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#74 Jeremy Weber on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

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Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
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the globe to capture the artistry and spirit of the
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world's finest traditional bow carvers.
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I'm Todd, the father. Ella is my daughter.
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Together we're on a mission to create a stunning coffee table
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book that profiles more than a dozen master bow years and their
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unparalleled skill. For each chapter, we travel to
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the Bow Years workshop. Carve a bow under his guidance,
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photograph his woodcraft in detail and share his story here
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on the Salish Wolf Podcast. The book is called Quiver the
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Art of Life. Through Bow Craft and this
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journey, our living story is Project Quiver.
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Well, it's good to see you, Jeremy.
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It's good to see you. How are things going there?
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At the beautiful lodge, I see the big fireplace in the
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background. Yeah, they're going really well.
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This year. We've gotten really, really
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busy. The name is kind of gotten out
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there. I think, you know, when you were
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here, we talked about it's, it's a small wedding venue, but we
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also do different types of retreats and things such as
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that. And this year we're pretty much
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booked as well as the accommodations, just the regular
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overnights, so. That's awesome.
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Wow, that's a lot of growth quickly.
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Yeah, it happened really quick. So your your place is called the
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Lodge at Water's Edge. The property itself is my
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girlfriend's whom I've been here with, you know, on the property
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since the beginning. I don't want to misrepresent,
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say it's mine, because it's not. Yeah, and where is the property?
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It's in Portersville, Pennsylvania.
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It sits right on the Slippery Rock Creek.
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It's 82 acres. It's an old estate.
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It was the main part of it was built in 1941.
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It was finished. It's a 4000 square foot single
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floor main lodge that has 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a large
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great room with a three sided fireplace.
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And then we also have two other buildings on site.
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A cabin, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a studio style cottage that
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can sleep for. But everything's on Airbnb for
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rent and you can also rent a place for small weddings or
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having retreats. And what I want to do is have go
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building workshops here. We had a couple last year.
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Nice. Well, that's a gorgeous place.
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You were kind enough to invite me and my children last.
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I guess it was last summer we were there.
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Beautiful place. Have you guys done anything with
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the giant swimming pool that is alongside the river?
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No, we haven't. We're the plan is we're going to
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fill that in. It's going to be a patio just
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OK. So it's an in ground swimming
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pool built out into the Slippery Rock Creek here.
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We call it a Creek, but some places will call it a river.
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It's that wide. I think you remember and.
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It's yeah, it's pretty wide. Yeah, it's, it's crazy to think
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that they were able to do this when they did it, that the
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original pole was built in the 60s and then they had somebody
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come in and redo it. 1982 we actually met the gentleman who
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did. It was a really cool story, you
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know, meeting him, finding out how they did it.
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But it's going to be turned into a patio area just because to
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maintain a in ground swimming pool built out into a Crick like
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that, it's not practical. Yeah, I wouldn't imagine so.
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And then I was just on your Instagram and I saw that you had
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some crazy ice this winter too. So I'm.
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I imagine that makes it challenging for things of that
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nature. Yeah.
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It it was nuts whenever everything froze and everything
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broke loose. We knew it was going to happen
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because the year before it happened a little bit.
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The year before that we had a big one.
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So we were kind of ready this year for it.
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And when it all breaks loose, it's kind of a bottleneck down
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here. So everything gets stuck for a
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moment and then it lets loose. And the water rose 5 feet
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immediately and then these massive chunks of ice, 1012
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inches that got pictures of it, 18 feet by, you know, 18 foot.
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Like, that was the biggest one I walked.
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So you're talking like 4 tons of frozen water sit in a ice and it
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just covered the whole area down there on the bank and then sat
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after the water receded. It just looked like a bunch of
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rubble from a building that had been knocked over.
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Wow. Coming down the gorge, it was so
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loud. It was taking out trees that
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were along the banks. So you heard the crashing and
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the bang cracking. Yeah.
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It's, it's really something when you see what just the force of
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nature, you know, you hear that spoken.
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But I think until you really see something like that happen and
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you're there to hear it, it's it's hard to explain.
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Yeah, wow, Yeah, the pictures look stunning.
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So you've been there carving bows for a while and you said
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you did 2 workshops last year and your as your intention to do
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some more? Yes, I have one.
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We have one scheduled for the weekend of September coming up.
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It'll be a three day weekend. I have one person signed up for
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it already and I'll be able to do 3 at a time so.
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OK, so it there'll be intimate workshop.
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So you have three people covering.
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It's nice because the property being what it is, I can harvest
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all the wood on the property and I can take someone into the
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woods if they want to and, you know, kind of show them what to
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look for with the trees. And I've gotten really good at
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identifying trees in the last couple years.
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And there's multiple species of trees on the property that are
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good for bow wood. What kind of trees are you
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harvesting mostly? For bow wood, well, we have
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three different types of Hickory, three different types
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of Elm. We have hop horn beam, American
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horn beam, There's Dogwood, flowering Dogwood and sugar
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Maple. So there's there's all these
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different types of trees that I've been able to collect and I
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have them split and drying. And it's exciting because I
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don't like to use the same wood to make a bow each time.
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I like to try something different just to see what I can
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do with it. And are you taking down entire
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trees? Are you harvesting saplings or
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branches? Or is it a combination of
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things? It's a combination.
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Some of them because of what the property is, a lot of trees get
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uprooted on their own when a wind blows really hard or
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something. So those are the first ones I go
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for because I'm around the property enough I can tell when
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something has newly fallen. So I'm on top of it really fast
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and I get it before any drying checks or anything start to
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happen. And then anything that's not
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usable. As far as splitting into staves,
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we have 123-4567. We have 7 fireplaces on the
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property. Four of them are in buildings.
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So we always need firewood. So I'm able to use whatever
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isn't, you know, usable for bows to split for firewood.
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But yeah, saplings and, you know, hold.
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Now the ones you listed, do you have a favorite to work with?
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Actually right now I think the American horn beam, it's, it's
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an odd tree. It doesn't grow very big.
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I think the biggest one I've had here on the property is 5 inches
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in diameter. The the back of it when you make
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the bow is just so unique. It's muscle.
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Wood is another name for it and actually have one behind me that
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I made. It looks like the tendons or the
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muscles of a forearm whenever it's flexed it's real uneven and
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crazy looking. Do you mind if I show you I
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mean? Yeah, do so.
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So I don't know how well you can see that, but it's very
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irregular and that's just pulling the bark off.
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Wow. OK, so you don't have to chase
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the rain, you just take the bark off and you use that for the
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back? Yep, just take the bark off, use
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that for the back. And I've found that harvesting
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them in in the summer, the the bark pulls right off of it.
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However, if you get it in late in the season or in the winter,
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it has to be taken off with a scraper.
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But the scraper has to be one that's rounded because it's it's
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so irregular that a flat surface just tears into the fibers and
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it just takes that much longer. It's really difficult to get off
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that way. Interesting.
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So the American Heart beam is called.
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Muscle wood, yes. And then the hop hop horn beam
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is Ironwood. How do they differ?
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They're actually very different trees.
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They grow in a little different areas, so I found this mostly in
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swampy areas here. The hop horn beam I found more
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up on the hill, places that drain a little bit better, and
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the hop horn beam seems to get a little bit larger.
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I've been able to harvest those and about 8-8 inches around.
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I haven't found anything the American horn beam that big.
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They look a lot different in the bark.
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Also the the hop horn beam looks similar to a shag bark Hickory
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the way it flakes off, but the flakes are a lot shorter and
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smaller than the Hickory and the musselwood.
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Another name for it is Blue Beach because it has kind of a
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it's a light blue hue to it. It's real, real smooth.
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And what are the characteristics for working with it?
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For bow wood, the. Well, the American horn beam,
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it's a little bit weak in compression, so I do heat treat
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those ones on the belly side. Aside from that, the
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irregularity of the back of the bow, you kind of have to pick a
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high Ridge and try to make that your center line down the bow
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because you can end up with these really deep ridges in the
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middle. And then whenever you're
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tailoring it, it kind of gets wonky because it's it can end up
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really thin here, but thicker on the the odd raised parts of the
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back. And what type of bow?
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Flat bow mostly. Yeah, so I've made flat bows out
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of them. This is the fourth one I've made
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out of them. And I tried a stiff handle and I
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just didn't like the way, I didn't like the way it
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transitioned between the fades and into the handle.
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And I think it was because of the Ridge.
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It just didn't feel comfortable. I for me, I found that making a
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bendy handle with the American horn beam works well.
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I think you know you also get more use of the.
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Way. And you know why it's called
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horn beam? Like historically what it's
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useless for? I'm not exactly sure what the
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word horn beam means, and I'm not sure why you have American
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hop horn beam and you have American horn beam, but I know
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that, as I said, another name for the American horn beam is
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Blue Beach, but I don't believe it's actually a beach.
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Tell me a bit about your kind of journey into becoming a Boyer.
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Well, whenever I was a kid, so my mom's family grew up about 20
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minutes outside of Pittsburgh in Moon Township.
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And I would say that everything started there because the farm
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that she grew up on had a very long history.
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We have records going back. It was actually at Delaware and
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I believe it was Shawnee Homestead.
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Native Americans lived there first and then it was a a wagon
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stop. It was a trading post and then
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my mom's family bought it, the Olson family.
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So it's currently called Olson Park.
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The Township bought it, I want to say, 20 years ago, but my
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family had still has a load of Native American artifacts, air,
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all kinds of arrowheads, hammers, just all kinds of tools
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and even some jewelry that they've kept in.
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It's just something that's been in the family.
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So that's always been an interest of mine and I've always
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shot Artery as long as I can remember.
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My father was always Outback shooting at Berry Curve.
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And then I think like so many others, he taught me how to take
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a stick and put knocks on the end, tie a string on.
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And you know, I hear you about you're, you know, 5-6 years old.
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And after that, I kind of started making them out of the
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sticks a little better and better.
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Never started tailoring them or anything like that.
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And then we all haunted in a family.
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So I learned to bow hunt and I started out with a, a compound
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bow. And then in 2011, I met a
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gentleman and he said that his son built bows.
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So I got a hold of him and asked him to build me a bow.
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And the first bow that he built me was a red oak board bow, a
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flat bow. And I used that to hunt deer for
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7-8 years and I was able to take a couple deer with that and
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those. Red oak isn't the best wood for
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building a lasting bow. It started to get some cracks in
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it. And then at some point, you
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know, I'd mentioned to some people I was into that and I'd
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love to learn how to build a bow and I was able to be around the
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right people to be able to learn how to do it.
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So that's pretty much a gist of it.
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Yeah. And then how long have you been
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carving, like in earnest? It's not been long.
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It's four. I think it's four years now.
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You. Can cover a lot of boats in four
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years. Yeah, and I'd be doing more if I
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wasn't so busy flipping cabins and doing things like that here
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on the property. So, but it's it fits in nice
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down here. Yeah, you have such a beautiful
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workshop right over looking the Creek.
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It's it's a really spacious workshop of all the ones I've
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been in and yours is probably the biggest of any of them.
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You got lots of room to move around in there.
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Yeah, it's, it's something that, you know, I want to be able to
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grow. I have a lot of people that I
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know that, you know, are really interested in it and want to
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learn to do it. And I'm happy to show them what
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what I've learned. And I'm a novice for sure.
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And but with each person that comes down and we start talking
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and all those interests and things start rolling, You know,
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I'm learning day-to-day with, you know, the people that I'm
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trying to show what I know. And, you know, they'll ask
14:33
questions and then they start delving into not really sure
14:37
about that. Let me look that up.
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I never thought to ask that question.
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And it's just a constant learning.
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It really is. And are you selling bows or are
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you primarily? No SO workshops.
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Now. I've given away, I don't know,
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probably 8 or 9 bows to people. Some of the people that have let
14:55
me come on their property and harvest some wood that they had
14:58
or something, let it dry out and I'll make them a bow and give it
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to them. I don't know that I'm really
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interested in necessarily selling them.
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I just enjoy making them. And if someone wants to learn
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and hey, I've got a bunch of wood split, you know, I'll show
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you what I know. And then what's it look like
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when you have people come for the workshops?
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Are they staying on site with you?
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Yes, we. Have a particular word?
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We have overnight accommodations which we encourage someone, you
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know, it's three days work, about 8 hours a day.
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We'll offer lunch and dinner, but they're able to stay on site
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in one of the cabins or one of the rooms in the lodge.
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And we get up in the morning and just get to work and do a lot of
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talking and it's, it's a lot of fun.
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Is there a particular type of bow style that you have people
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carved the first time and a particular wood that you use?
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So because we have so much Hickory on the property and you
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know, every, everybody says Hickory is the best one to learn
16:01
with. It's, you know, it's so
16:02
forgiving. The tiller can be a little bit
16:04
off. And I mean, it's really hard to
16:07
break a Hickory bow. I, I had one that I purposely
16:11
bent into well past 90° just to see if I could get the limb to
16:16
break. And then once it gives, it kind
16:19
of just the fibers pull apart slowly.
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It's not a snap. So it's very nice for someone
16:26
learning to do it because I feel very comfortable that OK, even
16:31
if there's a big mistake made, nobody's going to get hurt.
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It's going to be salvageable one way or another.
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We can shorten it down if we have to.
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We can drop the weight on it if we had to.
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You know, something major happened as tough as the fibers
16:47
on the backside of the bow or even a little bit of violation I
16:52
found just doesn't really hurt it.
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And then I think a pyramid. Style.
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Pyramid style flat. It seems to be the best for
17:01
that. OK, tell me a bit about the
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harvesting process and seasoning your staves and how long that
17:08
takes Everything you do to get a a piece of wood ready to be
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carved into a bowl. Yeah.
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So I think that's one of the neat things maybe that stands
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out about, you know, this place And what I'm able to do here is
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that because there's so much property and there's so much
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available wood. And so I'll go through, I'm
17:26
constantly in the woods down here, just walking around
17:28
looking and I'll pick out a couple trees that I like Or if I
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see something that's falling, if I see something that's falling,
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I'm grabbing it immediately. If it hasn't, you know, started
17:37
to check or get bugs or anything like that.
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But if I see something that's standing, I will take some rags
17:45
or something and I'll tie a rag around it, no market with my GPS
17:48
on my phone. And then if I can't get to it
17:50
that day, I know where it's at. But then later on I'll go up in
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the woods and with a chainsaw cut the tree to try to cut
17:59
things. Like if I can take a big limb
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and not damage the tree, I'll do that.
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If it's something that I see because a lot of times the trees
18:07
might be ready to fall, I'll take that.
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Tried it. It's called copacing, cutting
18:14
them so that they're able to sprout up from the trunk.
18:18
I've been practicing that and actually it's, it's working
18:21
well. You know, just in the last
18:23
couple of years doing it, some of the trees that I've cut down,
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I've got new sprouts now coming out of the trunk.
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So it's something where we can replenish what I've taken, but
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I'll cut them into 6 foot lengths wherever they fall.
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If I can get the truck to them, I'll take the truck to them.
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If I got to throw them on my shoulder, I'll throw them on my
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shoulder, carry them down the hill, whatever I have to do, and
18:45
I get them to the garage and immediately square the ends off
18:50
if they don't have a good square cut on the end and then I'll
18:54
split them. I use wedges sometimes if it's a
18:59
narrow one. I have a really wide draw knife.
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It's not really. I found it wasn't really good
19:06
for taking off bark, it's just too too meaty.
19:11
So I turned that into something where I can split more narrow
19:15
limbs with it and it follows the grain really well and seal the
19:21
ends with shellac. I used to use glue especially,
19:28
so if I take the bark off of it, some of the stuff I leave the
19:31
bark on, some of the stuff I take the bark off.
19:34
If I take the bark off of it, I used to use glue on the
19:37
backside, but it's kind of a pain to get off whenever you're
19:41
ready to start working the bow, so I started using shellac
19:43
instead. It just comes off that much
19:48
easier. And really you don't even have
19:50
to take it off because it's already a sealer on the back of
19:53
the bow anyway. So I see all them and then I
19:59
have a hot box, a drying box that I had built where I can
20:03
monitor the humidity and the temperature on a thermostat.
20:07
And I'm an electrician by trade, so I can kind of figure things
20:12
out and kind of make things work the way I want them to
20:14
electrically and shuts the heaters off when it gets to 90°.
20:19
If it gets below 75, turns the heaters on the.
20:24
I have a couple small dehumidifiers and buckets in
20:29
there to absorb the moisture and just keep monitoring the
20:36
humidity and I can dry Hickory out.
20:38
I can dry a wet piece of Hickory out.
20:41
And depending on how thick I split it down in just a few
20:45
months. So I really cut the drying time
20:48
on that. And as far as anything else, I
20:52
put it up in the rafters of the garage.
20:54
Wow, OK. So when you're splitting in with
20:56
wedges, you're getting down, down into halves or quarters
20:59
even. So it all depends on what what
21:02
wood it is. I've managed to come across a
21:06
whole bunch of Osage I've got. Good Lord, I couldn't even tell
21:09
you how much out there. It's crazy.
21:11
The Osage, a lot of it was big. So I cut it down.
21:15
I split it into pieces that I have.
21:17
I easily have two to three staves left in that one piece
21:22
and I'm going to dry that for about a year like that.
21:25
And then I'll go back and I'll split them again.
21:27
And if I want to do a belly split or another pie split, I
21:32
was doing some reading, it's a little easier to split them.
21:35
It seems like after it's dried out just a little bit and then
21:38
if I do the belly split, I think it's easier for me to.
21:40
I have found that it's easier for me to split it down the ring
21:44
that. Way.
21:44
And do you ever use tools like a band saw to do it?
21:47
Any power tools? Are you always using wedges and?
21:50
Hammer. No, just just wedges.
21:52
I have a band saw that I tried out in the garage and I tried it
21:56
on Hickory and I tried it on Elm and the fibers of those two
21:59
woods seem to play havoc with the blade.
22:03
They were getting pulled down below the table with the blade
22:08
and there was always jamming it up is what was happening, and I
22:12
might be able to use it with some other woods, but I just
22:15
gave up on it. I can do it well enough with the
22:18
wedges, and I like the exercise anyway.
22:21
And then you said with a draw knife, you're using that to
22:23
split some things. Is that starting at the end of
22:26
the stay with the drama? Yeah, I'll start at the smallest
22:31
end. So if I have say a sapling,
22:34
usually you have one end, it's a little more narrow than the
22:36
other. I'll start at the narrower end
22:39
and pick my spot and then use a hammer to start the draw knife
22:44
down in from the center of the draw knife.
22:47
And then I'll just use that hammer side to side on the draw
22:50
knife to get it to split, you know, all the way through.
22:54
And it's it gives you a lot more control than a wedge does for
22:59
sure. And the Osage is I didn't hear
23:02
because it cut out of it. Is that on your property or are
23:04
you finding it elsewhere? So no, we don't have any on the
23:06
property, but I know some of the farmers around here now and I
23:10
was able to find some of the farm about 20 minutes away.
23:14
And then I was fortunate enough to be at a junkyard getting my
23:20
son's car fit. And there was some across the
23:22
street, which, it's in the area where I grew up, so I knew it
23:26
had been there for years. And I asked the gentleman, you
23:29
know, whose property it was. I thought maybe it was theirs.
23:31
And he said no. Long story short, they were
23:34
selling the place and clearing the place.
23:35
He gave me the phone number of the people who own the property.
23:38
I called him up and told him what I would use it for.
23:41
And they said absolutely, they'll cut down as much of it
23:44
as you want. So friend of mine, yeah, it was
23:47
pretty awesome. So myself and a friend of mine
23:50
who's making those with me, we were out there.
23:55
It was after one of the big snowstorms we had like snow is
23:58
up past our knees, but we want to get this stuff before they
24:01
clear cut it all. So we spent two days out there
24:04
in the snow cutting this stuff down and then dragging it with
24:07
ropes through the snow to the trucks.
24:10
Probably, I'm not exaggerating. Probably 50 yards away, it was.
24:14
It was. Not.
24:15
You know, we told some of the people that we were doing this
24:18
and they're like, what's wrong with you?
24:20
So yeah, go ahead. Is it unusual for Osage to grow
24:25
there? It's pretty Far East.
24:27
I haven't seen very much of it in this part of Pennsylvania.
24:32
So I was getting to, I met a gentleman down at Washington,
24:37
PA, which is a little bit SA, little bit South of Pittsburgh
24:40
even, and he had a bunch of it growing on his property and he
24:44
let me take some of that. It seems like as you go South
24:48
and especially W, it's a lot more common.
24:52
I have family in Ohio that there's three farms right around
24:56
them. They have a horse farm and they
24:58
all have big Osage trees growing on the property.
25:02
And I haven't gone out there to ask anybody.
25:04
I just don't need any right now to go that far, but it doesn't
25:08
seem like it's very common here in western Pennsylvania.
25:12
And of the trees you were able to take down, was most of it
25:15
usable? Or both.
25:16
Yeah, actually there was quite a bit.
25:18
So that's The funny thing about Osage is from what I've seen,
25:22
you can take maybe a middle section of a trunk and you've
25:26
got these really nice wide rings and then the next 6 foot section
25:32
you get up the rings just are so tight or they're so oblong and
25:39
irregular. It's it's crazy the way that
25:43
tree grows and you can kind of, you can see it in its
25:47
silhouette. They're usually really gangly
25:50
and all over the place and there's knots everywhere.
25:52
So it kind of makes sense you would accept expect to see that
25:56
maybe where there was a knot or a limb growing, but even in a
26:00
clear section, you know, just up from a six foot section, the
26:04
rings totally change on you. And when they get too tight like
26:07
that, it's not really someone that's really good maybe could
26:10
do it, you know, but I see more people say, ah, you just leave
26:14
that go. Fortunately, like I have my
26:17
buddy does woodworking. So anything that's not good for
26:21
Bowood, we're going to use, we're going to make handles out
26:25
of, we're going to turn some just creative things.
26:28
And I also am friends now with a friend who's a bladesmith, and
26:33
he likes to use it for handles on his knives.
26:36
So even the stuff that's not going to get made into a bow,
26:40
we'll find a home somehow. That's great.
26:43
Yeah. It's it's such a cool What?
26:44
I've only ever made one bow with Osage.
26:46
I haven't had the opportunity to do anymore.
26:48
But that was with Waylon Allo Swiftwood bowls.
26:51
It's a beauty, beautiful wood to work with.
26:53
Yeah, it is. It's, it's, it's so much
26:55
different than the other ones as far as the compression in the
27:00
tension, just the way they complement each other.
27:03
But I would say it's probably still not even my favorite just
27:08
because it's, it seems like there's so many other people
27:11
that just like it so much as the one you see all the time.
27:13
I'm really stuck on this American horn beam.
27:16
Just, it looks so much different than anything else.
27:20
And when, when I hate you, I get good results from it.
27:26
You know, it's got good spring. I've shot I, I don't know how
27:29
many arrows I put through that thing now, but it's still flat.
27:32
You know that it's not really taken any set.
27:35
So it seems to me it's a good bow wood if built properly I
27:40
guess. Yeah, that's cool.
27:42
And have you experimented with a lot of other types of wood?
27:44
Yeah, so that's the fun thing is I did one out of flowering
27:49
Dogwood. I had to make it a little bit
27:51
white or wide in the limbs. I did one out of done a couple
27:57
out of hopcorn beam. I have some cherry down there
28:01
that I want to try. I have.
28:03
I haven't used any sugar Maple yet, but I've done 3 Osage bows
28:08
now and a few Elm, white Elm, slippery Elm, and the different
28:19
types of hickories, Hickory, Hickory all seems to be the
28:21
same. I haven't really noticed much
28:23
difference in that. And then you said you grew up
28:25
there on archery and hunting. Probably then you were using
28:28
more modern style bows. Now are you using primarily just
28:32
primitive bows or? Yeah.
28:34
So go back and forth. Whenever I got that first flat
28:36
bow, when that gentleman made that for me, I took it out
28:39
hunting that year. I didn't get a deer with it.
28:43
However, that next spring I sold my compound bow.
28:48
I had 0 interest in it anymore. Like this is what I was going to
28:52
hunt with. Now you know, it's it's, it's
28:55
way more fun. It's way more challenging.
28:57
And when I say it's way more fun, it's that it's like there's
29:02
more of a connection. The animal has to come in that
29:04
much closer. You have to be that much more
29:07
stealthy with everything. But there's also like this
29:11
thing, like I realize this is how primitive man had to do
29:16
this. This is how primitive man had to
29:18
survive. And to me, that's just a whole
29:22
nother level. That's it feels good.
29:25
It feels like it's a whole nother level to the game and I
29:32
games probably not the right word because you know, hunting
29:36
is not a game. I don't think about it like
29:38
that, but it's just a whole nother level to that process.
29:41
Yeah, I'm with you on that all the way.
29:44
I, I don't want to compound bow or anything modern whatsoever.
29:47
Me a primitive bow any day. I was going to say I just, I
29:50
don't recall when we shot together if you were shooting
29:53
both sides, but I noticed on your Instagram you do some
29:56
offside shooting as well. Yeah, so.
29:58
That makes you like the only other Archer really that I've
30:01
who I haven't of taught who shoots both sides.
30:04
So it's kind of neat. Last is it?
30:07
Last year a friend of mine bought a recurve.
30:11
He's left-handed and I'd never shot left-handed before.
30:14
I've never even thought about trying it.
30:17
And we were at a camp and I said, care if I try that out?
30:21
Just curious about it. And it was, you know, targets 12
30:26
yards away and I shot really well just for the first 3 arrows
30:31
ever. So it was, you know, right after
30:33
that I thought, I want to start trying this more often.
30:36
And then recently I built a left-handed Hickory bow and
30:41
wasn't even planned on being left-handed.
30:42
It was just the way the string laid on it after I was done it
30:46
like, OK, well, this will make a good left-handed bow.
30:49
And I started practicing more and more like that.
30:53
Yeah. It's it's neat because you're
30:57
much more aware of the mechanics of it because you think you have
31:00
to think about it no more. It's not natural.
31:02
It's not you close your eyes and it's something you've always
31:06
done. Like you have to think about,
31:07
OK, my arm extension, how tight am I holding it?
31:12
Where my anchor point is like you're really dialed in on those
31:15
things. It feels unnatural while you're
31:18
doing it until you hit that anchor point and you release and
31:22
then it's like, OK, I got it, this feels good.
31:25
And then I'm able to just get in the reputation repetition where
31:30
it feels good. Yeah, it's, I do it probably
31:33
5050 and whenever I go out and shoot, I'm always doing a group
31:38
of arrows on right hand, group of arrows, left hand.
31:41
Just always try to keep them both so that they're all,
31:43
they've always both felt very natural to me.
31:45
Because when I very picked up my very first bow, which have been
31:49
one I bought from Jamie McDonald of Ravenbeak about an English
31:53
Longbow from him, I just started shooting offhand at the very
31:56
first shot. I thought, OK, well, I'm going
31:58
to, I want to learn this both ways.
31:59
So I'm going to start on the side that I think is going to be
32:01
the awkward side and just got it dialed in right from the
32:04
beginning. Shot like my first dozen arrows
32:06
from the offside and I was like, OK, well, that feels normal.
32:10
And then shot the next dozen from what would what would be
32:12
the normal side and then just never stopped.
32:14
And I I really love doing it that way and keeps the body in
32:18
balance. I've been reading a lot with the
32:20
book that my daughter are writing Quiver.
32:23
I've been doing the last a few weeks, I've been doing a
32:26
historical deep dive into the inspirations for the bows that
32:30
we carved with all of the bow years because the publisher
32:34
asked for this and, and it was something I had in my mind for a
32:36
while. But just so we can have a little
32:38
paragraph about each of the bows that we carved and whether it
32:41
was inspired by the Bodmin or the Malek, a bed or the Home of
32:44
Guard or whatever the inspiration was.
32:46
And so I really started looking into it and then carved an
32:50
English Longbow with Jamie and then a war bow with Jake Fenwick
32:54
and, and looking into those because they have such a heavier
32:57
pull and because archery was so important in England, where it
33:01
was part of the law, men had to practice very regularly.
33:06
I think on Sundays they couldn't play any other sport, but they
33:09
could only practice archery for a while.
33:11
They had to own bows, but they were like a lot of the, a lot of
33:16
the bodies that were found in the merry rose of The Archers,
33:20
they were horribly twisted and imbalanced through the spine and
33:24
through the arm muscles and the back muscles.
33:26
And that's, they've been shooting these 150 LB bows their
33:29
entire life only from one side. And now it works.
33:32
And working with the bowyers who I worked with for the book and
33:35
shooting with a lot of them, a lot of them have indicated,
33:37
yeah, they've, they've noticed some imbalances because they're
33:40
only shooting one way and that's the way they've always shot.
33:43
So I think it's that to me it just seems like it just seems
33:47
natural to let's balance it out, let's shoot the other way.
33:50
And I love what it does for the brain and I'm I'm convinced it's
33:53
helped create a stronger non dominant eye for me.
33:56
We all have a dominant eye. Mine is my right eye.
34:00
So when I'm shooting off offside, I'm shooting using my
34:02
left eye to aim. And it's taken a while, but now
34:05
I feel like my aim is really kind of dialed in with that eye.
34:09
So it doesn't really feel like it's not dominant anymore.
34:12
I don't know if that's if the brains rewiring or what it it
34:15
is, but it seems like it's helping.
34:16
Yeah, it definitely makes sense. And you know, there's someone
34:20
that grows up shooting a a compound bow or even a recurve
34:26
bow with an arrow rest on it, kind of limited to always
34:30
shooting one way with that, You know, it's not really practical
34:33
to go out and buy a left-handed compound bow or right-handed
34:37
compound bow so that you can shoot both ways.
34:39
There's just too much money involved there.
34:41
Where you, you have that opportunity if you're shooting
34:45
off your hand with, you know, an English Longbow style or even a
34:49
flat bow, you know, if you don't have the the cut off for the
34:54
arrow, you can shoot either side.
34:57
It doesn't really matter. Doesn't affect the bow, you
35:01
know. Yeah.
35:02
Do you ever put arrow shells in your bows?
35:03
Are you going primitive with all of them?
35:05
I I prefer primitive. I prefer to shoot off the hand.
35:09
I know it's you can they say you can be much more accurate with
35:13
the arrow shelf. I'm sure you're, you're limiting
35:15
all the things that can happen, all the contact, you know, with
35:19
the hand and everything when you do that.
35:21
I just, I prefer to shoot off the hand also.
35:24
I think the yeah, however, you're making a bow if you're
35:27
going to put an arrow shelf on, if you're, if you're going to
35:30
cut into the handle like that, it just seems to me just you're
35:34
creating a weak spot. No matter what you're you're
35:37
taking something away from that center.
35:39
You can glue something to the outside of the handle and do it
35:43
that way, but I just prefer to shoot off the hand.
35:45
Yeah, while I'm with you on that and and some people, Corey Hawk
35:50
I believe of organic archery, he prefer he hunts with his
35:54
hackberry bows always and shoots off the hand and feels I think
35:59
it was Corey who told me he just feels he has better control
36:02
shooting off the hand. And I mean, I've seen him, you
36:06
know, online and everything, shooting.
36:08
I mean, he's a sniper with that thing.
36:10
So to say that. Yes, he is.
36:13
You can't shoot as accurately off your hand.
36:15
I just don't, you know, it's not, it's how much time you put
36:18
into. It yeah, absolutely.
36:20
Are you making your own arrows too or just focusing on the bows
36:23
right now? No I'm not.
36:24
I have bought stuff to do it it. If I start making arrows, then
36:30
I'm going to lose sight of. I want to still learn so much
36:33
more about bow building. There's just so many different
36:37
do it and I want to try so many different things.
36:39
So I don't want to jump to the next thing because all my life
36:42
I've had a habit of doing that and never getting to the point
36:47
where I really felt like I maybe mastered the thing and I'd
36:51
really want to stick with this. And are your bows, do you have
36:54
any sort of preferred characteristics that you add to
36:57
them like tip overlays, leather, hammo grips?
37:01
Is there anything characteristic, Jeremy?
37:03
I like to keep it real simple. I'd done a couple tip overlays
37:08
but I prefer just a simple self knock and keep the handle
37:13
simple. I found I like wrapping them
37:16
with rawhide, some rawhide lace. It just feels good in my hand.
37:21
Maybe I'll stack a little bit of leather in the palm area to
37:24
bring it out. I don't like real refined
37:29
handles. I don't know, beat my hands up
37:33
pretty bad through my job so it's not comfortable for me to
37:37
have a real throaty grip on a bow.
37:39
One of the reasons I don't really like shooting a recurve
37:42
because they all have that real Deep Throat and my thumb just
37:45
feels like it's kind of smashed in.
37:47
Usually I like to have just a nice flat handle, slightly
37:52
rounded and that's it. And it's as far as skins and
37:59
things like that. I like the wood.
38:01
I like seeing the grain of the wood.
38:03
Yeah. What are your tools that you're
38:04
using most often? Draw knife.
38:08
It typical everyone uses draw knife, scrapers, rasp, Farrier's
38:17
rat. Typically I found that I can
38:22
use. I have a couple smaller drawn
38:23
knives that I like to use in the same way as I would use a
38:26
scraper, pulling them towards myself with the bevel facing
38:30
away. I get a really nice peel of wood
38:36
off of that off of the top, similar to what a card scraper
38:39
does, but maybe just a little bit thicker.
38:41
And what's what are you working on right now in your workshop?
38:44
Do you have any bows on the go? So I do, I have a, it's a short
38:47
one, it's a hopcorn beam. It's about 61 inches long.
38:56
I'm probably, I'm going to try a little bit of snap shooting.
38:59
I want to see what that's like. So I'll probably make it like a
39:02
22 or 23 inch draw. That's what I'm working on right
39:08
now. And there I have a gentleman who
39:10
I'm friends with who's working on a Hickory bow.
39:13
It's about half finished. And then I'm preparing one for a
39:19
friend of mine. His son wanted to do a high
39:22
school project, so he wants to come and build a bow.
39:25
So I'm getting that. That stayed ready for him.
39:28
What's your preferred drawaway when you have 1?
39:31
So if I'm hunting, if I'm hunting deer, I like 60 lbs.
39:36
I have a little bow that I used for rabbit this last fall that I
39:40
enjoyed. It's 42 lbs.
39:44
It's a real short elbow that I made.
39:47
I think for just regular target shooting, 50 lbs feels good.
39:53
I don't like it too light because I don't feel like I'm
39:57
able to find my anchor point as well if I don't have the weight
40:00
there. And of course I don't want it
40:03
too heavy because then I just don't have control over it.
40:05
And then Speaking of, you talked about you want to master it.
40:08
Is there something right now in the bow carving realm that just
40:13
has you either perplexed or frequently challenged?
40:17
Something that you're trying to dial in, I think.
40:19
Following. The snaky grain, because
40:23
everyone, I think when people start talking about snaky grain
40:25
building bows, Osage is the one that pops into everyone's head.
40:29
They see the big WAVY lines. But I found that I get it in
40:35
Hickory actually a lot in Hickory.
40:38
Hickory, you know, I think I always thought it was just this
40:41
really straight grained wood, but I'm finding some of it where
40:44
it's it looks like something that you would see someone make
40:50
an Osage bow from. So I started using the stencil
40:55
that has different size circles on it.
40:58
So I'll use that to you to keep maybe a 2 inch A2 inch profile
41:06
going up a sneaky limb. That way I can follow the grain
41:10
as it goes, and then I'll draw the circles and then I'll just
41:13
run a straight edge from the outer part of the circles up and
41:18
around. And I think like I'm kind of
41:21
practicing with. That, and are there any styles
41:24
from the past, any historical bows that you'd like to
41:27
replicate, or are you just making bows as what what feels
41:31
right to you? I don't know that there's
41:33
anything that I'm necessarily trying to replicate.
41:38
A bow that I made last year that I did shoot a deer with.
41:44
I didn't replicate it, but I had seen pictures of the Sudbury
41:48
bow. It was Native American bow that
41:51
was found. I think it was found on the East
41:53
Coast but. Yeah, Sudbury, MA.
41:57
Yes. So whenever I had built that
41:59
bow, I'd seen pictures and it's kind of wide, not not
42:05
necessarily leaf shaped as much as some of the West Coast bows
42:09
are. It's definitely a wide limb
42:11
coming out of the fades and then it narrows it to knocks a little
42:15
bit. And it was a shorter bow.
42:17
It ended up that was a short one actually that was 57 inches, but
42:22
I managed to get a 26 inch draw out of it.
42:25
That was an 80 LB. That was 80.
42:27
Pounds So right after we visited with you last year, we went to
42:31
Maryland and we visited with a guy named Roy Brown, who's an
42:34
archaeologist, and he had studied the Sudbury bow and he
42:38
wanted to try to replicate it using basically the same tools
42:42
and styles. It would have been done just
42:43
looking at my notes because I posted it with him on my
42:46
Instagram. 1660 is when the bow was.
42:53
So he basically made all his own tools to chop down the tree.
42:57
So he chopped down the tree with handmade axes and then he used
43:00
all those. He made some like scrapers from
43:02
different types of, of stone and chopped down a Hickory tree that
43:08
would have been similar in size to what was used for the
43:11
original bow. And then he did this whole
43:13
Sudbury bow entirely and using these hand tools that he had
43:16
created. And it was pretty cool.
43:17
And then he, he travels around to different schools and he
43:20
brings the bow and he teaches students about the history of it
43:23
and whatnot. And so I went with my daughter
43:26
and son and we visited them, saw the tools that he used, saw the
43:29
bow. We actually got to shoot the
43:31
bow, which I felt really I didn't.
43:34
I actually didn't want to shoot it because I didn't want to
43:36
break this bow that he had spent so much time carving and that he
43:40
uses to go around to to teach children about it, but shot the
43:45
bow. It was a fairly lightweight bow,
43:46
but still had shot well. It's pretty cool.
43:48
I didn't know anything about the Sudbury bow until then.
43:50
But very, very interesting mission to go out and try to
43:54
create all of your own tools, to build a bow with tools the way
43:59
it would have been built 400 years ago.
44:02
It's really cool. I couldn't even imagine, you
44:03
know, it's it takes long enough to do it with just the hand
44:08
tools that we have now a modern day, you know.
44:10
But surprisingly, he said it. He said it only took him 40-2
44:14
hours from chopping the tree down to a completed bow.
44:17
I don't know if that took. I think he he took more time to
44:21
make the tools. But that was from chopping it
44:23
down to actually having a finished bow.
44:25
No, it was not like a highly refined and polished bow.
44:28
It's it was not sanded with sandpaper or anything.
44:31
It was done right. It would have been done 400
44:33
years ago. So it didn't have the finishing
44:35
details of a bow that you would make today, which we all know
44:38
can take hours and hours. But still, yeah, I was impressed
44:41
by how little time it. That's incredible.
44:44
And throughout history, I mean, people depended on these things
44:49
to survive, whether it was just for food or it was protection or
44:54
warfare, whatever it was, they I can't imagine they were
44:57
spending. It would make no sense.
44:59
It would be practical to spend all this time in refining it and
45:04
sanding it. And they needed something that
45:08
was going to work for that moment, and they figured it out,
45:11
and their lives were depending on it.
45:13
So those bows built like that. I mean, you can only imagine
45:18
they had to rival anything now made by hand.
45:20
They would have to, in my mind, because they were depending on
45:24
it to survive. Yeah, but I don't remember who
45:27
I've had this conversation with, but part of the what I remember
45:32
anyway is that the bows and and the weapons in general were not
45:36
as important because as you said, they they could be like
45:40
they had to be able to make them quickly and they would often get
45:44
damaged or stolen and warfare or whatever it might be.
45:47
And so they were masters it and making these.
45:49
And so maybe something like the Sudbury bow, it was to that.
45:53
I know for like for me, when I make a bow, I cherish it.
45:57
It's like this is like this is, I love this thing.
45:59
I want to, but I think in the past, some of them were less
46:02
cherished. And I've heard this too.
46:04
And like African tribes, like they can just make bows very
46:06
quickly and they don't make them for longevity.
46:09
They make them for that particular reason that they have
46:12
immediately in front of them. Yeah, and that absolutely makes
46:15
sense. Yeah, where can listeners find
46:18
out more about you and find out about your workshop and check
46:21
out your bows, your creation? So Instagram and Facebook, it's
46:27
self bows at Waters Edge. The Lodge at Waters Edge also
46:32
has its own site on Facebook and Instagram.
46:37
We also have a website, the Lodge at Waters Edge where
46:40
there's a link to the self bows for signups or anything like
46:45
that. Awesome.
46:46
And what? When did you say your upcoming
46:49
workshop is in September? What's the day?
46:51
The weekend of September 11th, OK.
46:53
Great. Awesome.
46:55
I will put all of those links in the show notes.
46:58
I appreciate you reconnecting with me again and I really
47:01
appreciate you and your girlfriend inviting us to the
47:04
lodge last summer. That was it was quite an
47:07
experience and it was such a beautiful place that you have
47:09
and being able to walk through your land and see all the the
47:12
trees that will one day maybe provide you some wood for making
47:16
your beautiful bows. It's really cool what you've
47:19
created there. We made homemade Maple syrup
47:21
this past but we'll just last month, first time we ever did it
47:27
walked up on the property. I already knew where the sugar
47:30
maples were. Tapped 10 trees and we ended up
47:32
with a couple gallons of Maple syrup, so it was kind of neat.
47:36
Wow, that must taste amazing. It, it was and it's, it's worth
47:39
the work. It's to do something like that.
47:43
And yeah. How much did that boiled down
47:46
to? What was your your gross yield
47:49
from tapping it down to what you actually finished up with?
47:52
Maple syrup. So we ended up with exactly a 40
47:55
to 1 ratio. So it was 40 gallons of Maple
47:58
water to 1 gallon of finished syrup.
48:02
But it was interesting because we knew that was the ratio we
48:05
were looking for and if we had maybe tapped a couple of wrong
48:09
trees, we weren't going to get that ratio because the sugar
48:12
content is different. So we feel confident we got all
48:15
sugar and Maple. You can use any type of Maple.
48:17
Tree awesome. It's such a beautiful spot you
48:21
have and it really, it's like, that's an understatement.
48:23
It's so unique and I grew up in Maryland, Western Maryland, so I
48:27
wasn't too far from where you are, like 3 hours South maybe.
48:32
And it's such a beautiful part of the world and where you guys
48:34
are. It just feels like for me, I
48:36
felt like going back to, I used to run cross country a lot and I
48:39
would go to state parks and run through the forest and that's
48:42
what your property feels like. It just feels like this
48:44
beautifully preserved State Park and you have your great lodge
48:47
and right on the Creek, which to me is a river.
48:50
It's it's quite sizable, but what a beautiful spot.
48:55
I appreciate it. Definitely worth it for anyone
48:57
who who wants to learn to carve Boas.
48:59
It's a good place to go and I think you'd be a great teacher
49:02
for anyone. So hopefully you get some sign
49:03
ups for September. I appreciate.
49:05
That, and if you're ever up this way again, we definitely want to
49:08
host you. Well, thank you, Jeremy.
49:09
That would be great. Great.
49:11
Well, thank you for doing this and let's stay in touch.
49:13
Absolutely. Thank you.
49:24
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