeah, it was really hard.
- 17:44Yeah, I maybe the term smuggling.
- 17:49Had you made those in Ontario in your workshop?
- 17:52I did. I did.
- 17:55However, when I was over there, I got the chance to work with a
- 17:57few guys. I was living with a guy named
- 18:02Wayne, Wayne Layton and he had a little shop because there is the
- 18:06English War Bow Society like the New Zealand branch.
- 18:08So I knew a couple guys over there and then actually, and
- 18:12one, one person I, I always like to mention is there's, there's a
- 18:15guy over there, his name's Aaron Williams and he's a fantastic
- 18:18Boyer. He never, I don't think he's
- 18:22ever sold a bow. Like he's not a professional
- 18:24Boyer, but the bows he made were just exquisite and, and using
- 18:30New Zealand timber too, which was kind of neat, you know, it's
- 18:33a new timber that, yeah, my knowledge, no one had used
- 18:36before is there, especially in New Zealand, actually.
- 18:40There's no history there, right? There's no history of archery in
- 18:42Australia or New Zealand, right? Exactly.
- 18:46That's what I was just about to say.
- 18:48That was something that I found really interesting because there
- 18:51was no history. There was, there's even, there's
- 18:53no leads, right. So everything was trial and
- 18:58error and I remember the one would I remember is he made some
- 19:00bows out of species called kanuka and I thought those were
- 19:06awesome. It really it's related to if you
- 19:08know, like manuka, manuka honey. It's the same kind of species,
- 19:13makes a fine bone. Nice and big to a Acacia trees
- 19:17work for bows, right? Yeah, that's right, though I've
- 19:20never worked with them, but I've heard that.
- 19:23And then there's some Australian woods too.
- 19:26Are you familiar with Colin Gare?
- 19:28Outlaw Bose No. I hope I'm not.
- 19:31Losing you now. Can you hear me?
- 19:35Yep, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
- 19:36No, I'm not familiar with him. OK.
- 19:41But he's, he's an excellent Boyer down there.
- 19:43And it's at the time he was really new.
- 19:46He, he was asking, you know, me advice.
- 19:49And, and that's kind of funny because now he's very, he's very
- 19:53successful. He's gone on to doing more
- 19:56laminated like flat bows, like hunting and whatnot.
- 20:01But I I had the pleasure of being there when they used to
- 20:05have their Australian war bow Society shoots and.
- 20:08I got to work a lot with Colin and and he was experimenting
- 20:11with some really interesting Australian woods, incredibly
- 20:15dense stuff, probably similar to different, but similar in that
- 20:19respect to where you where you're living now.
- 20:23Yeah, I haven't really. Worked with any of the well,
- 20:26that's not true. Well, that is true.
- 20:27I haven't worked with any of the woods in Costa Rica.
- 20:31I told a story recently on a podcast, which I don't know if I
- 20:34published that one yet or anyway about finding lemon wood trees
- 20:38in my backyard in Costa Rica. And I've been looking for lemon
- 20:42wood trees and looking a lot for multiple years in Costa Rica.
- 20:47And I'm building a carving studio right now at my place.
- 20:50And my builder's girlfriend was there and she's from Costa Rica.
- 20:55And I asked her what type of tree this was that I had a swing
- 20:58hanging from. And I only asked her because he
- 21:01was looking at the site for my studio, thinking we might have
- 21:04to cut down some of these trees. I'm like, you know, you can't
- 21:07cut down this tree. Like, whatever it is, it's got
- 21:09this cool swing hanging from it. And when I teach archery, a lot
- 21:12of my students will sit on the swing and watch their friends do
- 21:15archery. And so I asked her what kind of
- 21:17tree it was. It's a lemon wood tree.
- 21:20I had no idea. I've been searching for years
- 21:23down there to find lemon wood. And it turns out I have four or
- 21:26five of them in my backyard beside my archery range.
- 21:30So now I know what they look like.
- 21:33I. Can't cut those down.
- 21:35Yeah. But I know what they look like,
- 21:37so now I can find them, hopefully well, and they're in
- 21:41danger. Too, aren't they?
- 21:42They are so. They yeah, I think it was Chuck
- 21:45Loffler was telling me that due to bow making, they became very
- 21:51endangered because it's such a good bow wood.
- 21:54In Nicaragua, lemon wood is known as.
- 22:00Well, there's three. Names, it's either degame,
- 22:02Madera or Salomo. I think it's degame in
- 22:06Nicaragua. Whatever it is, it's the
- 22:07national tree, so it's protected there.
- 22:10And and then in Costa Rica, I it's not that common, at least
- 22:15where I am, Although again, I have a handful of them in my
- 22:18backyard, but those are the only ones I've seen.
- 22:20But maybe I just haven't had my eye out for them because I
- 22:23didn't know what they look like. But that is where that's where
- 22:27lemon wood's native to, so it should be available somewhere.
- 22:31Absolutely. Well.
- 22:31I know it's a fantastic bullwood.
- 22:33They, they used to use that an awful lot and I still think in
- 22:38the UK they can still get it. I've seen a lot of Boyers in the
- 22:41UK use it and I always was under the impression that the the UK
- 22:46stuff was imported from Cuba, but I could be wrong.
- 22:50So that's very cool that you've got it where you are.
- 22:54Yeah. That's very.
- 22:56Yeah, where do you? Get your your staves from where
- 22:59do I get my you? Staves from, yeah, your neck of
- 23:03the woods generally. OK, yeah, generally Vancouver
- 23:07Island or just on the mainland. There's a a few people there now
- 23:14who I've been getting staves from and wonderful quality.
- 23:18I've also worked a little bit with Italian you, not a lot, but
- 23:24I've well, and when I say I've worked with that, I've only made
- 23:28maybe 5 bows from Italian You. But again, back to before, like
- 23:36Ian Sturgis and I, we went and visited Celestino Paletti in
- 23:40Italy, which was a really neat experience.
- 23:44Kind of saw his workshop. Who is that?
- 23:46Oh, oh, sorry. So Celestino Paletti used to be
- 23:52to my knowledge he was the only person you could get Italian you
- 23:55from. Like I've I could be wrong with
- 23:58this, but I was under the impression that he was the only
- 24:00one the Italian government allowed to cut.
- 24:05And back in the kind of mid 2000s, early like 2010, he was
- 24:14supplying a lot of people with it with Italian you and.
- 24:21What's that? Is he?
- 24:23A bow ear, yes. Yeah, he.
- 24:25Would also work with that he made horse bows as well, but it
- 24:30was kind of common knowledge to get the good stuff you had to go
- 24:33there and you'd have to barter with him a little bit.
- 24:37He put up a hard bargain. He he had this whole room full
- 24:41of use staves that were, you know BC grade.
- 24:46But if you wanted to see the A grade, he had a whole separate
- 24:50area in this hill. And where is he?
- 24:55He's in the north. He's close to Trento, if you
- 24:58know where that is. OK, well.
- 24:59No, but we're going to be in the North, so I don't know to my
- 25:03knowledge. He's not making bows anymore, or
- 25:08at least not professionally, but I do know of someone in Europe
- 25:11who's recently gotten the stay from, so I know he's still
- 25:14around. And the staves that Trent got
- 25:18from him. Yeah.
- 25:21Yeah, I can get you his exact locale.
- 25:26I don't really want to, like, put it out there publicly.
- 25:29Yeah, yeah, in case he doesn't work that, But if you're
- 25:31interested, I'll let you know, OK?
- 25:34He's not. Far from where we're going to be
- 25:37and we're going to be in Brescia with Enrico Meraji and it looks
- 25:42like it's only a 23 hour walk. Fantastic.
- 25:46Now there you go, two hour, 2 hour drive, right?
- 25:51Yeah, it's kind of right. It's he's on the other end of
- 25:55the massive lake. Yes, he's up in the.
- 25:59Yard ways yeah, it looks like he's.
- 26:01Up in the mountains, a bit sweet.
- 26:04He definitely is. It's beautiful.
- 26:06He also had a a yurt building operation, so when you go there,
- 26:12you stay in these yurts. And yeah, he had this whole
- 26:17huge. Excellent.
- 26:18Shop. It was really, really neat and
- 26:22it was just various contact stuff.
- 26:25Yeah, I will. I will, yeah.
- 26:28But yeah, no, I worked with with his stuff and then in the early
- 26:31days I used to get my U out of Oregon, but now lately all EU
- 26:38pretty much that I work with is from British Columbia and it's
- 26:43excellent. And how?
- 26:44How expensive are the staves now?
- 26:46I've heard things are getting pretty crazy.
- 26:48I don't know like. To be honest, they're a fair
- 26:51price, I would say, because, you know, I mean, if you want a good
- 26:55stave, you're paying 200 and 5300 bucks.
- 26:59Canadian. Yeah, that's not what I've
- 27:00heard. Oh, Canadian.
- 27:01That's, that's actually a little bit better than what I heard.
- 27:04Yeah. And.
- 27:05Maybe I sometimes I get better rates.
- 27:08I've got some friends out there, but you know, it's such hard
- 27:13work. I mean, I've never I've never
- 27:15gone and cut you. Although I'm hoping next autumn
- 27:19I have an opportunity to head over to Vancouver Island and and
- 27:23join a guide on a big U harvest. So I'm hoping to get my hands
- 27:28dirty with that. But, but in the east here, I do
- 27:31a lot of stave harvests with our native Timbers here and it's
- 27:35hard work, you know, like when you look at, because it's true,
- 27:39people always talk about how expensive staves are and it's
- 27:42true, but it's also a lot of work, you know, So I'm also OK
- 27:46with paying people for their, for their labour because I also
- 27:50know with, with you, it's, it seems to be a joke a like often
- 27:53the best woods for making bows. They don't want to be bows.
- 27:57They're like gnarled trees and they're up in mountains and you
- 28:00go to work for them. Yeah.
- 28:03Well, and it's not like we're harvesting bamboo either.
- 28:05That grows back in a month, and this stuff is right.
- 28:10Right. Once it's harvested, it's.
- 28:11Going to be a long time. Exactly.
- 28:13Yeah. That's right.
- 28:14And that's also why I, I in particular really want to start
- 28:19going out there and doing some of my own harvesting.
- 28:22Not because it's any cheaper, maybe that sounds weird, but
- 28:27because you would in particular is such a special timber, it
- 28:31also requires so many years. Yeah, to mature, you know,
- 28:37compared to white Woods, you know, it, it also, I think it, I
- 28:43don't know, there's some sort of a feeling of, I don't know if
- 28:45it's reverence or, or what, but to kind of get your feet in the
- 28:49dirt, climb the mountain and work for the for the.
- 28:53There's something to that. I don't know, but I I have.
- 28:57Someone hubose where I can't even count the growth rings.
- 29:01They get so tiny and packed together but like 40-50 years of
- 29:05growth on just a tiny little bow.
- 29:06So yeah, it's amazing. Every now, yeah, every now and
- 29:10then you get those right? And it's just like, I know I'll
- 29:13look at and just go like, oh, and yeah, it's it's crazy.
- 29:19And to think, you know, what's interesting like when talking
- 29:23with you is, you know, I've had a few people ask me or I've
- 29:27spoken to other people about the differences between Italian you
- 29:31and our North American you. And what's crazy is when you see
- 29:37that caliber of you in BCI mean you just can't really get that
- 29:43in Europe anymore. It was all cut down.
- 29:45I mean, you can still get really good pieces, but not quite like
- 29:48that. But if you look at like the Mary
- 29:49Rose bows, the quality of taxes piccata that they had was
- 29:57extraordinary. You know, it was very, I, I
- 29:59think quite similar to what what we still have today in British
- 30:03Columbia. Yeah.
- 30:06One of my colleagues years ago is a renowned herbalist.
- 30:09She's from England and she was telling me about this little
- 30:12town that she grew up in where the.
- 30:16Town. Council would meet in the belly
- 30:19of a hollowed out Yew Tree that was still alive, but something
- 30:23like 700 a 1000 years old. I I looked it up at one point,
- 30:28but it was hollowed out enough that there could be like, I
- 30:31don't know, 6-10 people inside and they would have their town
- 30:34council meetings in this Yew Tree.
- 30:37Incredible. That's amazing.
- 30:39Where did you say this was? Somewhere in.
- 30:41England. Wow, that's like that sounds
- 30:44like some old school druid kind of stuff, you know?
- 30:47Yeah, that's incredible. And the.
- 30:49Name she said for you would, and I think it's like ancient Gaelic
- 30:54is Ewa Iwa. So I have a U bow that's named
- 30:58Ewa. Oh, interesting.
- 31:00Well, from what I understand in Gallic Gaelic culture, the Yew
- 31:07Tree is one of the trees that was supposed to come from fairy
- 31:11or something like that. Like I think it right.
- 31:14It was, it's got a, it's got a huge mythology, which I'm sure
- 31:18you know, but yeah, they have a. She showed me a symbol for it as
- 31:24well, which I carved into my bow and it's, I don't have the bow.
- 31:28I haven't seen it for a long time but it's like, I think it's
- 31:31like a stick figure man. But instead of 1.
- 31:35Set of arms, it's got like 3 or 4 sets of arms, so I don't know.
- 31:41I don't know what it means, but anyway, I carved that into the
- 31:46bow. It's pretty cool.
- 31:47I had a question written down that came up though, because you
- 31:49were talking about staves and using harvesting some staves
- 31:53where you are, Yes. What?
- 31:55What wood do you work with that's local so around?
- 31:58Here the best woods that we have is Ironwood or popcorn bean.
- 32:04Popcorn Bean and Elm, those are my 2 favorites and then White
- 32:09Ash in the Maritimes. Those are in my opinion, the
- 32:15three best ones. However, I've been doing a
- 32:17little bit of work with Yellow Birch, so I want to pursue that
- 32:20a little bit more. And are you able to carve any
- 32:25English style long bows out of these or are you doing more flat
- 32:28bows? Absolutely.
- 32:29I I almost never make flat bows if I'm honest.
- 32:33I'm, I know like a lot of people have this wide array and I've
- 32:40gotten out and played around a little bit, but I just keep
- 32:43coming back to the English longbows and the war bows.
- 32:46That's my thing. So, so the woods I test out,
- 32:48they're always for English war bows and I, I've had the chance
- 32:54to work with some a, a pretty wide variety of woods in
- 32:59Ontario. There's more woods than than
- 33:02there is out here. Like I've gotten to make some
- 33:04out of sassafras and black walnut and fun stuff like that.
- 33:08But so all the was that you just.
- 33:10Mentioned all make reasonable or good English long bows,
- 33:14Absolutely. Not necessarily English war bows
- 33:17from my experience, and I just like to preface this because
- 33:21anytime somebody said something with bows you can usually be
- 33:26proven wrong. You know, like other people
- 33:28might have a different experience, but in my
- 33:30experience, I wouldn't make the black walnut bows for longevity
- 33:37over 80 lbs. I have made them.
- 33:40I've I made one that was 120 lbs and it did really well for two
- 33:45months. And I see, I think, I think the
- 33:51rest you can make pretty heavy bows out of if you have the want
- 33:56there. And are you?
- 33:57Using a combination of sapwood and hardwood.
- 34:00Just hardwood. Just sapwood.
- 34:01What it often with white? Woods, you don't have a choice
- 34:04and you're using a lot of sapwood like with ash or
- 34:07whatever. But I always try and include the
- 34:10hardwood when I can because the the failing point where where
- 34:17white woods have the most trouble is in the belly.
- 34:19They get compression issues and it's one reason like when I'm
- 34:24selling them in my business, I really only right now I'm
- 34:28offering you bows and ash bows because you need to have a
- 34:34product. Obviously if a customer's paying
- 34:36good money and you're shipping it that longevity wise, they
- 34:40can, they can stand up. Whitewoods are a lot, I've found
- 34:43a lot fussier than you were Osage or or other ones.
- 34:48I'm just. Finishing and I just right
- 34:51before we hopped on the call I was doing a final send on an ash
- 34:54flat bow and I still have a few more pieces left so I'll try a
- 34:57Longbow next. Right on.
- 34:59Absolutely so and I'll say you know often a good clue of.
- 35:07What the? Wood will do well with is
- 35:09looking at the indigenous community, right?
- 35:12Because they're the ones who've worked with that species for
- 35:14years and years and years, and they tend to have profiles down
- 35:17pat. Woods like ash.
- 35:20They make excellent English long bows, but I think they can be
- 35:26more prone to issues than flat bows, again, because they're so
- 35:31tension strong, right? And you know, moisture and
- 35:35whatnot. But I would highly recommend it.
- 35:37And I would also really recommend if you make an ash
- 35:41English Longbow, heat treat it. It really can perform like a top
- 35:47shelf wood species. OK.
- 35:50Yeah, when I worked with Corey Hawk at Organic Archery a few
- 35:54months ago, we made a hackberry English Longwell, not an English
- 35:57Longwell. We made a hackberry Longbow and
- 36:01very similar to English Longbow, and we had to heat treat that as
- 36:04well. It was quite humid at the time
- 36:05we were carving it, but heat treating really helped it one
- 36:08and those. Yeah.
- 36:10And Corey hunts exclusively with his hackberry bows, basically,
- 36:13and he's been doing that for years and years and fantastic
- 36:16bow. That's awesome.
- 36:17It's not a war bow. It pulls, I think 60 lbs, but
- 36:22still that's great. Still no that that's.
- 36:24Awesome. And and Hackberry I know is
- 36:25really good. A friend of mine, Carl's worked
- 36:28with it quite a bit. But yeah, and and somebody like
- 36:31him would know. And I would, I would also say if
- 36:35ever you're unsure of a white wood, it's always easier to have
- 36:39a bit of a flatter section, even if you're doing AD shaped bow
- 36:42just to give it that extra strength.
- 36:44But yeah, I, I can imagine that that bow you made does really
- 36:50well. I white woods get a bad rap, and
- 36:52I think that just comes from, in a lot of ways they're harder
- 36:57than other woods, but you can make just fantastic bows with
- 37:01them. Yeah.
- 37:03What are some of the most unique woods that you've worked with?
- 37:07I'm trying to think I, I, I think I had the opportunity to
- 37:12work a little bit with Kanuka in New Zealand, but most have been
- 37:18around here. I've.
- 37:21You know, to be honest, I think sassafras, black walnut are
- 37:26probably the most off the beaten track.
- 37:30Yellow Birch. I don't know many folks who have
- 37:32worked with yellow Birch. I think those are probably,
- 37:35that's probably it really. I generally work with you,
- 37:39Ironwood, Elm, Ash. That's my.
- 37:44Go to, you know, and I'm I'm sure because you're a boy or
- 37:48yourself, I'm sure you've kind of gotten to this point too,
- 37:51where you, you kind of, you get to know the wood almost a little
- 37:55bit like a, a person, you know what their personality is.
- 37:58So if you're working with a certain species, you know, OK,
- 38:00these are the problems that could come up when working with
- 38:03it. So you take steps to prevent
- 38:05that, you know, especially given the stave you have.
- 38:09Yeah. Part of the fun.
- 38:10Yeah, tell me. About the societies, the warbo
- 38:13societies like you sound like you start helped start the
- 38:16Canadian one when you were like 15 or 16.
- 38:19Oh yeah, yeah. That, you know, they're really
- 38:21grand names. The one, the one in the UK was,
- 38:28you know, the big one, they had tons of members.
- 38:32They, they, they were very, you know, professional about it all.
- 38:38They had like their own insurance.
- 38:39I think when they'd shoot at these wonderful estates and they
- 38:43would, they would do amazing things and they had all this
- 38:47amazing, you know, experience pulled together through the form
- 38:53and everything. And, you know, we saw that and
- 38:56went, well, that looks great. And so we started a very
- 38:59Canadian version of it, which essentially is a bunch of guys
- 39:03who get together in a field in the forest, camp out, have
- 39:06fires, Bilbos in the evenings and shoot during the day.
- 39:11And it was, it was very unofficial.
- 39:14That sounds perfect. Yeah, but.
- 39:15We gave ourselves a nice name that was.
- 39:19That was. Essentially what it was T.
- 39:21Shirts and yeah, good to go some.
- 39:23T-shirts exactly. And and you, you know what it
- 39:29was Todd in a in a big way. It was gauging how you were
- 39:34doing and how different woods reacted.
- 39:37So like the biggest thing for me is that all these shoots, there
- 39:41was these flight shoots where they would record all the
- 39:44details. So you'd have spec arrows, you'd
- 39:47have like, you know, 5 different types of arrows with really
- 39:51strict parameters. So everybody's essentially
- 39:55shooting the same thing. And then you'd have bow
- 39:58categories. And so you could see how well
- 40:01you as an Archer and the bow. Was doing next to what other
- 40:05people were doing all around the world.
- 40:07So as a as an Archer, it was fantastic because you could kind
- 40:10of watch yourself get better. And as a a Boyer, it was really
- 40:15fascinating because you had all this data of these bows you're
- 40:19making and how they were doing. Yeah.
- 40:22My only experience with that is when I was with Chuck Loffler of
- 40:25Hartwood Bows in Salt Lake City. He took us out to the Bonneville
- 40:28Salt Flats and we did some flight shooting and he's got a
- 40:31few world records and the primitive category with his bows
- 40:35and so. We got to.
- 40:37Shoot some of those record holding bows and I shot one of
- 40:42my bows, I think the one that I made with Waylon.
- 40:44All of I couldn't find the string for the hackberry bow I
- 40:47made with Corey, which turned out was there the whole time,
- 40:50but I just couldn't find it. But anyway, it was pretty fun to
- 40:52just I'd never done flight shooting, so to aim the bow 45°
- 40:57up in the air and just launch the arrow.
- 40:59It was it was pretty cool. I've always only shot at Target.
- 41:02So amazing. There's there's something
- 41:04magical about watching the arson of an arrow fly away from you.
- 41:07Yeah, it's a good and. They are so technical about it
- 41:10as you were saying like the arrow should I I shoot with any
- 41:13arrow like I I it's some of my arrows are in the worst possible
- 41:19shape. But these guys are mine too.
- 41:21Weighing every arrow, testing the strength of the shafts like
- 41:25it's it's down to an exact size for flight shooting well and I
- 41:28think. They're on another level out
- 41:30there. You know, they got the ideal
- 41:32conditions and like you say, you're getting like world
- 41:34records. Out of curiosity, do you recall
- 41:36any of your distances? Mine.
- 41:40Yeah, no, yeah, rather not say. No, I'm I.
- 41:45I don't want to say something stupid and exaggerated.
- 41:48It was over 200 yards, but I'm not sure where over that.
- 41:52I don't know whether that was at the Broadhead or I don't
- 41:56remember. And I don't remember whether
- 41:58that was with Chuck's record setting bow or my my Osage
- 42:02orange bow. I have no idea.
- 42:03But I was just out there having fun.
- 42:05I mean, that's the main. Thing, that's the main thing,
- 42:08right? Yeah.
- 42:08Do you remember any of his arrows?
- 42:10How far he was getting. A good 5060 plus meters for or
- 42:14yards further than me, but I I don't recall what we were
- 42:17hitting. I think his his world records.
- 42:21I do actually have it here. Just a moment.
- 42:25Yeah, I'm curious. Because I know, I know, some of
- 42:27the Turkish ones are insane, but you know what I don't?
- 42:30Think I have them written down, it's all good.
- 42:33Hey, tell you what, next time there's a hurricane, come over
- 42:35here and we'll smash all of them.
- 42:40Sounds good. Yeah, I don't know.
- 42:44I I want to say he was like 350 yards with.
- 42:49Primitive. Category No actually that would
- 42:51have been a SUNU back Juniper bill, so 350 that's a good.
- 42:56That's that'd be a simple. Composite.
- 42:58But yeah, I'm not sure. I I don't want to, I don't want
- 43:02to commit to that. But anyway, he set the world
- 43:04record, a couple of them. Right on.
- 43:07Yeah. I think the horn bows, the Asia
- 43:10had a corn bows, he was saying. And I've been researching shoot
- 43:12over 600 yards. They're crushing.
- 43:16That's crazy. Right.
- 43:17Just to think about that, just to visualize it, it's hard.
- 43:22It's actually hard to visualize it.
- 43:23It is once it gets. Over 200 yards for me anyways.
- 43:26Maybe this is just my eyesight, but that's when I have trouble
- 43:28actually seeing the arrow come down, you know?
- 43:31Oh, yeah, We can't see the arrow come down.
- 43:32It's good distance, Yeah. Well, that's the way it was on
- 43:35the South flats. Like we launch them in the air
- 43:37and I would lose them within a few seconds and I finally
- 43:39started to be able to train my eye to, to follow them.
- 43:42But that was, yeah, two 300 yards, not 600 yards, right?
- 43:46We're, we're really lucky at our place where we're surrounded
- 43:51mainly by Ducks Unlimited, but on the other side there's a, a
- 43:54farm field and, and he hates it. So it's, it's right by my shot.
- 43:57So one of my favorite ways of testing bows is just bringing
- 44:00them out. And I don't have a chronograph.
- 44:05So I, you know, I, I, I know when a bow is fast just from
- 44:09field, but I have no idea the actual foot per second, But I do
- 44:12know how far they can shoot. And that's a really good gauge
- 44:15for me to, you know, to make sure it's up to as a standard
- 44:19that I like. I've always used distance as a
- 44:24more as a gauge, you know, than anything.
- 44:26So you said? You started, so your business is
- 44:29your brand is Fenwick Bows, right?
- 44:31Yeah. Yeah.
- 44:32OK. Did you say you started that
- 44:34when you were like 16? Yeah.
- 44:36Yeah, I did. That's amazing.
- 44:40It. You know, it was, it was
- 44:41awesome. It was fantastic.
- 44:43And I did that most of my life. I've been doing it.
- 44:45I did take a couple years off recently.
- 44:49I I had a kid and did what a lot of dads do and panicked in the
- 44:55way where I was kind of going. You know, bow making was amazing
- 45:00for me in the sense where when I didn't have a, a family or a
- 45:04house, I was making great money. You know, you don't have as many
- 45:08expenditures if you're just rambling, which was what I was
- 45:10doing. And you know, sometimes I would
- 45:13take time out. I used to like backpack and
- 45:17knock on doors and ask to work, you know, for a place to stay.
- 45:21So I would kind of disappear for a while and come back.
- 45:24And then anyways, when my son was born, I, I picked up work
- 45:30with a local Carpenter, kind of an old school Carpenter, because
- 45:33I wanted to learn how to build houses and stuff.
- 45:35And so that really worked out. So I took a couple years off, I
- 45:38caught my sabbatical and I just learned how to build timber
- 45:43frame and structures so that I could build stuff around our
- 45:46property. That's so go.
- 45:48Yeah, that's what a skill to have timber framing is.
- 45:52It's all related, right? It's, it's just all cool stuff.
- 45:55And so I, I got a little bit of knowledge with that.
- 45:58And then, but what was great about it is when I came back to
- 46:02making bows, it was just like I was kind of unexpected, to be
- 46:07honest. I, I wasn't going to restart it
- 46:09until later on, but I was getting people asking me if I
- 46:14would make a bows and I ended up getting enough where I just
- 46:17said, yeah, sure, I'll, I'll do it.
- 46:19And then I got some really good suppliers and, and then it just
- 46:23took off. And all of a sudden I had to
- 46:26really quickly finish up all my last carpentry work and go full
- 46:30time on bows because it just kind of took off like a rocket.
- 46:32So I'm really glad. How old were?
- 46:35About how old were you when that happened?
- 46:36No, this was. Recently, this was like a year
- 46:39ago, not even OK cuz about I took about two years off before
- 46:45then and then before that I was making bows.
- 46:47I was doing fine, but yeah. You know, sometimes a little.
- 46:51Step away really does yeah, does you good.
- 46:55So it's. Full time and it's taking off.
- 46:56Good for you. Well, thanks.
- 46:58Yeah. But you know, and at least for
- 46:59now, yeah. And like I said, we have some B
- 47:03and BS on our property. So you know, that takes some of
- 47:06the pressure off. So between that and the bow
- 47:08making and that sort of now, are you teaching?
- 47:11Too, you know I, I. Haven't really, I've done it.
- 47:15Sounds like you have a good set. Up with your B and BS.
- 47:17I'm well, I'm. Kind of planning on it.
- 47:19I'm also planning on doing some more.
- 47:21I used to host a big CWBS shoot every year in Ontario and I'm,
- 47:24I'm hoping to start hosting shoots again and do some classes
- 47:30and we'll see. I mean, the, the, the thing that
- 47:32I'm not sure about is we live in kind of a corner of the country.
- 47:35You know, you kind of have to go up and around Maine to get to
- 47:38us. So it's whether, you know,
- 47:41there'd be enough interest with people to show up because the
- 47:45Maritimes are also sparsely populated.
- 47:47There's not many. Yeah.
- 47:47It's such a beautiful. Place though and yeah steeped in
- 47:51so much legend and folklore and it's you know to me there's
- 47:56certainly this draw to come there to just experience that
- 48:00part of the world there's so much unique history there so I
- 48:04think to combine that with staying in your beautiful
- 48:06property at the Bay of Fundy and carving English longbows that's
- 48:09a beautiful experience so well I'm.
- 48:12In it'd be. Awesome to have.
- 48:14You and and maybe you can give me some feedback.
- 48:16I mean, how far are you? From a major airport O40. 5
- 48:20minutes. We're we're closest to Moncton.
- 48:26But I mean, what one thing I love, and this is the
- 48:29juxtaposition of the marathons. One thing I love about it is
- 48:31there's more people in the city of Ottawa than there is in all
- 48:33of New Brunswick. So there's not many people.
- 48:38And so, you know, it's, it's kind of 10 years behind the rest
- 48:42of the country, but it also does provide that really nice side of
- 48:47things where, yeah, there's lots of natural beauty.
- 48:50And yeah, I'd love for you to come out.
- 48:52I mean, you're from you're from the other coast.
- 48:54It's it's a very different coast, what I'm going to.
- 48:57Do like I'm getting excited about this.
- 49:00So we have a very tight schedule from here on in, but we finish
- 49:04up here with I think Pete Woodland.
- 49:09He's around, yeah, around August 25th.
- 49:12And then we're not due in, well in Arnhem in the Netherlands
- 49:16until September 5th. So we've got about 10 days and
- 49:20we've got to get there. And like you said, you're on the
- 49:24route. I'm going to look into it, look
- 49:26into it. There's cheap flights to Ireland
- 49:30and London. Usually there's cheap flights
- 49:32from. There, but shockingly, the
- 49:33flights within Canada are the most expensive I know.
- 49:37So we could. Fly often.
- 49:38We can fly from Victoria to Europe for cheaper than we can
- 49:41fly from Victoria to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, so I believe
- 49:44it. I'll look into it.
- 49:46That would be awesome. Because yeah, it'd be fun.
- 49:49There's there's lots to do, man, and it'd it'd be interesting.
- 49:53Have you ever made any? Well, I I assume you probably
- 49:56have. You're, I know you're, you're
- 49:58talking to people like Jamie from Ravenbeak.
- 50:02Have you made any English long bows?
- 50:03Yeah, all of my. Original bows be my first.
- 50:08Well, what did I do? I I bought my first bow, which
- 50:11was from Jamie at Ravenbeak. It was a 40 LB English Longbow.
- 50:15Fell in love with it. Had this literally, I just had
- 50:18this inner sense, this inner calling to get into archery.
- 50:20I knew nothing about it. I didn't know primitive archery
- 50:24was a thing. I just knew I didn't want a
- 50:26fancy bow with carbon fiber and steel and pulleys and stuff.
- 50:30I wanted a piece of wood. And so I looked all over really
- 50:34online for a bow and I ended up finding out about Jamie.
- 50:38He's not that far from from where my farm is and B CS like a
- 50:42three hour, 4 hour trip with the ferry ordered a bow from him.
- 50:47It was, I thought I was going to spend a few 100 bucks on my
- 50:49first bow and it was well over 1000.
- 50:52I was like, shit, I'm I'm committing, but instant love
- 50:56with I just fell in love with it.
- 50:58And it's absolutely has changed the course of my life getting
- 51:01that bow. And so then I took, I was
- 51:04leading men's retreats at the time.
- 51:06And so I asked Amy if I could bring some men to him and
- 51:09combine bow carving with our, our men's retreats.
- 51:12And so we did that twice. And then COVID happened and I
- 51:15had to cancel a few of them, but I got to go back and Carbos with
- 51:19him. I got to go and carbos with him
- 51:21on those two trips. I think I carved 3 bows with
- 51:23him. And then I just kept working on
- 51:28trying to do it on my own, which I have a lot of fails.
- 51:32I have a quite a sizable bow graveyard in my workshop, mostly
- 51:39choosing the wrong staves and just also, well, all sorts of
- 51:43mistakes. But, and that's a big.
- 51:45Part too, you know, I I am a but it's absolutely if.
- 51:49You don't make those mistakes then.
- 51:51But it's it's impossible not to. Really, it's true.
- 51:55Unless I had like Jamie. Or you looking over my shoulder
- 51:59every single bow I ever carve, I'm going to make those
- 52:01mistakes, right? Because you don't get to the
- 52:04level of expertise that you have without doing that.
- 52:07Absolutely so. Absolutely.
- 52:09But then I. Started taking bows to Costa
- 52:11Rica to teach and EU bows. Unfortunately we're not holding
- 52:13up well there. The humidity is off the charts
- 52:16and I have a question about that.
- 52:18Because that's really interesting, because you in
- 52:22particular is, is hydroscope scopic the right word that's
- 52:28generally quite good with moisture.
- 52:30That's what I thought. Coming from England, coming from
- 52:32the Pacific Northwest, I was like this is gotta be amazing.
- 52:34And maybe, maybe say, I will say that the first bow I bought from
- 52:39Jamie, which I still have and I still used to teach, has been
- 52:41doing fine. I had a couple U bows break that
- 52:44one of them I had carved with Jamie, but I had it, I had it
- 52:48for like 4 years and I'd shot it in thousands of times.
- 52:51And I took it down there and one day it folded on itself,
- 52:55literally folded. It creased the wood.
- 52:57It did not break. That's also.
- 52:59Really odd because U tends to when it goes it's usually
- 53:02spectacular. It was like.
- 53:04Taking a plastic PVC pipe and creasing it.
- 53:07Really. Yeah.
- 53:09It's weird. I still have it.
- 53:11It's still intact. I don't string it anymore.
- 53:14It's just a noodle. It just, it looks fine when it's
- 53:18on strung, but there's a when you look closely, there's a
- 53:21Ridge on the belly of it that's a crease where it literally
- 53:25folded. I've never.
- 53:27Seen that before, yeah? So I had a number of bows.
- 53:31I had Hickory bows fail there. I had U bows fail.
- 53:33Not all of them are ones I had carved either.
- 53:37So I started work I started working with laminates and
- 53:40started working with tropical wood laminates and that's has
- 53:44served me really well. So when I was. 1st starting
- 53:48because obviously seasoning takes time.
- 53:51That's what I always started with was was laminates, and I
- 53:54could see them being quite good because also, I mean, other than
- 53:57backings, most of the, at least in the English long bows, most
- 54:03of the belly and core woods tend to come from places like Costa
- 54:07Rica. Yeah.
- 54:09Yeah. So I teach almost.
- 54:11I have two flat bows in my quiver that I teach with, but
- 54:14the other 15 or so bows are all English long bows.
- 54:18Some are laminate, some are you. Most are laminates though.
- 54:23And so I've carved a lot. Well, not compared to you.
- 54:25I've carved dozens of successful long bows, but most of them have
- 54:30been laminates and beautiful bows.
- 54:33They work great. Right on.
- 54:35I was really. Pleased with them at the time.
- 54:37Now, as I kind of mature as a Bowyer, I look at some of them
- 54:39and I'm like, it's kind of like when I go back and look at my
- 54:42writing from years ago or even last week.
- 54:45Yeah, it's like me. Too me too, absolutely.
- 54:49And unfortunately, that will never stop.
- 54:52No, I. Think that's good?
- 54:53It's it keeps us always improving and it keeps us moving
- 54:57forward and not just settling for whatever.
- 55:00Absolutely. You're in.
- 55:01You're in. Positive momentum.
- 55:04So I think that's fantastic and we're finding.
- 55:07That I'm finding this as we're doing this book is like some of
- 55:10the the first 3 bow years. I've already written the
- 55:12chapters on them and as I'm going through now and putting it
- 55:15into book format and kind of rereading it, I'm just changing
- 55:18so much stuff and I'm like, that was only two months ago.
- 55:21I'm gonna restart it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask so
- 55:24many. Iterations of this book before
- 55:26it's finished. I'm just gonna have to, like,
- 55:28cut it off at some point because that would be I, I.
- 55:31That would actually I'm a perfectionist when.
- 55:32It comes to stuff like that. So I I this book in particular
- 55:35this book I see as a tribute to everyone who's hosting me and
- 55:40who's been generous enough to invite me into their home and
- 55:42workshop to to learn from them. And so I want this book to be an
- 55:46amazing tribute to each and every one of those individuals.
- 55:50So it's it's very important to me that it is of the highest
- 55:54quality and representation of their work and their character.
- 55:57Yeah, right. No, that makes total sense.
- 55:59But I totally understand your anxiety.
- 56:01I feel like I would be in the exact same spot where all of a
- 56:05sudden, yeah, you look back and go, yeah, it it's not.
- 56:09Anxiety for me, I don't know, it's just I just go and think I
- 56:13can do that a little bit better. I can do that a little bit
- 56:15better. It's going to.
- 56:15Mean it's a good product now, yeah.
- 56:18Now let me ask you Todd, before I forget, do you have any
- 56:21experience with warbos slash interest?
- 56:26I definitely have interest. I have not, No.
- 56:29The heaviest thing with not. Well, if laminates count, yeah,
- 56:33they count. Yeah, but.
- 56:35Also, what is your warbo standard 70 lbs or is it 9080 or
- 56:3990 lbs to be you know it's. Subjective.
- 56:41The the number I've always used is 80, but you know, you can put
- 56:45it where you want. Yeah, no my.
- 56:47Heaviest alignment is 72 lbs. So let's just say no.
- 56:49Yeah. OK, cool.
- 56:52When shooting it, how did it feel?
- 56:55Good I. And it depends too, I normally
- 56:58warm up with some lower weight bows before I shoot 70 plus, but
- 57:04I'll find that sometimes I get in rhythms where it feels like a
- 57:0640 LB bow and then other days I'm like, what the hell, this
- 57:11thing hurts, right? So it's just, and I think it's
- 57:15like anything archery, I do very inconsistently compared to
- 57:19things like surfing and jiu jitsu, which I'm doing every
- 57:22day. And so I know if I have an off
- 57:24day, it's not because I'm out of shape, right?
- 57:26Archery. Sometimes I'll go a week in
- 57:28between lessons and then I just might not even shoot during that
- 57:31time. And during the rainy season in
- 57:33Costa Rica, sometimes it rains for two weeks straight.
- 57:35I'm not doing archery then. So I, I think a lot of that is
- 57:39just the ebb and flow of my it. It's crazy because the fitness
- 57:44for doing archery is so much different than basically
- 57:48anything else. And like I said, I'm doing jiu
- 57:50jitsu every day, sometimes twice a day.
- 57:53And yet the actual act of drawing back the bow using those
- 57:56specific muscles that I'm doing, nothing trains me for that other
- 58:00than actually doing that. Very true.
- 58:04And I'll. Have people students come to do
- 58:06archery who are monsters comparatively to me in physique
- 58:11and I'm easily pulling back 70 LB bows and they're not even you
- 58:15know they're struggling at the 40 LB level yes.
- 58:18You know, these these are guys who can, you know, curl me one
- 58:22arm, bench press me right, and it's like way stronger, but the
- 58:27technique and the specific muscles that are involved,
- 58:30they're so unique and I think it's to a lot of things, but I I
- 58:34just. Have to interject because I mean
- 58:36what you're saying is so true. Like I used to do public
- 58:38demonstrations with heavy bows back when I could really shoot
- 58:43heavy bows. Now in the process of working
- 58:45back up And what is heavy for? You well at my.
- 58:49At my peak strength I could pull 140.
- 58:53Well nice now I I'll say I can shoot 100 well in cold weather
- 58:59and 110 more like in warm weather well but that's about
- 59:05it. But, but even with 80 lbs a
- 59:08£100, when we do these demonstrations, one of the most
- 59:12fun parts for me is you look in the crowd, you'd see, you know,
- 59:15who's the rugby players or the hockey players or, you know,
- 59:18like the, who's the, or the gym rats, you know, and you, if they
- 59:22were king, you'd get them out and have a go.
- 59:26You know, just pulling it and just seeing that kind of look in
- 59:29their eyes, they realize, oh, this is different.
- 59:32Even though, yeah, they they could military press me no
- 59:34problem, you know, sure. But it's well, and they could
- 59:37even. Do a standing cable row, which
- 59:39is a similar movement, but they're holding on to a big
- 59:42beefy metal handle. Yeah.
- 59:45Right. Very, very different.
- 59:47Than holding on with three fingertips with a little string
- 59:50cutting through your fingers. Absolutely.
- 59:52Very true. And and also because so much of
- 59:56his technique I find like those strong guys, a lot of them can
- 1:00:01muscle it back to here. But as soon as all of a sudden
- 1:00:05form comes into it where you have to roll the shoulder and
- 1:00:08lock straight, then all of a sudden it that's what really
- 1:00:13separates. People who are using.
- 1:00:15Raw strength and and people who can actually shoot, definitely.
- 1:00:20Yeah. It's to be able to do it in a
- 1:00:22smooth, fluid way where you can shoot accurately.
- 1:00:26Yeah. And for me, it's it's a full
- 1:00:28form of meditation. So when I teach archery, I teach
- 1:00:30people the meditative aspect of it.
- 1:00:33So I really want them first and foremost.
- 1:00:35We focus on breath. And I have to come back to that
- 1:00:40basically every shot. When I watch people trying to
- 1:00:43shoot in the first few rounds, I'll see them shaking or
- 1:00:46struggling. And I'll just say, how's your
- 1:00:47breathing? How's your breath?
- 1:00:49And like, Oh yeah, right, forgot.
- 1:00:51And so I always teach to draw back the bow on an inhale and
- 1:00:56instead of focusing on drawing back the bow, I tell them to
- 1:00:59focus on filling their lungs as much as absolutely possible.
- 1:01:03And the only way to do that is to be aware of your physical
- 1:01:08movement and where where things are anatomically.
- 1:01:12So if your elbow is lower than your clavicle, you cannot take a
- 1:01:16full breath because your clavicle actually needs to raise
- 1:01:19up. And the only way for it to raise
- 1:01:20up is if your upper arm is higher than your clavicle.
- 1:01:23And so. I have to.
- 1:01:25Tell people get your elbow up because people will try to pull
- 1:01:28the elbow back kind of level with the nipples or shoulder
- 1:01:32line. And I say, OK, talk to me while
- 1:01:34you do that. Yeah, you can't talk, you can't
- 1:01:38breathe, so you got to get the elbow up at least as high.
- 1:01:41I tell them like jawline or ear, when you do that inhale, when
- 1:01:45you do that drawback and just focus on the breath, the bow
- 1:01:48will come back. It it, it literally does.
- 1:01:51It comes back on its own when you focus on that breath and
- 1:01:53that inhalation that that is. Very cool.
- 1:01:55What you've just described is you know, when I've, when I
- 1:02:01teach people or I've shown people how to shoot, I, I can
- 1:02:06only tell them the 2 dimensions, you know basically where your
- 1:02:08body should be. But you've just explained
- 1:02:11everything so that that is that's very cool.
- 1:02:14IA lot of that is news to me. I could probably benefit from
- 1:02:18your class, Yeah, and it. Takes it to a whole different
- 1:02:21level too, because it's now not just a physical exercise.
- 1:02:26It becomes, if you want, it becomes a spiritual exercise, a
- 1:02:30spiritual practice. Because when you are connected
- 1:02:32with your breath, which most people are not, it takes you and
- 1:02:36your body in a whole different way than what we normally
- 1:02:39experience. And so I, I'm very convinced
- 1:02:42that most people go through life without taking a single
- 1:02:45conscious breath in a given day. Like we don't think about it.
- 1:02:49We just breathe automatically, but slowing down and taking just
- 1:02:55a minute to focus on breathing and just to literally follow,
- 1:02:59trace that breath into the body where it goes to trace that
- 1:03:02exhale, feel what's happening in your body while you're doing it.
- 1:03:05So that's something that archery allows me to bring that to
- 1:03:08people. And for me, I'm a, I'm a Qigong
- 1:03:10practitioner. I've been doing Qigong for that
- 1:03:13makes sense, yes. I don't know 20.
- 1:03:15Years and then that comes from my, my background as a Chinese
- 1:03:18medicine and Chinese medicine. And so that's what got me into
- 1:03:21archery is my Qigong practice. There are archery type moves in
- 1:03:24Qigong and I've been doing these for decades.
- 1:03:28And one day like 810, whenever I got my first bill 10 years ago,
- 1:03:33I was like, I got to actually put a bow into this form because
- 1:03:36this feels amazing. I'm drawing back like I'm
- 1:03:38shooting a bow, but I'm, I'm only, you know, holding air.
- 1:03:41And that's when I ended up finding Jamie and Raven Beak in
- 1:03:44my first Longbow. Fascinating.
- 1:03:47But yeah, the, the level of embodiment that can happen with
- 1:03:52archery and taking people into a just a deep, deep practice and
- 1:03:56meditative practices, it's profound.
- 1:04:00And then that that release of the string.
- 1:04:04Is a huge. Injection of adrenaline for
- 1:04:06someone who's never done it before.
- 1:04:08So I, I've, I've coined the term Xenolin.
- 1:04:10It's a Zen practice with adrenaline.
- 1:04:12So it's like getting your dose of Xenolin.
- 1:04:14So it's it's you're holding I. Find there's something.
- 1:04:18Yeah, that power is incredible. So so I teach people inhale on
- 1:04:24the draw, hold the breath, then release the string and then
- 1:04:27exhale. And it's so I teach them first
- 1:04:31and foremost, it's a breath cycle.
- 1:04:33Focus on the breath, stay with the breath.
- 1:04:36And then the rest of it kind of comes together.
- 1:04:38I think what's really. Fascinating about what you're
- 1:04:40doing with that. And you, you've probably touched
- 1:04:44on this already, but I think a lot of guys in the guys in
- 1:04:47particular who shoot, I think this, that kind of meditative
- 1:04:53part of it is something that a lot of us subconsciously enjoy
- 1:04:58and do without really realizing it.
- 1:05:00You know, like for for me, I'm much more of a Boyer than an
- 1:05:03Archer, but when I shoot and shooting is how I got into it, I
- 1:05:08would shoot socially. It would be a social thing or it
- 1:05:13would be for peace. And even.
- 1:05:17Though I might not have put that label on it, I mean, that's what
- 1:05:21it was for me. For me, the the romance of it
- 1:05:23was going out into a field or forest, but I was generally in a
- 1:05:28field usually after a day of work or whatever, you know, sun
- 1:05:32low, the animals are out, the sun's hitting the grass, there's
- 1:05:38a nice breeze and you just, it's just you, something you've made
- 1:05:44stick, string, arrow and you shoot.
- 1:05:47And what's really neat about this practice and what you're
- 1:05:52talking about is you're able to put narration into that to so to
- 1:05:58actually label it correctly to what you're doing.
- 1:06:02Well, yeah, I think people. By and large, don't recognize
- 1:06:07that archery is a martial art. Yeah, right.
- 1:06:11And so. Virtually all martial arts are
- 1:06:13practices of deep spiritual connection and, and embodiment.
- 1:06:18And so whether you're doing karate or aikido or jiu jitsu or
- 1:06:24archery, there's always that component of spiritual and
- 1:06:27physical connection. And so I think it's, we've lost
- 1:06:32sight of that. Yeah.
- 1:06:33And so for me, Qigong also is a form of martial arts.
- 1:06:37So for me, it's just, you know, it was always kind of natural
- 1:06:40and that's why I got into it. I got into it from my practice
- 1:06:42of martial arts. So for me, it's always been a
- 1:06:45martial art and A and a practice of that.
- 1:06:47Fascinating. I think you've gone into it in a
- 1:06:49much more mindful way than most people like I, I I think most
- 1:06:54people are searching for that without realizing it.
- 1:06:57Yeah, Well, and. Bowyers.
- 1:07:02Almost without fail, everyone that I've I've spoken to on this
- 1:07:05podcast have all connected into a deeper spiritual realm of bow
- 1:07:11carving. It's very meditative and I
- 1:07:15literally have interviewed multiple people who got into it
- 1:07:20during very, very hard periods of their life.
- 1:07:23Some of them speak of had a nervous breakdown.
- 1:07:25I got into bow carving. I went through a divorce.
- 1:07:28I got into bow carving. I had PTSDI, got into bow
- 1:07:30carving. So interesting.
- 1:07:33Yeah, there's a deep. Connection with that too.
- 1:07:35I think that fits. I think there, there is
- 1:07:39something about anything working with your hands, but
- 1:07:41particularly you marry into that an organic material, a material
- 1:07:46that has a history, you know, starts as a seed, a tree that
- 1:07:52you work with. It's a very fluid form.
- 1:07:55It's to my knowledge it's the only form of woodworking that
- 1:08:01requires such movement of its subject.
- 1:08:07I I think that that makes sense and and it is such a peaceful
- 1:08:12thing, right? You're just kind of alone in in
- 1:08:15your shop or in your yard, wherever you are and the whole
- 1:08:18craziness of the world, which is ample, just kind of can float
- 1:08:23off over there somewhere. So that makes a lot of sense to
- 1:08:26me. Yeah.
- 1:08:27And for and. I've also, for my practice of
- 1:08:29archery, I shoot both sides. OK.
- 1:08:32For you, Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to.
- 1:08:34Get them balanced. And I have spoken with people.
- 1:08:37Corey Hawk, very powerful, strong man but he only shoots 1
- 1:08:44sided and he's noticed physical imbalances and and challenges as
- 1:08:48a result of doing that. I have that.
- 1:08:50Yeah, I've actually been through X-rays and the nurses have asked
- 1:08:54why I'm. Yeah, and you're shooting. 100
- 1:08:56plus # bows on a regular basis and even if you're not shooting
- 1:08:59them, you're drawing them back as you're making them like
- 1:09:01you're testing them. You think about it like going
- 1:09:05into a gym and doing reps the 100 plus pounds on one arm.
- 1:09:09You wouldn't think of doing that with bicep girls, Yeah.
- 1:09:12You wouldn't mean like I'm just going.
- 1:09:13To train my right arm for the next 20 years.
- 1:09:15It's true. It's true.
- 1:09:17I I have to one thing that I'm having to work around because
- 1:09:20I've. I've definitely thought of this
- 1:09:22a lot, but unfortunately I've kind of ruined my left hand a
- 1:09:25little bit. Like this finger doesn't really
- 1:09:26work, so I need to try and figure out a way to kind of work
- 1:09:30around that. I'm sure that it looks good.
- 1:09:32It looks good for the. Draw.
- 1:09:33Just not good for the release. Well, that's what.
- 1:09:35It is, yeah. I can, I can now move it like
- 1:09:38that, but I can't. It's just not nearly as as
- 1:09:42strong as the rest. Yeah, but I'm sure there'll be
- 1:09:45ways to kind of work around that.
- 1:09:47Yeah. Well, the.
- 1:09:48Asian, the Asian style of shooting with stretching between
- 1:09:52the thumb and of course, yeah. And the index finger, yeah,
- 1:09:55absolutely. So there's.
- 1:09:56No excuse, but I think it's harder.
- 1:09:59To do heavier bows? Well for me it's harder to do
- 1:10:01heavier bows that way because I'm not really practice with it,
- 1:10:03but. I have a think you can build up
- 1:10:05to it. I have a good friend named Dan
- 1:10:07McGee. He lives down in Chicago.
- 1:10:11He's fantastic in the way of, you know, most people have an
- 1:10:16interest in a specific form of archery and he's very
- 1:10:20knowledgeable, but he's kind of covers all the bases like he's
- 1:10:24done, you know, like Yumi bow building with yap culpa dryer
- 1:10:29down South. He's done Turkish stuff, he's
- 1:10:32done English stuff. But what's great about that is
- 1:10:36he's really knowledgeable of all these different styles.
- 1:10:38He might actually, if you come in September, he might be around
- 1:10:41then maybe we can anyway. But he's the only person that
- 1:10:46I've kind of shot thumb ring with and he had a really kind of
- 1:10:50good way of explaining it. It's something I would like to
- 1:10:53try more of and I have huge appreciation of the Asiatic
- 1:10:57bows. And that's, that's something
- 1:11:00I've been kind of at at some point I would like to kind of
- 1:11:03branch out and give that a little and I, I think.
- 1:11:05The rapid refire that they can do is so cool.
- 1:11:10Exactly the way they. Loaded off the thumb and like
- 1:11:12some people are shooting multiple arrows.
- 1:11:15I think a second. Some people are, yes, it's like.
- 1:11:17Holy. Shit, I know.
- 1:11:20And it makes sense, like their style makes sense, but wow,
- 1:11:24every style does, right? Like depending on what they're
- 1:11:27doing. But yeah, I, I find that really
- 1:11:29interesting. And I'd like to kind of because
- 1:11:31I know and we're now out of the realm of my knowledge.
- 1:11:36So, you know, I could be ignorant, but from what I know,
- 1:11:39like the the Manchu wore bows in the Far East, I believe they
- 1:11:43both shot with thumb ring and very heavy draw weights.
- 1:11:46So, you know, there's probably different styles and techniques
- 1:11:51that could help with that. But it would be interesting.
- 1:11:56I've always specialized in the English bows.
- 1:11:58That's kind of where my heart is.
- 1:12:01But at some point, because I've dabbled a little bit, you know,
- 1:12:05with Comanche bows and stuff like that, but at some point I
- 1:12:08would really like to have a go at like a totally different horn
- 1:12:12and sinew. Because there's, I know there's
- 1:12:15a guy in Sackville, sorry, that's the town I live in.
- 1:12:19And he's he's pretty big. I believe in the Turkish archery
- 1:12:24world. Really.
- 1:12:25Someone in your town? Yeah, I didn't know about it.
- 1:12:27Actually, I just found out the hardware store fellow knows us
- 1:12:32both and he said that Adam Karpowicz is his name lives here
- 1:12:38and he wrote a book on Turkish archery.
- 1:12:41I think one of the so he's really.
- 1:12:42Into it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 1:12:44Yeah, I think he's an older fella.
- 1:12:46Anyways, I'm meeting up for a tea with him at some point.
- 1:12:50I'll have a chat. That's awesome, but I kind.
- 1:12:52Of. Want to it's?
- 1:12:54Strange Sackville. 'S a weird town where we are.
- 1:12:56It's kind of, it's so many people either have spent time
- 1:13:00here. It's.
- 1:13:02Yeah, it's kind of odd. So it's almost not surprising
- 1:13:04that there's some strange guy like me living out in the marsh
- 1:13:08making bows. But that's I.
- 1:13:11Told this story a few weeks ago when I was interviewing Pete
- 1:13:13Woodland. He, I knew there was a Bowyer
- 1:13:16who lived near me on here on Lower Vancouver Island.
- 1:13:20And I kept hearing about him. And then one day he and his wife
- 1:13:24were at my farm. My wife invited him over and we
- 1:13:26were walking around and I'd actually been emailing with this
- 1:13:29strange person. Oh, really?
- 1:13:31I was like, I want to meet you. I want to see what you do.
- 1:13:33And then just never happened. And then chatting with him as
- 1:13:37we're walking around the farm and I don't know how it came up,
- 1:13:39but he's like, yeah, I'm a Boer. I'm like holy shit you're the
- 1:13:42dude. That's hilarious.
- 1:13:43You're the guy I've. Been messaging and he's like is
- 1:13:46that you 4? 100 meters.
- 1:13:48Down the road from me. Oh wow.
- 1:13:50That's wild. What are the chances, eh?
- 1:13:54Well, and that's. Like as we're doing this book
- 1:13:56when we started out. It was.
- 1:14:00Like, yeah, we'll do a book, It'll be great.
- 1:14:02We'll go and, you know, interview and car with a dozen
- 1:14:05of the best in the world. There can't be that many more
- 1:14:07than that. And now it's like, oh, wow, OK,
- 1:14:11we need another book and maybe a third book and maybe a fourth
- 1:14:14book, because they're all coming out of the.
- 1:14:16Amazing bow years all. Around the world and we started
- 1:14:19to get get a sense of that when some people have 100 + 1000
- 1:14:22followers on their bow carving YouTube channels.
- 1:14:24It's like, OK, there's a lot of people watching this stuff when
- 1:14:28it's growing. You know, I that's one thing
- 1:14:30I've noticed with is it's it's really growing.
- 1:14:33But but that is such a cool story because I do feel like
- 1:14:38you're in a bit of a hotspot with at least archery in Canada.
- 1:14:43BCI think is kind of like there's a ton of lawyers doing
- 1:14:48self bows. I mean, mainly 'cause that's
- 1:14:52where the best material in the country is.
- 1:14:55So it's, it's kind of neat that you just happen to live in a
- 1:14:58place where you're, you know, surrounded by some.
- 1:15:01Yeah, there's a few that. We're not including in the book
- 1:15:05that I'm aware of anyway, that and, and there's three that are
- 1:15:08going to be in the book from 2 from the Vancouver Island and
- 1:15:11one Jamie from just off of the island.
- 1:15:13So who's the other fella? On Vancouver Island, if you
- 1:15:16don't mind me asking? Well, we're interviewing.
- 1:15:18We're working with Ryan Gautier. Oh fantastic.
- 1:15:21He's great. He's great.
- 1:15:23Yeah. So that's.
- 1:15:24We leave tomorrow, actually, we'll be there this time
- 1:15:26tomorrow. I'm going to be carving a boat
- 1:15:27with Ryan. Oh, say hi to him.
- 1:15:29For me, I yeah, I was just speaking with him on Yeah and
- 1:15:33then. He's got a friend in Haida.
- 1:15:36Guai. Who car.
- 1:15:38Or is it Fletcher Stump Stalker is his handle.
- 1:15:41Yeah. Oh, I.
- 1:15:41Know that guy Blaine Blake's name?
- 1:15:45Blaine. Blaine Blake.
- 1:15:46Something, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I haven't reached out to him
- 1:15:49because we're not doing just fletching in this.
- 1:15:53That's a four leather. Book series, yeah.
- 1:15:56And I think there's a. There's a guy named Clark, yes.
- 1:15:59Say Dunn. Downhill.
- 1:16:01Dental. Yeah, Yeah.
- 1:16:02Same guy. Yeah.
- 1:16:03Yeah, I know. I think he's in the Kutneys of
- 1:16:04BC I haven't reached out to him either.
- 1:16:07And largely because what I'm trying to do for this book is
- 1:16:09have a wide range of different styles from the bow years.
- 1:16:12And so as I'm carving a bow with each bow year, each bow I'm
- 1:16:16carving is unique and kind of consistent with that bow.
- 1:16:20Your style or passion. And so I didn't want to have
- 1:16:24eight different English long bow years.
- 1:16:26Yeah, because quite I, I, Jamie, I had to have in this book
- 1:16:31because he's the one, you know, he's the reason I got started.
- 1:16:33You know, I bought my first bow from him and learned a car from
- 1:16:36him then. He's fantastic.
- 1:16:38He's an amazing Bowyer. And so once I had Jamie, I'm
- 1:16:41like, OK, we got the English Longbow category filled up.
- 1:16:44So that kind of narrowed it down.
- 1:16:47But then you came in. Sorry.
- 1:16:48Well, it's a war bow. It's a little bit different.
- 1:16:51So yeah, we'll see if we can bend.
- 1:16:53It a little bit. We'll keep it traditionally.
- 1:16:57But anyway, like I said, well, that's, that's a question mark
- 1:17:01whether I can come see you this year or not.
- 1:17:02But we'll look into it. Yeah, yeah.
- 1:17:04Just let me know. Because and if not, we.
- 1:17:08Definitely do plan on like as this thing unfolds.
- 1:17:11I'm I'm already casting my sights on the future in another
- 1:17:14book. Excellent.
- 1:17:16Well, we're not going anywhere, so I'll be easy to find.
- 1:17:19Like I said, winter is probably not the best time.
- 1:17:23No, you can. Do no, nobody wants to come to.
- 1:17:26The Maritimes in the winter. Yeah, well.
- 1:17:30Other than that. I'm sure it's.
- 1:17:32Beautiful, but it's it is it's. Hard to get anywhere, but it's
- 1:17:35beautiful. Yeah.
- 1:17:38Yeah. We'll keep it in the.
- 1:17:39The warmer weather. So, yeah.
- 1:17:41And I'm not much of A winter person anymore after living in
- 1:17:43Costa Rica. Yeah, a number of years picking
- 1:17:46that up. I got a hoodie on.
- 1:17:48Here and it's summer outside, so it's.
- 1:17:50Yeah, right, eh, Yeah. It's true, a little.
- 1:17:52Bit soft I. I, I can't complain.
- 1:17:55That's what I used to do. When I would go down to when I
- 1:17:58would travel all the time. I was always away.
- 1:18:00We would, you know, we'd go to the Middle East or South Africa
- 1:18:04or wherever in the winter time. Wow.
- 1:18:06You know, and then you you've. Done a lot of travelling.
- 1:18:08I've been very. Fortunate.
- 1:18:10Yeah, very fortunate. And is that?
- 1:18:13How much of that was for bows? Probably half.
- 1:18:15And how? Much.
- 1:18:16Really. OK, Yeah, I.
- 1:18:18'Cause I would get all these contacts and then either I could
- 1:18:22make bows there, so I'd set up shops in the different countries
- 1:18:25I'd go to and sell locally. So cool.
- 1:18:27Or. I would.
- 1:18:29Get other work, you know, like when I was in Greece, I ended up
- 1:18:33knocking on a door and ended up working for an old lady who
- 1:18:36didn't speak English, but she made leather shoes.
- 1:18:38So, you know, did that for a while or worked on an olive
- 1:18:42farm. Or when my now wife and I were
- 1:18:46in the Middle East, we lived with Bedouins for quite a long
- 1:18:49time out in the desert. And you don't need much money to
- 1:18:52do that. And, you know, you just, if you
- 1:18:55have, see, this is where I was really lucky.
- 1:18:57If you have time and you don't have proper responsibilities and
- 1:19:02you have really low standards as far as comfort, then, yeah, you
- 1:19:08can get away with with doing an awful lot.
- 1:19:12Yeah. And so I lived in Sri Lanka.
- 1:19:14For a year and really. Yeah, that's where I.
- 1:19:16Originally studied acupuncture and travelling around.
- 1:19:20I was staying in what are called guest houses and they were.
- 1:19:24$2.00 a. Night, maybe $3.
- 1:19:27And at. Times it was just a mad on the
- 1:19:29floor, right? And that was.
- 1:19:31Totally fine by me, right? I think this is great.
- 1:19:34Yep. And if I really wanted to
- 1:19:35splurge, like I could go to a hotel and I could get a room and
- 1:19:38it was like 10 bucks and then it's luxury normally.
- 1:19:41I was just mad. On the floor is good for me,
- 1:19:43absolutely. And there gets to be kind of a
- 1:19:47different point of view. You start to appreciate things,
- 1:19:50Yeah, you spend more time. In the local culture, the
- 1:19:53families would invite us, me, sometimes I was travelling with
- 1:19:57people but they would invite me to eat with them.
- 1:19:59And it was just a a different, a more immersive experience as
- 1:20:03opposed to now go to a hotel or an Airbnb and chances are you
- 1:20:07don't get the chance to interact with anyone who's local notice.
- 1:20:11That the most authentic experiences are the least
- 1:20:14comfortable and. Certainly the most memorable,
- 1:20:19yeah. My best stories were, yeah,
- 1:20:22borderline traumatic at the time.
- 1:20:24But, you know, they turned into these huge lessons, right?
- 1:20:28Well, and that's. It's cool that you mentioned
- 1:20:31that, because my kind of philosophy for traveling and I
- 1:20:34did a lot of it before I I had my son and daughter and getting
- 1:20:38to do it again now with my daughter, but that's so cool.
- 1:20:40It's those. Hard times.
- 1:20:42That we remember the most. And So what I remind myself now
- 1:20:47or tell myself now is when I'm going through one of those hard
- 1:20:50situations, I mean, this is going to be memorable.
- 1:20:53We're going to tell a story about this.
- 1:20:54We're not going to tell a story about the posh comfort when
- 1:20:57everything goes well and there's no adversity.
- 1:21:00So we're going to tell stories about when shit hit the fan,
- 1:21:03100. Percent, You're going to tell
- 1:21:06everybody about when your car broke down, you're stranded and
- 1:21:08you had to hitchhike out. You're not going to tell people
- 1:21:11about the all inclusive resort you went to, right?
- 1:21:13Like not in years to come. Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:21:16Right. So I think it's really.
- 1:21:18Important for me anyway to keep that in mind.
- 1:21:21So when I'm actually in the thick of it, OK, I need to do
- 1:21:24better. At that, that is a very good
- 1:21:26practice that is true to think about.
- 1:21:29And yeah, I have to say too I'm. I just love that you're doing
- 1:21:33this with with your daughter. You know my son's only three.
- 1:21:37So we've got a ways to go. I mean, we travel with them, but
- 1:21:40well, but it's such a difference when you have kids.
- 1:21:45I mean, I've only been a dad for three years, but like, man, what
- 1:21:49a difference. It's incredibly awesome.
- 1:21:51But everything changes your whole, you know, we're, we're
- 1:21:56planning on, you know, rambling again, hitting the road again,
- 1:21:59but all of a sudden we're it's going to be different.
- 1:22:02You know, it's going to be a totally different kind of
- 1:22:04experience and just seeing yourself where your daughter is,
- 1:22:08is is, was she a teenager? She's 15.
- 1:22:11Yeah, right on. Doing something like this,
- 1:22:15fantastic for both of you. I mean, yeah, it's next level.
- 1:22:20And and I see it in her too. Like, we're so excited about
- 1:22:23this. And I get it.
- 1:22:27You're traveling with your son when he's 3.
- 1:22:29It's great. And I just found that he just
- 1:22:30keeps getting better because as they start to become like,
- 1:22:33little adults, yeah, real people like my daughter now, it's like
- 1:22:37she's just like my best friend. And we go and travel.
- 1:22:39It's like, this is amazing. This is so cool.
- 1:22:42And then to have a a mission like have this project be
- 1:22:45working on it just takes it to a whole nother level, man.
- 1:22:48So it's that what you? Just said that excites me
- 1:22:51greatly because yeah, yeah. And it's the, it's the.
- 1:22:55Same with my son. My son wants to, he's 12.
- 1:22:58We surf together almost every day.
- 1:23:00And so like I know our trips are going to be very different when
- 1:23:02we're together, that's we're always going to be looking for
- 1:23:05waves and and that's fantastic. Like there's nothing that I can
- 1:23:09that I enjoy more than being out at sunrise with my son sitting
- 1:23:13on our boards waiting for the next wave.
- 1:23:15And we just look at each other and we just laugh and we smile
- 1:23:18because it's just like, this is our life.
- 1:23:19This is amazing, this is so beautiful.
- 1:23:21Talk about. Quality time and instilling this
- 1:23:24sense of adventure, gratefulness, all those good
- 1:23:28things, you know, from doing that.
- 1:23:30And also I, I was really lucky. So I, I grew up with parents
- 1:23:35that I really have a good relationship with and they were
- 1:23:38always very supportive of my sometimes very unorthodox
- 1:23:42choices. And seeing you do that with your
- 1:23:46kid and just allowing them because it sounds like I don't,
- 1:23:51I don't know the details, but it sounds like you, you guys are
- 1:23:55living maybe an unconventional life and, but you're allowing
- 1:24:00them to pursue clearly what they're interested in.
- 1:24:03And I just think you can't go wrong with that.
- 1:24:07It's really cool to see I. Agree.
- 1:24:09I agree completely. Pursuing our passions, I think
- 1:24:13is one of the most important things we can do for me to be
- 1:24:16able to give that opportunity to my kids beyond what is expected
- 1:24:21of like traditional schooling. And you know, no, no, you got to
- 1:24:24wait till you're 18 before you can go out and see the world.
- 1:24:27But no, then you got to go get a degree before you can do that.
- 1:24:30And well, then you got to get set up with a career.
- 1:24:32It's like, wait a minute. Absolutely.
- 1:24:35Any of that. Fulfilling like how and how are
- 1:24:37we contributing to the world by just falling along like these
- 1:24:43lemmings over the edge of a Cliff when the world's
- 1:24:45different? It used to be you could, you
- 1:24:48know, for a short period, very short period in history, you
- 1:24:50could get an education, get a good job, get a pension, all
- 1:24:54that sort of thing. Nothing's guaranteed anymore.
- 1:24:56And I, I think following what you're interested in or your
- 1:25:02kids interested in is the ticket cuz that's they, I don't know, I
- 1:25:06feel like they kind of know the education they need.
- 1:25:08I feel like I always knew what education I really needed.
- 1:25:12I don't think for, for me, high school is fantastic and post
- 1:25:15secondary for some people, I don't mean to, you know, down
- 1:25:19talk that, but for me, I never needed high school.
- 1:25:22I don't think I learned anything from it.
- 1:25:24I learned an awful lot in the evenings and on weekends making
- 1:25:27bows and yeah, you know, travelling the world.
- 1:25:30And studying under all these amazing mentors like and that's
- 1:25:33what built my. Life How can you do better?
- 1:25:35Than that, yeah, exactly. So, you know, I think I think
- 1:25:41really following your what the kid is, yeah, you know,
- 1:25:45interested in is definitely the there's a huge paradigm.
- 1:25:47Shift I'm feeling now and that's something that people are doing
- 1:25:51a lot more. It changed our generation
- 1:25:53growing up. It really, it sounds like you,
- 1:25:56you managed to do it. But for me it really wasn't kind
- 1:25:59of on the map. It was no, you go to school, you
- 1:26:01get your diploma, then you go and get your degree and.
- 1:26:05And it was during. That process, I was like, wait a
- 1:26:07minute, This is this feels weird.
- 1:26:09Yeah, yeah. There you go.
- 1:26:11Because it wasn't I studied. I studied medicine, I did my
- 1:26:14undergrad in medicine and it was just going through the motions.
- 1:26:17Getting the degree had great grades.
- 1:26:20That was never an issue for me. But then right after I I
- 1:26:23graduated from university, I went to Sri Lanka to study with
- 1:26:27my mentor who taught me acupuncture.
- 1:26:29And literally I went from sitting in a classroom being
- 1:26:33bored out of my mind, memorizing shit so I could regurgitate it
- 1:26:37in ACE exams, but having no practical application of it
- 1:26:41whatsoever. And then I went to Sri Lanka and
- 1:26:43on Day 2 I had patients who I was supposed to stick
- 1:26:46acupuncture really on day. 2 day one I had tropical.
- 1:26:49Fruit as my patient day two. It was real people.
- 1:26:52That's hilarious. And you went from A and then it
- 1:26:55was. Just like it changed everything.
- 1:26:57And I started to actually, there were very few English bookstores
- 1:27:01in in Colombo, the city where I was living in.
- 1:27:03But I would seek those out and I would start and I started buying
- 1:27:07medical textbooks, the same books that I had hated all
- 1:27:09through university because there was no relevance to them then.
- 1:27:13It was just memorized. But now I had people, I had
- 1:27:17patients who needed help and they were coming with various
- 1:27:20diagnosis. And all of a sudden it's like,
- 1:27:22oh, I need an anatomy book. I need to go back through this
- 1:27:25so I can understand where I'm putting the needles.
- 1:27:27And there was a reason. I now there was a reason.
- 1:27:30Absolutely. It really that degree really
- 1:27:34ended up helping me, but at the time I had no idea.
- 1:27:38I was like, this is this is just boring.
- 1:27:40I'm just doing this stuff because that's what you're
- 1:27:43supposed to do. But once I got into my passion,
- 1:27:45and acupuncture was an absolute passion.
- 1:27:48Once I got into that, it was a whole different thing.
- 1:27:50And so that's what I've for my kids, yeah.
- 1:27:53I want them to follow their passions.
- 1:27:55And I, I don't care what they do for schooling.
- 1:27:59Like my, my daughter is a high school dropout and I absolutely
- 1:28:03love it. Good for her.
- 1:28:05And she's killing it. And you know what Better
- 1:28:08education than traveling the world writing a book?
- 1:28:11Absolutely. And if that's what she's into,
- 1:28:15whether it's writing or photography or or whatever, to
- 1:28:19me, and I think in the world to come, what's going to be much
- 1:28:22more beneficial than sometimes a degree is if you can make real
- 1:28:28connections with people. And you can also be like, check
- 1:28:31out this book. You know, I did that when I was
- 1:28:3215. You know, that is going to speak
- 1:28:35volumes for itself. And yeah, as there's less
- 1:28:40guarantees, I think there's going to be, it's more space and
- 1:28:45it's going to be more important for the creative side, but less.
- 1:28:49Guarantees which with the state of our economy and inflation
- 1:28:53there's no guarantees anymore exactly so I would rather
- 1:28:58personally myself and have my kids do the things that we love
- 1:29:01and fulfill us then worry about how are we going to stockpile
- 1:29:04cash so we're ready for whatever that's right because.
- 1:29:08And a year that cash is worth half of what it is now
- 1:29:11potentially. Absolutely.
- 1:29:12It's like, yeah, let's let's follow our dreams.
- 1:29:14That those bows that we're making, yeah, those photos that
- 1:29:17you're taking, that book that we're creating, those are things
- 1:29:20that we can always look back on and and be so grateful for that
- 1:29:24opportunity. Absolutely.
- 1:29:25And I think. When you follow those interests,
- 1:29:27it builds this inner resilience. You know, when you've had these
- 1:29:31experiences, you know your limits, not your limits.
- 1:29:37You know, like what you can do, it gives you confidence,
- 1:29:40especially as a young person, at least myself.
- 1:29:43I think that's a big thing that's really difficult is, you
- 1:29:48know, first of all, kids in today's society, they really are
- 1:29:50superfluous. In in the past, kids always had
- 1:29:54a purpose. They were needed, you know, on
- 1:29:56the farm or whatever it is. Today's kids, No.
- 1:30:00And they know that. I knew that.
- 1:30:02And so it's you have to find your way.
- 1:30:04And so you get to that age. And I think a lot of kids, what
- 1:30:08holds them back other than, you know, maybe limiting things told
- 1:30:12them by their parents, but it's also their own confidence.
- 1:30:15And so if you can build that confidence and following what
- 1:30:17you're interested in, knowing that if you are interested in
- 1:30:20something, you'll do it right, You'll figure it out, then that
- 1:30:24builds that inner resilience that, you know, yeah.
- 1:30:26Economy tanks, who knows what happens, right?
- 1:30:31Natural disaster and you got to relocate.
- 1:30:32I don't care what it is. You'll have that resilience, I
- 1:30:35think where it gives you that, that ability to know that you'll
- 1:30:40you'll keep on doing cool stuff. So yeah, that's pretty.
- 1:30:46Jake, this has been awesome. Man, I'm looking at the clock.
- 1:30:48We've been on here for 2 1/2 hours.
- 1:30:50Manny, I didn't even realize. That had some breakdowns in.
- 1:30:53Tech technology. But this has been great.
- 1:30:56I really appreciate getting to know you in this opportunity so
- 1:31:00well. Likewise.
- 1:31:01Todd, thank you. I'm honored to be included in
- 1:31:03the in the podcast and it's great talking to you and, and,
- 1:31:07and yeah, I look forward to hopefully seeing you in the
- 1:31:09future. Yeah.
- 1:31:11Well, it's definitely stay in touch.
- 1:31:12We've got a lot of collaboration ahead of us.
- 1:31:14So right on. Thank you.
- 1:31:16For all that you do. And for putting your beautiful
- 1:31:19bows and keeping the legacy of of Beau carving alive and
- 1:31:22bringing those out to the world. My pleasure both.
- 1:31:25Thanks, Todd. I'm I'm also really interested
- 1:31:28to see the rest of your journey that you and your your daughter
- 1:31:31are doing. So it's really cool.
- 1:31:33Awesome. Thanks so much.
- 1:31:44to Project Quipper on Salish Wolf.
- 1:31:46Follow our journey on Instagram at Project Quiver as we seek out
- 1:31:50the world's most extraordinary traditional boat years and join
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- 1:31:59Craft, arrives in 2026. We are honored to share with you
- 1:32:03the beauty, history, and magic of traditional archery.