Latest / Salish Wolf / #95 Gerhard Wiesler on Project Quiver

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#95 Gerhard Wiesler on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

• 0:06
  Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
• 0:09
  the globe to document the artistry and spirit of the
• 0:11
  world's finest traditional bowyers.
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  I'm Todd and Ella is my daughter.
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  Together we've traveled to the workshops of master bowyers,
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  carving bows under their guidance, photographing their
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  work in extraordinary detail, and preserving the stories
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  behind one of humanity's oldest crafts.
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  The result is Quiver, the art of Life Through Bow Craft, a
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  photographic and narrative exploration of traditional bow
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  carving, this podcast shares stories and experiences of the
• 0:36
  remarkable individuals who are carrying forward the enduring
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  legacy of the bow and arrow. The book is Quiver.
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  The journey is Project Quipper. Welcome to the Salish Wolf
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  podcast. Thanks Gerhardt for meeting with
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  me today. Your pronunciation of my name is
• 0:54
  fantastic. Excellent.
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  I was going to be one of my first questions.
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  So usually when I'm travelling English speaking countries I
• 1:02
  call myself Gary because Gerhardt is a really hard name
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  for native speakers to pronounce.
• 1:09
  Oh, really? Yeah, it is.
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  And what is your last name? Well, I have what's what's is it
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  a maiden name in when you're a male too?
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  I guess so, yeah, yeah. Because funnily enough in German
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  there's also like it only applies to women.
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  So I was Kratukwil born, which is a Czech name.
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  But when I'm married I took on the name of my wife Wiesler.
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  So it's Gerhat Wiesler, and by now I'm after after 27 years,
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  I'm pretty used to it. That's what I was going to ask.
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  How long have you been married? That's a long time.
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  For a long time. Yes, good for.
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  You it is, yes. Are you from the Czech Republic?
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  No. But like it was the Austrian
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  Hungarian monarchy like 100 years back, more than 100 years
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  by now. So there were a lot of migration
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  all through the Empire and Vienna was kind of the melting
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  pot, the capital of the Empire. So almost anyone in in Austria
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  has like ancestors from the Czech Republic or Hungary or
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  Poland or Italy. Like it's, it's an, it's a
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  mixture. Got it.
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  And where are you in Austria? So at the moment we're living in
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  Syria, which is in the southern part of Austria.
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  But we originally we lived in Vienna.
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  So I met my wife in Vienna. We lived in Vienna for the 1st
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  30 years, then we went on a round the world trip for 1 1/2
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  years and after the trip we decided to come back to Austria
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  for family reasons. But we didn't want to go back to
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  the big city so we were looking for a property on the
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  countryside and in the end we decided on stereo.
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  So now we have a 200 year old farmhouse with a property of
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  roughly 15 acres around it, which is great for archery.
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  That's awesome. Yeah.
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  Are you close to the Italian border or the Slovenia border?
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  Yes, like a two hours drive. The ocean is a little bit
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  further away. So to get to the ocean,
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  unfortunately it's like 4 to 5 hours drive.
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  Yeah, OK. And you get a.
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  Lands up. Yeah, well, in a beautiful
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  mountainous area though, so that's, yeah, some stunning,
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  stunning views. You did a round the world trip,
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  you said. Yes.
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  How long ago was that? 18 years.
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  So this was like the change between Vienna and Styria.
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  We were OK set up in Vienna, but like on the spur of the moment
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  thing, we decided to go on a rounded world trip with our
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  kids. Wow.
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  Well initially we just bought this old camper van for like
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  €2000. So really old, really cheap and
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  our chain of thought was OK. Now we have a camper van so we
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  can go on holiday with it with the kids.
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  It's a cheap way of doing holidays, but if we're on a
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  camper van we might do it outside of the school holidays.
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  So why not skip school entirely? Homeschool our kids and make it
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  a roundabout trip and one thing led to another and like 2 years
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  2 weeks later we booked all our flights and off we went.
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  So we had our mobile home shipped to Canada from Europe.
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  So we had a cheap way of living in North America.
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  So we crossed Canada from east to West and then we stayed on
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  the West Coast going South all the way to California.
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  Like San Diego was our southernmost point of our North
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  American travel. Then we continued on to New
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  Zealand and Australia because basically we were only
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  travelling English speaking countries because in the back of
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  our minds we thought, well maybe we want to relocate, you know,
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  leave Austria. But yeah, for family reasons, in
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  the end we decided to come back to Austria.
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  So the trip was mostly in North America.
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  Well, six months of North America, New Zealand, Australia
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  and lots of Europe. Did you look?
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  Well, you should be Campus Australia as well.
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  No, no, no, no. Well, we left it in Los Angeles.
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  We kind of donated it. We had to steal our Austrian
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  license plates. So we took them off, sent them
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  home. OK, you can unregister our car.
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  And we donated the car because you couldn't basically use it.
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  It was old. It was falling apart after this
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  long travel. So we just left it in Los
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  Angeles. So I'm in the West Coast right
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  now. I'm in British Columbia on
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  Vancouver Island. Yeah, we love the place.
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  Like our two favorite places for living there was actually like
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  Vancouver, Vancouver Island and the Northern Ireland of New
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  Zealand. OK, yeah, amazing.
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  And how old were your kids when you did that trip?
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  The older one was in primary school and the younger one was
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  still in kindergarten. So homeschooling is is not that
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  common in Austria, so. It's not allowed anymore, is it?
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  Oh, Germany. In Germany it's.
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  Austria it is allowed. Austria it's OK, but they have
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  to do an exam each year and if they don't pass the exam you're
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  not allowed to do it the next year.
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  So you have to homeschool. You can't unschool.
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  What some people would like to do.
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  You have to do in a normal curriculum of the school year
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  and they have to pass the test yet.
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  OK, and what happens if you say you're just going to unschool
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  anyway? You're just going to do it your
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  own way. Well, I guess bureaucracy kicks
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  in eventually and then funny things happen.
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  I have no idea. It's amazing, this world that we
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  live in. We actually met a few German
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  families who relocated to Canada and the US because they wanted
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  to homeschool their kids. And in Germany like the police
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  comes and takes the kids away in the end from you.
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  So for them to homeschool their kids, they they went to Canada
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  for example. That's crazy.
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  That's heartbreaking to hear. And home schooling in Austria is
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  like, frowned upon really, because it's unusual and
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  something must be off with you. So either you're a religious nut
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  or something you know, or something else is just not right
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  with you. Did you do it the whole way
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  through with your kids? Yes, but with travelling, this
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  is like a decent excuse, you know, people can relate to that.
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  If you say, yeah, we were travelling the world.
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  So we homeschooled our kid. And when we moved to Styria, we
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  asked our boys, they were like 9:00 and 6:00 then do you want
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  to go on being homeschooled? And they said, Nah.
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  In a small village where we're living right now, we would be
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  immediately like the outsiders and we would be difficult to get
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  friends and like soccer practice.
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  We would be like these strange kids.
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  So actually we want to go back to school.
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  But if we would like live in a big city like Vienna, they would
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  have loved to be homeschooled. So for their age, I thought
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  that's a really deep thinking on the account.
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  Yeah, and why did you guys begin with homeschooling?
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  Because we were travelling. You were travelling.
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  Yeah, Yeah. Just made the most sense.
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  OK, Yeah. And we wanted our kids when
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  eventually, wherever we end up, to just join in the normal
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  school system again. Maybe if we would have moved to
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  Canada, for example, we would have continued to homeschool
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  them. I don't know, you know.
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  Yeah, so I was not too far away from where you are.
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  I just checked on the map to see where Steri is.
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  I was with Phil Rothhauser. My daughter and I were last
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  year. Or our project Quiver.
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  And so he's in And it looks like that's only a few hours from
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  you. What a beautiful part of the
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  world. And it's so we we loved it.
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  We loved all of our time in Austria.
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  We're also in northern Austria with Eric Strikes beer and
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  Sparrow bows. And then we we visited a friend
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  in Salzburg and we went to Innsbruck.
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  We trained pretty much through the whole country, but we didn't
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  go as Far East as Vienna, but we really enjoyed it.
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  We probably spent almost between 2:00.
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  Well, it was between two and three weeks in Austria last
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  year, so. Last.
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  Year, it was just, we were there in probably September.
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  Yeah, just a year ago, yeah. So how did you decide on on
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  actually? I thought I know all like famous
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  bow makers in Austria, but I've never heard about this guy.
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  Funny. Which one?
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  Eric Strikesbeer or. Yeah.
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  Well, we featured. There's two of them.
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  There's Phil Rockhouser. Well, it's technical.
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  Last name is Steinhauser, but he goes by Rockhouser or Rock
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  Rockhouser Archery. So he is.
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  Yeah, he's on. He's in the South in Millstadt
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  on There's A and just awesome guy, awesome Bowyer he trained
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  under. Mika Wolf, which I know, Yeah.
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  So it's in this bubble, OK. Yeah.
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  And then Eric Strikesbear of Sparrow Bows is further north in
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  the VOD Beutel region, and I think he also trained a bit
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  under Mika. He certainly knows of them, but
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  they're both incredible bowyers. Like Mika is, is kind of the
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  godfather of Boyers in Austria. Like he started 3040 years ago
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  and eventually you end up contacting him or making a mate,
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  I think 2 workshops at his place.
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  So yeah, yeah, everything goes from there.
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  Yeah, Phil did a a number of workshops with him at his place,
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  which sounds like an amazing spot.
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  Phil was saying that the the carving barn is, I think you've
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  sang us around 300 years old potentially and just a a
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  beautiful spot. So both of them are full time
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  bow making. Neither of them and neither of
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  them want to be. So Eric with Sparrow bows.
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  He is a urban designer in Vienna, so that is his his
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  weekly job and then on the weekend, his wife.
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  He and his wife hop on the train and they travel.
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  I think it's somewhere around 2 hours to their to their farm
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  home. And that is a generational home.
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  It's where Eric's mom grew up. I think it's been in the family
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  for multiple generations. The home itself is, I believe
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  like 250 years old and. He, yeah, it's ours, is only 200
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  years old. It's a beautiful spot and he has
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  this incredible workshop that he built.
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  So that's part time for him. He actually, he's been doing it
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  for quite a number of years, but now he only makes, I think he
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  said around 4 to 6 bows a year. He is, he's a, he is a historian
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  by passion and he studies all the bows and all the museums
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  around Europe. And then he makes perfect
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  replicas of those. And when I say perfect, I mean
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  he is with calipers measuring every, yeah, every square inch
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  of it to get it exactly right. So he spends a lot of time doing
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  each bow and he just does it as a, a pure passion.
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  He's incredible with it. And then Phil is in the
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  electronics sector, computer programming.
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  And so for him, bow craft was just something to help him get
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  away from the computer and do something with his hands.
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  And he's, he had the, he was at the crossroad a number of years
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  ago, whether he wanted to pursue it full time, but he decided
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  that he, he didn't want to turn it into his job.
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  It's it's his passion. So there's always the question.
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  So I call myself a professional Boyer because that's the way I
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  earn, like 90% of my money by either building ball or making
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  workshops. And the border between
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  professional amateur hobbies. Yeah, it's very fluid.
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  So in my estimates, there are probably several 100 people in
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  Austria who built wooden bows regularly.
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  Yeah, like, almost like at least there are three clubs around
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  here in the countryside. There are one or two or three
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  guys. When you need a wooden bowl, you
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  just go to your friend and say, ah, can you build me bow?
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  And he's grateful for, OK, I can build a bow again like he did
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  doing 1234 bows a year. So yeah, I wouldn't consider
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  that like being a professional, but since there is no formal
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  education to become a Boyer in Austria, but I don't think
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  anywhere in Europe. Have you ever met anyone in
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  Europe who had like a formal education in ball making?
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  I've never met anyone who has a formal education.
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  Well in Asian countries it's still a thing, you know, being
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  an apprentice at a master Boyer for I don't know, in Japan it's
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  1015 years and eventually like continue degradation.
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  Yeah, I and I don't know any bowyers, any Asian bowyers
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  necessarily. And I worked, we worked with
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  Stefan, Tim who makes the Umi bow, but he studied under Yap,
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  Copa dryer and Yap Yap studied in Japan, but I don't think he
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  did a 15 year apprenticeship. It was he.
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  Or Europeans? His pet shorts.
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  Yeah, but I know he did work with Kanjur Shabbata for quite a
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  while. They were, they're very close,
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  but and actually they still work together to this day.
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  But I just released Yap Coppadreiro's interview maybe a
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  week ago and I don't recall him saying he did 15 years of
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  apprenticeship but. Well, Asians, I think work on a
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  different timeline. I've read up, you've done some
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  martial arts, like that's the story.
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  If you join a traditional Dojo in Japan, for example, like the
• 17:09
  first one year you only sweep the grounds, you know, right,
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  watching. And maybe after one or two years
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  you're allowed to step on a tatami.
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  And it's really slow going. Like as Europeans, we are
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  impatient. We want to go.
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  I love the tradition of martial arts in Japan, whether it's the
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  combat of martial arts such as jiu jitsu or krauti or archery.
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  I I love the history behind them and how they continue to carry
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  on those traditions today when it's no longer necessary.
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  And in the rest of the world, like you said, most of us have
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  moved into kind of the fast-paced results and just want
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  to get into it. Of course I trained jiu jitsu.
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  I would have never stuck with it if my first year I was just
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  there sweeping them out. Yes.
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  And the same with archery. I don't think I would have
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  wanted to stick with archery if I didn't actually get to shoot a
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  bow. I remember years ago reading
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  Eugene Harrigold's book then in the Art of Art and, and reading
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  about his experience there. So I love it.
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  I love that tradition. It's really amazing that it's
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  still alive and well. And for me, martial arts are,
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  they've given me so much in life and my kids are in the martial
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  arts now and it's so important I teach when I teach archery in my
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  other home in Costa Rica, I'm not going to claim I teach it
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  from any sort of traditional martial arts perspective, but
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  that is what I aim to give as the experience more than
• 18:39
  anything is more of a martial arts experience.
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  So I'm teaching each person how to, for lack of better words,
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  embody the practice, connect with their breath, connect with
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  the earth, to connect with the entire process and not just be
• 18:53
  focused on the outcome of let's shoot this arrow into a
• 18:56
  bullseye. And that's, that's actually not
• 18:58
  even that's, that's the last possible outcome I focus on.
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  I'm more worried about taking them through the, the whole art
• 19:06
  of it and the embodied element of it.
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  So I think it's really important in that way.
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  I, I do think we can be far too performance based, outcome
• 19:17
  oriented in our methodologies. And there's certainly something
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  about these traditions. I'm, I'm trained in traditional
• 19:23
  Chinese medicine. That's a medicine that dates
• 19:26
  back thousands of years and the traditions are still largely
• 19:29
  carried on today. And I love that about it.
• 19:32
  It's just this timelessness. And when I'm doing an
• 19:35
  acupuncture treatment, that's all I'm doing.
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  I'm there with that patient. There's nothing else in the
• 19:41
  world going on. And I might sit there checking
• 19:44
  their pulses for 5 minutes or I might be there for 20 minutes,
• 19:48
  depending on what information I'm getting or, or what the
• 19:51
  situation is. And I just, I love that, that
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  history. So I think that's why I'm drawn
• 19:56
  to martial arts as well. It's because they do have such a
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  a history and it's it brings us back into our body and so much
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  of what we do is out of our body these days.
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  Yes, so I met my wife at aikido practice.
• 20:09
  So definitely changed my life. Sure.
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  I did. And just just this story about
• 20:16
  like South Korea, I'm not really sure if it's true or not.
• 20:19
  Like if you start archery in South Korea as a little kid,
• 20:21
  like the first year, you're not supposed to shoot an arrow at
• 20:25
  all. You know, just practicing your
• 20:28
  form. And after maybe a year, you're
• 20:31
  allowed to shoot your first arrow.
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  That's at least the story I heard.
• 20:36
  Well, considering their success in the Olympic archery field,
• 20:41
  there might be something to it. I don't know, but no European
• 20:46
  kids, or at least none I know of, would take up with that.
• 20:52
  You know, just OK, I want to start archery.
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  Yes. Now come and practice the
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  movements for a year before you're allowed to shoot the
• 21:01
  first error. It's just so.
• 21:05
  Interestingly, that is almost how archery came into my life
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  and my awareness. And it was through my regular
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  daily practice of Tai chi, which is ancient Chinese martial art.
• 21:17
  And so for years, I was going through an archery form without
• 21:22
  ever holding a bow. Yeah.
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  And then I don't know if it happened overnight or if it was
• 21:29
  a a slow progression, but at some point I realized I could
• 21:34
  add a bow to this. Yes.
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  And so it. Was the emotions, anyway.
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  It was literally years of going through those motions, day after
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  day after day that I realized, yeah, I think I should I should
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  take this to the next level and add a bow.
• 21:48
  So in a way, I guess that is how my archery started out.
• 21:52
  Well, my beginning were was a bit more mundane.
• 21:56
  I watched Rambo 2IN cinema. You know the scene where he's
• 22:02
  shooting the the chopper with exploding arrow?
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  This looked me like I bought a a compound bow immediately and
• 22:12
  this was my the start of my Algeria.
• 22:17
  Awesome, now have you shot any flaming arrows out of a compound
• 22:20
  bow or? Any arrows exploding arrows in
• 22:23
  there done that. Taken projectiles out of the
• 22:27
  sky. Actually, flaming arrows are not
• 22:31
  that easy, so I had to do quite a bit of tinkering for a few
• 22:36
  years. I made a New Year's Eve workshop
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  where we started in the evening on of the 31st of December and
• 22:47
  the workshop ended at around midnight.
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  And then we were doing archery fireworks, you know, shooting
• 22:56
  flaming arrows into the night sky when all the fireworks in
• 22:59
  Austria are going off around midnight.
• 23:03
  So I had to tinker a bit to get them going and to be safe not
• 23:08
  starting a fire anywhere on my property.
• 23:11
  So it was fun. Were you shooting in the water
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  or no? No, actually the best thing for
• 23:19
  just for the optics is steel wool.
• 23:23
  You know, for which you're using for for sanding like very fine
• 23:28
  steel wool. If you use like a battery to
• 23:34
  ignite, ignite it so it is very bright as long as it's flying
• 23:41
  because of the of the the air passing through it and as soon
• 23:45
  as the arrow lands in the grass it immediately stops.
• 23:49
  OK. So that worked for the optics.
• 23:52
  Very well, that's the hope anyway.
• 23:55
  It worked for it stops. And then I was doing like, we
• 23:59
  have like bonfires Easter and Midsummer.
• 24:05
  So I was igniting the bonfires with fire arrows for a few years
• 24:12
  and with the help of some gasoline to be honest.
• 24:18
  How far away were you from the fire?
• 24:19
  Well, 2030 meters. Not 100 meters of something, but
• 24:27
  it was fun. Quite an explosive start into
• 24:30
  archery. How long ago was that?
• 24:33
  I don't remember when Rambo 2 came out.
• 24:36
  Well this was like in my teens, but I was living in Vienna in a
• 24:41
  flat so there was really no place to shoot the bow in a
• 24:47
  normal archery club at that time.
• 24:49
  This was mainly Olympic archery. They didn't like any compound
• 24:54
  bows so I was not shooting a lot on the countryside at my parents
• 25:00
  place sometimes. But eventually I stopped and
• 25:03
  when I was was cash strapped as a student unfortunately I sold
• 25:09
  this. Really nice.
• 25:11
  I think it was a bare bowl with wooden limbs even there was some
• 25:17
  wood still in the lens of a compound bowl.
• 25:19
  And the lead off was not a lot. So it was like a £50 bowl and I
• 25:27
  had like 35 to 40 lbs on my fingers, so not comparable to a
• 25:32
  more than compound bowl. So I sold that one.
• 25:34
  And when we like 18 years ago moved to the countryside to
• 25:38
  Styria, like I immediately started archery again.
• 25:41
  With 15 acres there's so much space to shoot and I was doing
• 25:48
  that for a few years and then I participated in a bow making
• 25:53
  workshop with a German bow maker and my first self-made wooden
• 26:03
  bow was a complete and utterly failure.
• 26:09
  So I think there were 5 or 6 people and there everyone else
• 26:14
  had this nice good looking bow shooting well and mine had a
• 26:19
  huge weakness in the limb and this really pissed me off.
• 26:25
  So when the workshop ended I I went to the the guy who made the
• 26:28
  workshop and said can I have all your staves you still have?
• 26:31
  There were like 5 or 6 of them. I bought them all.
• 26:34
  And when I came back home, I immediately started on my second
• 26:40
  bow, which was better and better.
• 26:42
  And it's kind of started with like, yeah, a failure.
• 26:50
  And, and, and nowadays I'm thinking maybe if my first bowl
• 26:55
  would have been a success, I've never would have become a bow
• 26:59
  maker, a professional. Yeah.
• 27:00
  You know, I've heard, I've heard other bowlers say that as well.
• 27:03
  Really. Yeah.
• 27:04
  It's funny. OK.
• 27:06
  Yeah, I'm trying to remember who someone has a similar genesis
• 27:09
  story and they their first bill was just terrible.
• 27:12
  And then? Humiliation.
• 27:17
  And you had a teacher, too, so that's really going above and
• 27:20
  beyond. Yeah, I have people in my
• 27:22
  workshops who said, yeah, I've built like 345 bills, they're
• 27:26
  all breaking, and now I want to get a serious advice.
• 27:30
  I can understand that, but like with a professional instructor
• 27:35
  still ending up with something like that, it was I guess it was
• 27:40
  fate. No, it had a weak limb.
• 27:45
  But did it break or did it? Actually show, yeah, like it
• 27:49
  was, it had a huge weakness in one limb and eventually I burnt
• 27:53
  it, destroying all evidence. And I kind of make a habit, you
• 28:03
  know, I'm, I'm only shooting wooden bows, like usually for
• 28:06
  one to two years. And when they're kind of
• 28:09
  finished, when their draw weight drops too much, I always burn
• 28:14
  them. It's like a ritual.
• 28:16
  It's a ritual for me. Yeah.
• 28:19
  And I, I think that's, that's a nice way of, of ending a goal.
• 28:26
  Well, your, your archery career began with fire.
• 28:28
  And so I guess you're both should end with fire, yes.
• 28:34
  So you are making wooden bows still today?
• 28:39
  Are you still, Before we go deep into that, are you still
• 28:43
  shooting compound bows as well? No, no, no, no.
• 28:46
  OK. I never touched a compound bow
• 28:49
  for the last 30 years, only since I'm starting an archery
• 28:55
  club at my village. I bought 2 basic ones for the
• 28:59
  people to try it out. So especially young boys or like
• 29:04
  teens, they're kind of fascinated by this modern stuff.
• 29:09
  It's not really my thing, but I want to give them the
• 29:12
  opportunity to at least try it out.
• 29:15
  And if it's their thing, I'm not judging it.
• 29:17
  Yeah, if it's their path of, of shooting compound pose, I'm fine
• 29:23
  with that. But yeah, not for you.
• 29:27
  It's not my thing so. It's not for me either.
• 29:30
  I've never shot 1. I held one once, OK, and I and I
• 29:34
  passed it right back to the guy who owned it.
• 29:35
  And I was like, Nope, that doesn't feel like what I went.
• 29:39
  This was back when I had made the decision for my the
• 29:42
  realization during my Tai chi practice that I wanted to get a
• 29:45
  bow and I knew nothing about archery.
• 29:47
  Nothing. Other than.
• 29:49
  You shoot an arrow through the air.
• 29:50
  And so at that time, I, I had a friend who was living on my farm
• 29:55
  and he was in the Navy. And so he had a compound bow and
• 29:59
  he's like, I'll show you my bow. And he brought it to me and I he
• 30:02
  on buckled the case and pulled out this state-of-the-art thing
• 30:06
  and handed it to me. And I immediately handed it
• 30:09
  right back to him like, Nope, that's not what I'm looking for.
• 30:13
  So it was a very good tool for me because I, I didn't know
• 30:15
  anything about archery. And so once I got that, I
• 30:18
  realized that I definitely don't want something modern, which
• 30:22
  then sent me on a search for a what I now know to be a
• 30:25
  primitive self bow. At the time I didn't have, I
• 30:27
  didn't even have the knowledge of what that was.
• 30:29
  But. Yeah, I'm wondering if you'll
• 30:33
  take a modern compound bow and put it in the hands of an
• 30:37
  African bushman, you know, still bow hunting.
• 30:40
  Would he even recognize it for what it is without telling him?
• 30:44
  I I don't think so. He wouldn't recognize it as a
• 30:47
  bow per SE. It's just a strange contraption
• 30:52
  kind of thing. It is.
• 30:54
  To me it is, yeah. So tell me a bit about your
• 31:01
  journey then into where you are now.
• 31:05
  Like you're carving bows pretty much as you said for a living.
• 31:08
  You teach a lot of workshops. It looks like from what I've
• 31:11
  seen from your website, you just have such a beautiful place,
• 31:14
  beautiful home, beautiful workshop.
• 31:16
  So. So here at my place, everything
• 31:19
  is set up for for archery. And so the first thing is I only
• 31:27
  build a wooden bowl out of one piece of wood.
• 31:30
  So I'm only making self bows. I dabbled a little bit into
• 31:35
  like, yeah, making composite bows, but it was not really my
• 31:41
  thing. And I early on realized in my
• 31:47
  journey that building bows to sell them, especially self bows,
• 31:54
  won't make me enough money to live on.
• 31:57
  So the workshops are probably 90% of my income and all the
• 32:06
  rest is only 10%. So I'm doing lots and lots of
• 32:11
  workshops. Like I would guess by now after
• 32:16
  10 years of doing it professionally, there have been
• 32:19
  several thousand peoples at my workshop by now.
• 32:23
  Yeah. And I'm only selling a few bows
• 32:29
  a year. The other thing with selling a
• 32:34
  wooden bow, especially to people you don't really know is
• 32:39
  consumer rights in Europe are pretty strict and they they have
• 32:43
  a two year warranty on it. So if someone can't handle the
• 32:49
  specifics of a self bow as you know, probably yourself, for
• 32:53
  example dry firing it and the bow breaks, I'm still obliged to
• 33:00
  either give him the money back or to build him another bow.
• 33:03
  Kind of. And there's no way around that.
• 33:07
  No, if he like you can like let them underwrite a contract.
• 33:12
  But it's it's not legal anyway. Consumer rights are so strong
• 33:19
  you have two year warranty if you produce something.
• 33:22
  There's no way around it, even for a special product like it
• 33:26
  wouldn't bow. So I'm sometimes wondering how
• 33:29
  other bow makers in Austria are doing it.
• 33:32
  Just hoping for the best but mishaps happen.
• 33:36
  I've seen in my time at tournaments or even at my place
• 33:41
  a lot of boats breaking so I'm wondering how to get around it.
• 33:47
  What if you sold it as art and that was not, no seriously,
• 33:52
  something that was not actually meant to be functional?
• 33:54
  It could function as a bow, but people are buying it as a work
• 33:58
  of art, and if they chose to use it as a bow, well, that's not
• 34:01
  the intended purpose. So the onus.
• 34:03
  Is on them? I'm not sure I'm.
• 34:05
  Telling you I I don't like rules so I'm always good at finding
• 34:09
  ways around rules so. So the way around is, is on the
• 34:14
  one hand, making workshops because if people build them
• 34:16
  themselves, you know, there's no warranty.
• 34:20
  And the other thing is I'm only selling bows, like finished bows
• 34:24
  I made myself to people I know basically.
• 34:27
  OK, And what if you sold an unfinished bow, like you didn't
• 34:31
  put on a final coat of oil or you didn't?
• 34:35
  That's what would would that then alleviate you of the
• 34:38
  responsibility the other person who bought it has to do some of
• 34:43
  the building of it? To be honest, I'm perfectly fine
• 34:46
  where I'm at. I really enjoy my workshops.
• 34:50
  Yeah, because like all the people that are coming to me to
• 34:55
  build the boat, they are great. They're so interesting.
• 34:57
  We have so many interesting conversations, Of course,
• 35:01
  spending time together. I just love it.
• 35:07
  You know, there's there's no need to go into bow making big
• 35:11
  time. Well, it's also from, from what
• 35:14
  I know from all the Bowers we've been tributed can be, it's very
• 35:17
  stressful too, especially if you're making custom bows and
• 35:21
  you're trying to meet a specific draw weight and draw length and
• 35:25
  your customer wants certain features on it.
• 35:29
  I know a lot of bowyers have actually moved away from making
• 35:32
  custom bows for that reason. It's just.
• 35:34
  It's kind of. Stressful so workshop sound
• 35:36
  great and. Yeah, go on.
• 35:41
  I was. Just going to say it sounds like
• 35:42
  you have a very good setup going.
• 35:43
  I'd like to hear more about it. And in my experience, going back
• 35:47
  to the to this theme, there are two kinds of bowyers.
• 35:52
  There are the ones who specialize in one type of bow
• 35:57
  and usually with one type of wood, for example, only building
• 36:02
  or such flat bows, which is very popular to build and for the
• 36:08
  customers. And that's not really my thing.
• 36:12
  I want to experiment. So I'm building different bows
• 36:16
  all the time. So the depth of my knowledge is
• 36:21
  probably not as big in a specific kind of bow.
• 36:26
  So I'm more like a check of all trades with ball making, you
• 36:31
  know, always experimenting, always trying out new designs,
• 36:35
  new things, new bow boards. I'm always in search of of
• 36:40
  interesting new bow boards trying it out.
• 36:43
  So maybe if you're specializing on one type of bow and you'll
• 36:49
  get really good at it, this kind of alleviates the stress of
• 36:55
  getting it right. I don't know.
• 36:57
  And with your experimentation, are you trying to also and well,
• 37:03
  what are you trying to enhance? Is it the beauty of the bow?
• 37:06
  Is it the performance of the bow?
• 37:08
  Is it both? Again, there are like two types
• 37:12
  of boys, the ones that shoot a lot like myself, and there are
• 37:17
  also like the ones who love to build, but they're not really
• 37:22
  shooting a lot. So for me it's like the comfort
• 37:26
  to performance, the looks of it. We talked about the Japanese
• 37:32
  Yumi bows like before. In my opinion, it's not a very
• 37:39
  efficient design. To be honest, I don't know if
• 37:43
  you agree or not. Have you ever shot a Yumi bow?
• 37:46
  I made a Yumi bow but I still haven't shot it because I don't
• 37:48
  have an arrow. You made it traditional, but one
• 37:54
  with all the bamboo flew together.
• 37:56
  Yeah, I made one with Stefan Tim last year at his home in in the
• 38:00
  Netherlands and it we, I was only there for less than a week.
• 38:06
  So it takes longer than that to fully complete a you me.
• 38:09
  And so while the while everything was setting and
• 38:12
  drying for the two weeks, once you string it up, I was already
• 38:17
  gone. So then he shipped it to my farm
• 38:20
  in Canada and I did all the finishing touches on it, but I
• 38:24
  didn't have an arrow. I still don't have a 38 inch
• 38:27
  arrow, so I've never shot it and I've always strung it once or
• 38:31
  twice to take photos for the book.
• 38:32
  The thing intimidates me. It's very different from all the
• 38:37
  other bows that I made. Not to put it down or anything,
• 38:40
  but like the two things that come to my mind, it's it's a bit
• 38:43
  too long to be really efficient on the one hand.
• 38:46
  And I've I've built a lot of asymmetrical bows, like a
• 38:51
  symmetrical bow usually works better than being asymmetric,
• 38:55
  you know, with different so. But I'm a big believer that the
• 39:01
  Japanese, they know what they're doing and for whatever reasons
• 39:06
  they have to continue to make that bow today.
• 39:08
  I'm I'm sure that there's some very valid ones.
• 39:10
  So I can't say well. They're not in search of shot
• 39:13
  it. Yeah, they're not.
• 39:15
  Maybe not in search of efficiency, which is perfectly
• 39:18
  fine, but I'm usually also like measuring the bows I make myself
• 39:24
  like with the chronometer. So like, yeah, that's, that's a
• 39:30
  thing for me. I want to have a fast bow and I
• 39:35
  want to have a very comfortable bowl, you know, not a lot of
• 39:38
  handshake. I.
• 39:40
  Wonder if there's something to it.
• 39:42
  Based on I think Stefan, when I was interviewing him, I think he
• 39:48
  he mentions that people would expect it to be more awkward to
• 39:52
  shoot than what it is what it is.
• 39:53
  But I think he spoke of the resonance of shooting bow and
• 39:57
  how it how it's like a finely tuned musical instrument.
• 40:00
  And that makes sense to me, especially how they continue to
• 40:05
  practice it today as a very. As a martial art with a specific
• 40:13
  ceremony around it. And so I can imagine that that
• 40:16
  resonance of each bow has an important role in that, in that
• 40:22
  how it's still a cultural icon. What amazes me in your story of
• 40:27
  of building your own Yumi bow, usually like shooting the bow at
• 40:32
  my workshops is such an important part of building a
• 40:35
  bow. Nobody leaves the workshop with
• 40:40
  less than 50 to 100 shots to my boat.
• 40:43
  You know, like after finishing the tilling process, I want the
• 40:50
  people at to at least make 50 shots with their new bows so we
• 40:55
  can fine tune it. Most of the guys, at least in my
• 40:59
  experience, they start off with the bow that's too strong for
• 41:04
  them and I would guess even like half of them leave my workshop
• 41:12
  with a bow. That's too strong.
• 41:13
  Slightly too strong for them. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:17
  Like, yeah, it's just a thing with with the guys, you know,
• 41:22
  right. Yeah, and that was the only of
• 41:24
  the 14 bow years we visited. That was the only bow that I
• 41:28
  made that I didn't shoot when I actually finished it.
• 41:32
  And at the time too, Stefan didn't have any completed Yumi
• 41:37
  bows in his home or workshop because he sells them
• 41:40
  constantly. And so when my daughter and I
• 41:42
  showed up to take photos of his collection of bows, we we
• 41:47
  immediately ran into a hiccup and he's like, I don't have them
• 41:50
  there. And so he had two nearly
• 41:54
  completed Yumi's that over the four days we were there, he
• 41:57
  finished, but we just didn't have a chance to shoot any of
• 42:01
  them. So we did not shoot the Yummies.
• 42:05
  But anyway, so. When I'm putting on a bamboo
• 42:10
  backing on a bow because like there's a defect in the bow or
• 42:13
  whatever reason for it, I'm always using the Japanese method
• 42:18
  with the rope slung around the limbs and then using the bamboo
• 42:22
  wedges. I think that works really great.
• 42:25
  Yeah, and it's so beautiful too. Some of our favorite photos in
• 42:28
  the book are the bamboo wedges it looks.
• 42:30
  Amazing. It does, yeah.
• 42:33
  It's like some ancient dinosaur or somewhere.
• 42:35
  I guess all dinosaurs are ancient.
• 42:37
  But yeah, it's it's some crazy creature.
• 42:40
  And it's a very versatile technique because otherwise you
• 42:43
  have to build a form for gluing it together and you only have to
• 42:47
  stick with one shape of the bowl.
• 42:50
  But with their old technique you can go crazy with the shapes and
• 42:55
  each bow is unique. Yeah, it's a really fascinating
• 43:00
  way to build, very unlike any other experience I've had in bow
• 43:03
  building. That you mean certainly stands
• 43:06
  alone. So for me it's usually one piece
• 43:11
  of wood and I have one and two day workshops.
• 43:15
  The one day workshop, to be honest, is a bit hectic.
• 43:19
  That's quick. That's really quick, yes.
• 43:22
  Wow, do you have the staves somewhat shaped out in advance?
• 43:26
  Yes, yes, I have. And so in the morning when they
• 43:34
  arrive, I present the options like in the one day workshop,
• 43:38
  they can build a Longbow, a horse bowl or a recurve bowl.
• 43:42
  So basically three types of both.
• 43:45
  And in the two day workshop like the options are opening up what
• 43:49
  they can do and some of them are building the ball basically by
• 43:57
  themselves and some of them need a lot of help.
• 44:00
  So it's really. Yeah even 2 days is really fast.
• 44:04
  So in the one day if they're doing a recurve, how do they
• 44:07
  even have time to bend it and let it?
• 44:10
  Are you using steam or using heat?
• 44:12
  Heat, heat. OK.
• 44:14
  So. The next time you're coming to
• 44:16
  us to you can come to my place. I.
• 44:19
  Would love to, yeah. Experience it.
• 44:22
  Wow, that that is fast. We scheduled typically four days
• 44:26
  with each bow year for our trip because we wanted to make sure
• 44:29
  we had plenty of time to build. Well, doing photographs and
• 44:33
  everything, yeah, that's. Well, I wasn't doing any of the
• 44:35
  photos. I was just building a bow.
• 44:37
  That was my job my daughter was doing on the photographs.
• 44:39
  But even still, I think the fastest one we finished was on
• 44:43
  the morning of day three was the quickest turn around.
• 44:47
  But I also didn't have the urgency.
• 44:49
  I didn't need to finish a bow in two days.
• 44:51
  I always had at least three, three full days and often 4 full
• 44:54
  days. So but one day.
• 44:58
  As fast though I'm having a like a love hate relationship with
• 45:03
  you. Did you build any U bows?
• 45:07
  Hang on, I love hate relationship with me or with the
• 45:10
  would you? With the would you by EW.
• 45:18
  Oh my God, I have to work on my pronunciation.
• 45:22
  It's the same pronunciation. It's the same.
• 45:25
  Oh my God, the same. That's funny.
• 45:28
  I. Was like wow, what did I do?
• 45:29
  Already only known you 40 minutes and you already hate me.
• 45:35
  Yes you I I do build with you. I just finished a Pacific U
• 45:40
  English Longbow a week or so ago.
• 45:43
  A beautiful character bow. My first the first bow I bought
• 45:50
  was a Pacific U English Longbow from Jamie McDonald of Ravenbeak
• 45:54
  Nature works here on the West Coast of Canada.
• 45:57
  I then went to his workshop to carve my first ever 3 bows.
• 46:01
  So all my my first four bows were all English long bows out
• 46:05
  at U and then. And they all worked instantly.
• 46:09
  None broke. I, well, no, I still have the
• 46:14
  one that I bought from him that's probably about a decade
• 46:16
  old and I still use it to teach. It's in Costa Rica and I still
• 46:20
  use it as a teaching bow because it's, it's a little bit lighter.
• 46:22
  It's 40 lbs. And so I find that's good for
• 46:25
  when I have, it's heavier for people just learning.
• 46:30
  But if I have a stronger person, often the £40 will be a good one
• 46:33
  for them. I then made one for my wife,
• 46:38
  which still, however many eight years later, still works.
• 46:42
  I still use that for teaching. I made a a tiny one for my then
• 46:45
  six year old son which I still use to teach with.
• 46:49
  And then I made the first one I made for myself.
• 46:51
  I think it was around a 60 pounder and it was beautiful.
• 46:56
  I shot it for years and then I took it to Costa Rica and then
• 46:59
  my very first season there, one day I was shooting it and it
• 47:04
  folded over on itself. It didn't break it just like and
• 47:09
  it just folded. It was the humidity.
• 47:12
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 47:13
  And so I learned the hard way. I lost 3 or 4 bows my first year
• 47:18
  there. I lost a Hickory one.
• 47:20
  I lost 2 U bows. Now one of EU bows I I know I
• 47:25
  poorly constructed. I I made it in a very quick
• 47:28
  rush. My son and I were literally
• 47:30
  putting rawhide backing on it the night before we left for
• 47:33
  Costa Rica, and I just didn't have a good tiller on that.
• 47:36
  So I'm not surprised that one broke.
• 47:38
  But the humidity was brutal on my bows.
• 47:41
  So now I have a different way of storing them.
• 47:43
  And it also got me into making laminate bows.
• 47:46
  I started making laminate bows out of tropical hardwoods and
• 47:49
  bamboo and that's what I used predominantly in my teaching,
• 47:53
  and now I'm starting to carve bows.
• 47:55
  They're out of local wood. Lemon wood predominantly.
• 47:59
  Yeah, I heard about me once. Yeah.
• 48:01
  And never. And I built a lemon wood bow.
• 48:03
  I'm only part way through my first one because I harvested in
• 48:09
  this spring and I didn't have long to dry before I came back
• 48:14
  to Canada. So I left a few pieces to dry
• 48:17
  pretty intensely in the sun, which I know is not recommended,
• 48:20
  but I wanted to try to build 1. I only got part way through it
• 48:24
  though, so I'm not sure how it's going to work.
• 48:26
  But I have hundreds of staves that I harvested this spring and
• 48:30
  hopefully they'll they'll dry and work out and not mold and
• 48:34
  become a disaster. I haven't been there for a
• 48:36
  couple months, so I'm worried when I get back they might be a
• 48:39
  disaster. But so anyway, you sorry, go
• 48:44
  ahead. I was I was going to get back to
• 48:46
  you Wood. Yeah, I've had good luck with
• 48:49
  you for the most part. And the one that I just made,
• 48:52
  which I posted on my Instagram the other week, has three huge
• 48:55
  knotholes. It was a gift to me from Ryan
• 48:58
  Gautier, who's a bow. You're here on Vancouver Island.
• 49:02
  And I didn't think I had the skills to bring that to to life
• 49:07
  as a bow. But what it had was beautiful
• 49:10
  sapwood. All three knots were in straight
• 49:13
  line, perfectly straight line. And really for me, in that
• 49:17
  experiment, you really lived up to its reputation of if you get
• 49:21
  a good tiller, you're going to you're going to have a good bow.
• 49:24
  And despite these three big knot holes, one of which was right in
• 49:27
  the middle, I was able to to tiller a beautiful bow.
• 49:31
  And so I was really happy with it.
• 49:34
  So I've had good success with you for the bows that I carved
• 49:37
  for Project Quiver War Pacific U bows.
• 49:39
  I have not carved any out of European you though, so I I
• 49:43
  don't know. Well, as a as a boy, I'm making
• 49:48
  workshops. I kind of hate to you because
• 49:52
  I've. Heard a number of bowyers say
• 49:54
  yeah. Yeah, because people this is
• 49:56
  like, yeah, like the medieval long bow.
• 50:00
  It was made out of a few and it's such a great bow wood.
• 50:03
  In my experience the European you is just not that good.
• 50:09
  I've never had Pacific hue so I'm wondering if there is a huge
• 50:13
  difference that I get mine from Switzerland.
• 50:18
  Like everything I get around here is like basically crap.
• 50:22
  You can make like a 2025 maybe 30 LB bow out of it.
• 50:27
  Everything else is just not up to it.
• 50:30
  So I have a friend who lives in Switzerland and I buy my U from
• 50:36
  him. But even this you that's like
• 50:39
  high up the mountain growing slower.
• 50:43
  I'm not a huge fan. Yeah, so one of the people we
• 50:47
  visited with is Simon Kell in Switzerland.
• 50:51
  He loves you. He calls it the Queen of Bow
• 50:53
  Woods and he says he's married to you and he has a story about
• 50:57
  how you is, how important it is to him in his life.
• 51:00
  But I do think it's quite different than, well, not quite
• 51:02
  different. I do think it's different than
• 51:04
  Pacific yew. What I noticed is the yew trees
• 51:07
  in Europe are huge. There's some really big yew
• 51:11
  trees and the Pacific Northwest, we're lucky to find a Yew Tree
• 51:16
  that is more than just even like 20 centimeters in diameter.
• 51:24
  I mean, that's that's probably kind of the average somewhere in
• 51:26
  the 20 maybe up to 30 centimeters and then
• 51:29
  occasionally. How?
• 51:31
  How old are they with the diameter of that?
• 51:33
  They're they're probably, they're typically their third,
• 51:36
  second or third growth because most of our original forests
• 51:39
  have been destroyed and they grow them in forests of fir and
• 51:43
  cedar trees. And to give an idea, standing
• 51:48
  right, Yeah, yeah. And right beside AU tree, and
• 51:52
  these are probably about 70 or 80 years old.
• 51:55
  And right beside AU tree that is maybe a diameter of a a soccer
• 52:01
  ball or a football, as standing right beside that will be a fir
• 52:06
  tree that is like 3 meters in diameter and a cedar tree that's
• 52:13
  2 meters in diameter. And these were all grown
• 52:15
  basically at the same time. So very, very different growing
• 52:19
  wood. As far as I can tell, it's very
• 52:21
  slow growing. So the very first bow that I
• 52:24
  bought off of Jamie MacDonald, I tried to count the rings on it.
• 52:29
  And this is it's, it's like I said, it's a 40 LB English long
• 52:32
  bow. So it's not that big of a bow.
• 52:34
  And I got it 70 plus rings into it.
• 52:37
  And I just lost so crazy. Yeah.
• 52:40
  So it's a very, very dense heartwood.
• 52:42
  I know that here. So I don't know how that varies
• 52:45
  with the European you. I've never had a stave like that
• 52:49
  in my hands. OK, so.
• 52:52
  And then often the sapwood is just pristine.
• 52:56
  And I carved one with Pete Woodland of heritage bowls last
• 53:00
  year and the sapwood was just, I can't even it, it was just
• 53:04
  absolutely gorgeous. Not a mark on the whole thing of
• 53:08
  it. So.
• 53:10
  So in my experience, like I have a success rate of maybe 75 to
• 53:15
  80% when building a Uber. So one out of four or five
• 53:20
  breaks immediately, yeah. And in yeah, that's really bad.
• 53:25
  And in a workshop situation, it's like a 5050 chance.
• 53:30
  Yeah, it must be EU. So Jamie McDonald only cars bows
• 53:34
  out of out of Pacific U. He's got over 1000 staves and he
• 53:41
  his bows are absolutely beautiful in all of his
• 53:43
  workshops. That's what people are carving
• 53:45
  and I think when you have a good piece of you, it's hard to mess
• 53:48
  it up. But so I'm wondering if the
• 53:52
  shipping is prohibitively expensive or not.
• 53:56
  I don't know. It's probably it's like.
• 54:00
  Yeah, I'm not sure I knew. I knew some of the bow years
• 54:04
  that that are featured in our book.
• 54:07
  I know they they have exchanges and stays between Europe and
• 54:10
  North America. So I don't think, I don't think
• 54:12
  it's that crazy for me to ship my Finnish bows from Europe back
• 54:17
  to Canada. Typically each bow was around
• 54:23
  maybe €70 to ship and so stays. Probably going to be at least
• 54:28
  twice that, but I don't know. Well, all my old searches from
• 54:31
  the US, but usually like a few ball makers are getting
• 54:36
  together, one of them flies over, fills up a shipping
• 54:41
  container full of Osage wood, and then the whole container is
• 54:45
  shipped to Europe, which makes it less expensive.
• 54:49
  Yeah, there's there's hardly any Osage left in Europe.
• 54:52
  Like Hungary had a bit of Osage, but since it's so precious and
• 54:58
  like you get a lot of money for it, the Hungarians cut down
• 55:04
  already most of the suitable Boe wood, right?
• 55:07
  Because it's huge money for them.
• 55:09
  Yeah, yeah. And actually, interestingly
• 55:12
  enough, I was just talking with Jake Fenwick this morning,
• 55:16
  Fenwick Bose, who's on the East Coast of Canada, and he actually
• 55:20
  is getting ready to fly to Norway to do some you
• 55:23
  harvesting. That's crazy.
• 55:26
  OK. Yeah.
• 55:27
  So I don't know why he's he got an invitation to come and go to
• 55:30
  a museum and provides his expertise on the some of the
• 55:34
  bows they have in the museum. So he's going to make AU
• 55:37
  harvesting trip. Out of it, but yeah.
• 55:40
  So maybe Norway, maybe Norwegian U is worth looking into, I don't
• 55:44
  know. Yeah, high up, slow growth,
• 55:48
  short growing season, yeah, might be a thing.
• 55:53
  And it's a lot nearer than than the Pacific Northwest.
• 55:58
  So the the main woods I'm using is I'm using a lot of ash for
• 56:06
  the workshops, at least black locust with locust kind of
• 56:12
  abundant. My current tournament bow is out
• 56:16
  of black locust. I really love it.
• 56:19
  Sometimes people have a hard time with it if the tealer is
• 56:23
  not perfect, getting those Chris Ellis on the on the belly of the
• 56:29
  bow it. Makes you a better bow year
• 56:33
  though. It does, yeah.
• 56:35
  I always tell them it's a tough teacher.
• 56:39
  It's interesting to say that Nacho Marco in Spain calls it
• 56:42
  his his best teacher. Black locust has been his best
• 56:46
  teacher for that exact reason. Yeah.
• 56:49
  I'm using a lot of Osage and Hickory is also a thing, but
• 56:57
  here in Austria unfortunately you only get like a 2 by 2 inch
• 57:02
  Hickory stave. You'll never get a a piece of a
• 57:06
  tree trunk. I would love to get Hickory
• 57:10
  trees for homemaking but you only get it from from the lumber
• 57:15
  yard. Like salt to a square.
• 57:17
  Right. Which still works fine, but it's
• 57:20
  it's not as romantic. Oh my workshop participants.
• 57:26
  Here's a board. Yes.
• 57:29
  Now you're working two days on this board and then you get to
• 57:32
  end up with a stick. Yeah.
• 57:34
  It is amazing though, that you can start with something as you
• 57:38
  said, as unromantic as a board and you can still turn it within
• 57:41
  a couple days into a gorgeous bow one that one that you
• 57:46
  wouldn't know came from a board once it's finished.
• 57:48
  But yeah, it's, it's not quite the same as working for mistake,
• 57:51
  but it's, it's a good place for people to start if they don't
• 57:54
  have access. Because for me, that was a big
• 57:58
  impediment to starting out on my own bow carving.
• 58:01
  I didn't have staves that had been harvested and dried for one
• 58:05
  to seven years. That's how long Jamie and
• 58:08
  McDonald, that's his you would, you would stave season.
• 58:12
  And so I wanted something quicker.
• 58:14
  I wanted to get started. So I, I did start with some.
• 58:18
  I didn't start with what I did do some board bows.
• 58:20
  And then I was using my, I was using the lumber boards for all
• 58:23
  the laminate bows that I did. Yeah, sure.
• 58:26
  So, so Stave logistics is a huge part of my business, as you can
• 58:33
  imagine. Like I need 150 to 200 stays a
• 58:38
  year. Wow.
• 58:40
  So harvesting them myself, splitting them and storing them
• 58:46
  for a few years is basically out of the question.
• 58:48
  It's just mind boggling. I can't imagine so actually I
• 58:52
  prefer to buy already dried bullwood from different sources.
• 58:59
  Makes my life so much easier. I can concentrate on the
• 59:01
  workshops and yeah. It's it's.
• 59:06
  Just yeah, the dimension. It's just like having you.
• 59:11
  You told me about the guy who has 1000 U staves.
• 59:15
  Jamie and MacDonald. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 59:17
  I have some photos in the book of his.
• 59:21
  He's is probably the biggest collection of at least Pacific U
• 59:25
  staves in the world, but maybe U in general.
• 59:28
  And he lives in dense forests that are populated by tons of U
• 59:34
  wood. And at the same time, these are
• 59:36
  forests that are being logged at a incredible rate.
• 59:39
  They're destroying entire mountains of and so fortunately
• 59:46
  he's able to get many of them before well, he's able to get
• 59:49
  them before the logging industry destroys them because in the
• 59:52
  logging industry, yew trees are not kept as a a lumber would.
• 59:55
  They're just. They're doing clear cuts.
• 59:58
  Yes, yes, sadly, that is still what happens on Vancouver
• 1:00:03
  Island. We have an abundance of cedar
• 1:00:05
  and fir trees which are amazing lumber also some spruce, lots of
• 1:00:09
  spruce and so a lot of great lumber wood and U is not
• 1:00:14
  considered a lumber wood and especially when I told you how
• 1:00:16
  big it is compared to the. Damage it's.
• 1:00:19
  Too small, you can get a couple boards out of a Yew Tree so it's
• 1:00:24
  just cut down and left. Cut down and run over with their
• 1:00:27
  machines. Or they'll use it to make roads.
• 1:00:30
  So they literally will put it on the ground and then put the
• 1:00:33
  roads on top of it. I know.
• 1:00:36
  We. He took it.
• 1:00:38
  Jamie took us for a drive probably about 30 minutes from
• 1:00:42
  his place, maybe not even that far to visit his favorite stand
• 1:00:46
  of yew trees where he'll go with his students and they'll shoot,
• 1:00:49
  they'll stump shoot in the in the yew forest.
• 1:00:52
  And as we were pulling up to it, he's, I heard him go, oh shit,
• 1:00:56
  it was gone. The entire forest had been was
• 1:01:00
  taken down and there were just a bunch of big machines sitting
• 1:01:03
  there. And so that's what happens there
• 1:01:06
  on a an alarming rate. It's just they have probably 50
• 1:01:12
  to 100 kilometers of logging roads that extend into the
• 1:01:16
  wilderness. And it's all considered Crown
• 1:01:18
  land, which is the Government of Canada.
• 1:01:21
  And they give out huge logging contracts and that's just what
• 1:01:24
  happens. So, and that's not on, that's
• 1:01:29
  not on Vancouver Island, that's on the the West Coast of the
• 1:01:32
  mainland of Canada, just across from.
• 1:01:34
  Vancouver, I guess you don't want it in a touristy spot
• 1:01:37
  because of the looks of it so. That's they, that's, that's such
• 1:01:41
  a big industry. They do it anyway.
• 1:01:43
  Often they'll leave like 20 meters thick of trees along the
• 1:01:50
  roadways. So when you're driving, it still
• 1:01:52
  looks, it still looks like there's forest, but then you see
• 1:01:55
  the gaps in between and there's nothing.
• 1:01:57
  Nothing for miles and miles and miles.
• 1:02:01
  So one of the most magical places on our on the world trip
• 1:02:07
  where the Redwood forests. Oh, I've never been, but I want
• 1:02:10
  to go. You've never been there.
• 1:02:12
  I haven't we we wanted to go a couple years ago as a family and
• 1:02:17
  my wife started looking into accommodations because we don't
• 1:02:19
  have the RV to to drive with we Airbnbs or hotel and it was
• 1:02:25
  insane. Like. $8 at home, yeah.
• 1:02:31
  We were camping, right? These were not like the biggest
• 1:02:34
  ones, you know, but they had like a diameter of, I don't
• 1:02:38
  know, 678 meters and just just being there for a few nights.
• 1:02:44
  It was like being in Middle Earth or something, you know?
• 1:02:48
  Yeah, I can only imagine. We do still have some virgin
• 1:02:52
  forest not too far from me, about an hour and a half.
• 1:02:55
  And there are the cedar and the fir trees are are several meters
• 1:02:58
  in diameter. But I I really want to see the
• 1:03:02
  redwoods. And was it General Sherman, the
• 1:03:04
  biggest tree in the world? Yeah, that's amazing.
• 1:03:08
  Amazing. So you are having how many
• 1:03:16
  workshops are you doing? One a week.
• 1:03:18
  Several. Months.
• 1:03:19
  I can't live on one workshop a week.
• 1:03:22
  Wow, to be honest. I have 3 kids and a farm and
• 1:03:26
  everything so I'm doing probably 80 to 90 workshops a year with I
• 1:03:33
  would guess. Hopefully the IRS is not
• 1:03:37
  listening to it. 250 to 300 people a year.
• 1:03:44
  OK. Roughly in a good year, you
• 1:03:47
  know, there are ups and downs and.
• 1:03:51
  Where do your students come from mostly?
• 1:03:56
  Well, I had by now I'm living in a small village, like 2000
• 1:04:00
  people living in Puk. So I had several people from
• 1:04:04
  around here and. And the circles are just going
• 1:04:08
  outside. Yeah, last year, No, this year
• 1:04:14
  actually, I had a few people from Switzerland, like combining
• 1:04:18
  it with a normal holiday in Austria.
• 1:04:20
  I have Germans pretty often, but most of them are Austrians from
• 1:04:27
  all over the place. And the interesting thing is,
• 1:04:32
  like back in Vienna, I worked in an in marketing and advertising
• 1:04:40
  and there's always the thing going on.
• 1:04:42
  Know your target audience, You know, what's your target
• 1:04:46
  audience with the bow making workshops, it's such a diverse
• 1:04:51
  crowd. It's basically all ages, city,
• 1:04:56
  people from the countryside, lower income, higher income.
• 1:05:02
  I've never found like a common feature that's drawing people to
• 1:05:08
  building their own bow. The only thing like after a few
• 1:05:13
  years I realised, which is yeah, interesting is Austria has a lot
• 1:05:21
  of immigration from Eastern Europe, Turkey, and there are
• 1:05:28
  very little immigrants in my workshops.
• 1:05:32
  So I would guess like there are like 20% of people living in
• 1:05:37
  Austria are like immigrants, but I hardly ever have someone from
• 1:05:42
  Turkey, for example, or from Eastern Europe.
• 1:05:46
  So somehow I'm not sure why that is.
• 1:05:51
  But that's the only thing I kind of realized after a while, like
• 1:05:56
  missing people, but it's not like there are a lot of people
• 1:05:59
  from certain ways of life coming to my place.
• 1:06:03
  I wonder if it's the rich tradition of their own
• 1:06:07
  traditional bows in those countries, which is they're not
• 1:06:11
  drawn to making the bows that you're making.
• 1:06:13
  I'm doing horse bows workshop so OK.
• 1:06:15
  I don't know. Interesting.
• 1:06:17
  Turks, that's the only thing. But apart from that, they're
• 1:06:23
  from all walks of life coming to my place.
• 1:06:26
  And I never have problems with the people, you know, if you're,
• 1:06:34
  I worked in sales, for example, back in Vienna, like normal
• 1:06:38
  customers and a certain percentage of people are just
• 1:06:41
  awful, you know? Yes.
• 1:06:44
  To interact with, Yeah. I don't want to use any swear
• 1:06:48
  words because it's supposed to be family friendly.
• 1:06:52
  I never ever had that in my workshops.
• 1:06:55
  Like all the people that are coming to my place, they're
• 1:06:58
  relaxed, they're friendly, they're great.
• 1:07:02
  So that's, I feel kind of blessed to have a work like that
• 1:07:08
  where I only have like positive encounters with people and I
• 1:07:13
  don't have to argue or anything, you know, That's yeah, that's
• 1:07:18
  really amazing. Yeah, so take me through what a
• 1:07:22
  2 day workshop looks like. Where do people stay?
• 1:07:27
  What are they? How far advanced?
• 1:07:30
  Are you taking their staves when they get them, or are they
• 1:07:35
  starting from a fresh stave? Like, walk us through it.
• 1:07:38
  So we're here out in the Bond Dukes, so there is no public
• 1:07:42
  transportation. That's a little drawback.
• 1:07:45
  So everyone who comes to my place goes there by car.
• 1:07:50
  Typically it's on the weekends, like Saturday.
• 1:07:53
  Sunday, they arrive. We start at 9:00 in the morning
• 1:07:56
  on a Saturday, and depending on which kind of workshop they
• 1:08:01
  booked, I present the whole range.
• 1:08:04
  That's basically possible to build in that workshop.
• 1:08:09
  So in a more advanced workshop, they can build like Longbow, of
• 1:08:14
  course, a horse bow, recurve bowl, hybrid bowl, whatever you
• 1:08:20
  want to call it, and a flat bowl.
• 1:08:23
  So these are the basic shapes that are on offer.
• 1:08:27
  And the first step is always you choose a certain type of bowl.
• 1:08:32
  So example, if you're building a horse bowl, there's basically
• 1:08:35
  only one wood you can use to build it.
• 1:08:39
  But if you're building a flat bowl, there is a huge range of
• 1:08:44
  woods you could use. So what is the selecting?
• 1:08:47
  What is the word for the horse bar?
• 1:08:50
  I'm using Manao. Have you heard about it?
• 1:08:53
  I'm not sure what it's called in English.
• 1:08:56
  OK. It's a round thing.
• 1:09:00
  From the outside it looks like bamboo, but it's not hollow.
• 1:09:04
  It's filled with basically bold wood.
• 1:09:08
  One of the finest bold woods. Really.
• 1:09:11
  OK. And it's almost indestructible.
• 1:09:15
  Not really, but yeah it's it's very brake resistant so you can
• 1:09:21
  build a short horse bowl without breaking it.
• 1:09:25
  And where do you buy that wood? There are it comes from from
• 1:09:30
  it's a tropical wood, it comes from Asia or from America like
• 1:09:35
  Central or Southern America. And there are people in DO.
• 1:09:40
  You know how to spell it? MANAU.
• 1:09:43
  At least that's the most common name in in German.
• 1:09:47
  But it's not a German words or names, it's Have you found it?
• 1:09:53
  Yes, and I'm just trying to find.
• 1:09:56
  There an English name for it. That's what I'm looking for.
• 1:10:07
  Speaks of African culture. I'll keep looking.
• 1:10:11
  I'll find out here. So.
• 1:10:14
  So if they're choosing like a flat bow design, I have like 6-7
• 1:10:21
  or eight different bow woods and they're all have their
• 1:10:24
  advantages and disadvantages. Like Osage is a really great bow
• 1:10:29
  woods, but usually it's not very straight.
• 1:10:34
  So the bow has more character. If people choose an ash stay,
• 1:10:39
  for example, usually they're like ramrod straight.
• 1:10:44
  There are no no branching things.
• 1:10:48
  So it's kind of easier to work with.
• 1:10:51
  Hickory is fine too, but it's it's kind of hard on on the body
• 1:10:59
  because it's such a tough word. People have to work really hard
• 1:11:03
  if you're choosing Hickory. So I'm usually I'm tell them,
• 1:11:06
  OK, that's the advantage. That's a disadvantage.
• 1:11:10
  So this is a multi step process. First the bow type, then the bow
• 1:11:14
  wood and usually I have several staves where they can choose
• 1:11:19
  from. OK, so stop there.
• 1:11:22
  The manao is from Central and South America.
• 1:11:25
  Typically it's a very dense hardwood.
• 1:11:28
  It's known as Minkorsia gianensis.
• 1:11:34
  One of its common names is a Caricara, but otherwise it's
• 1:11:39
  Mana or Manu so I'm not familiar with it and it grows in Costa
• 1:11:44
  Rica so I'm going to be looking for it.
• 1:11:46
  So those staves I'm I'm buying, they have a diameter of 35 to
• 1:11:52
  40mm. OK.
• 1:11:54
  And basically you can build a horse bow up to 80 lbs.
• 1:12:00
  Wow. You can build a really strong
• 1:12:02
  horse bow. OK, I'm going to track some of
• 1:12:05
  that down. A little little Side Story.
• 1:12:08
  When I got to Costa Rica, I knew that lemon wood was a common bow
• 1:12:12
  wood and I knew it grew in Costa Rica.
• 1:12:14
  I didn't know anything about what it looked like or how to
• 1:12:17
  find it. For some reason I didn't look it
• 1:12:19
  up on maybe I did look online, but it didn't help me.
• 1:12:22
  And so I started asking some of my friends who lived there and
• 1:12:25
  one guy who knows the the trees quite well told me where I could
• 1:12:29
  go and find some and I never did.
• 1:12:31
  And then last year, I was building a bow carving workshop
• 1:12:36
  and an extension on my home, on my property.
• 1:12:40
  And my builder was there and he was asking about a few trees
• 1:12:45
  that were potentially in the way of the building site.
• 1:12:47
  And he said, do you mind if we take these down?
• 1:12:49
  And I said, no, no, I don't want any trees taken down.
• 1:12:53
  And, and I said, by the way, what is this tree?
• 1:12:56
  And his girl, his girlfriend is Costa Rican.
• 1:12:58
  And she looked at it and she was, oh, that's lemon wood.
• 1:13:02
  Yes, I cut it down. And so I turned out I had, I
• 1:13:09
  have 7 mature lemon wood trees on my small home property.
• 1:13:14
  And so on both sides of my archery range are lemon wood
• 1:13:17
  trees. And I even have a a piece of a
• 1:13:20
  swing made from a piece of driftwood and it's hanging from
• 1:13:23
  a tree that my students will sit on while I'm giving the archery
• 1:13:27
  demonstrations. And it's a lemon wood tree.
• 1:13:29
  And I had no idea that's. A good story.
• 1:13:32
  So does lemon wood. Yeah.
• 1:13:34
  Does Lemon Woods have growth rings?
• 1:13:37
  It does, yeah. I'm, I'm very, I've only been
• 1:13:42
  cutting down what I can or finding stuff that already been
• 1:13:45
  knocked down by storms. So I'm I'm not very familiar
• 1:13:50
  with it yet other than it is dense and splitting.
• 1:13:53
  It is. It is back breaking labor and
• 1:13:58
  I've split. Easier to cut it to cut it with
• 1:14:01
  a pencil or something. Yeah, but the problem is it's,
• 1:14:04
  it's a big growing tree. And so a lot of a lot of the
• 1:14:07
  logs I have are almost a meter in diameter and a oh.
• 1:14:12
  My God yeah so many post days. It is, but a 2m long section of
• 1:14:18
  that takes 2 humans to lift. It is so heavy that there's no
• 1:14:22
  way I'm going to be able to feed that through a bandsaw.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
• 1:14:27
  So I'm finding saplings now. Or what happens is the the
• 1:14:30
  branches that grow off the trunk, they're called like
• 1:14:33
  suckers in English. I'm finding a lot of suckers now
• 1:14:36
  that I can take that are around four or five centimetres, 6
• 1:14:40
  centimetres in diameter, but it is a heavy, heavy wood.
• 1:14:44
  So anyway. So actually this is yeah.
• 1:14:48
  So they decided on a boat type, they decided on a boat wood, and
• 1:14:52
  then they chose their individual bow safe.
• 1:14:55
  Usually I have a selection. If they're choosing Ash, for
• 1:14:59
  example, I present them, I don't know, four or five different
• 1:15:02
  ones, and they're all OK, kind of.
• 1:15:06
  Otherwise I wouldn't use them. But they have, yeah, they can
• 1:15:11
  choose whatever they want, basically.
• 1:15:14
  So after the selection of the stave, the next step is the
• 1:15:19
  design. What kind of draw weight do they
• 1:15:24
  want to have in the end, Roughly?
• 1:15:27
  A lot, quite. I think the majority of the
• 1:15:31
  people coming to my workshops, they are not very experienced
• 1:15:35
  but was some some are even starting out their archery
• 1:15:39
  experience with a self-made bow so they they don't have any
• 1:15:44
  other bow yet. So guessing the draw weights.
• 1:15:49
  Yeah, usually with women we end up in the 20 to 30 LB range, and
• 1:15:58
  with men it's 25 to maybe 40 lbs.
• 1:16:04
  So I'm not a huge fan of strong bows, especially if they're not
• 1:16:08
  well trained because they just can't control it.
• 1:16:13
  Yeah, that makes sense. In the end it's their decision
• 1:16:18
  when they want to stop tailoring.
• 1:16:19
  And yeah, a lot of men are stopping reducing the draw
• 1:16:27
  weight too early in my opinion, but still.
• 1:16:32
  Do you find women are generally more patient about harbors?
• 1:16:40
  Well I have a ranking of my favorite workshop participants
• 1:16:47
  to the most demanding ones though.
• 1:16:50
  So the top tier are old men. These are my favorite, like old.
• 1:16:56
  I mean like 50 plus. The next tier is young men.
• 1:17:03
  Then I have young women or I'm getting so in trouble now.
• 1:17:11
  And the the ones having most trouble are older women because
• 1:17:17
  like they never some of them never had used any hand tool in
• 1:17:23
  their life. You know, back then when when
• 1:17:26
  women went to school, they didn't have any, any workshops
• 1:17:30
  in school, like learning basic stuff, just using a saw and
• 1:17:35
  working with wood. Young women nowadays in school,
• 1:17:40
  yeah, they're doing stuff, you know, building something out of
• 1:17:43
  wood. So they have some experience.
• 1:17:46
  And yeah, so I would not call them patient, more patient
• 1:17:54
  women. Sometimes they're lacking a bit
• 1:17:59
  like self-confidence in a workshop environment.
• 1:18:03
  So I have to build them up, you know, Whereas man can be like
• 1:18:09
  overconfident, yeah. I sorry, I used to many, many
• 1:18:14
  years ago, decades ago, I used to teach water skiing and then
• 1:18:18
  when wakeboarding became a thing, I used to be a wakeboard
• 1:18:20
  instructor and for a summer I was teaching wakeboarding in
• 1:18:24
  Hawaii. And so 95% of my clients were
• 1:18:27
  Japanese. Amazing.
• 1:18:30
  It was nice. It was nice.
• 1:18:32
  And I would often have couples who would come and they would be
• 1:18:34
  in their early 20s, a man and a woman from Japan.
• 1:18:39
  And the man would always come with the bravado of I can do
• 1:18:41
  this no problem whatsoever. And they would normally go 1st
• 1:18:45
  and sure, everyone would get up and I would, I would get them
• 1:18:48
  all wakeboarding. But the men, it would normally
• 1:18:50
  take 5 or 10 times. And the women, almost everyone
• 1:18:55
  would pop up on the very first try.
• 1:18:57
  And, and the difference I found was in the they were, they
• 1:19:04
  weren't forcing it. They were just sitting back and
• 1:19:08
  allowing the boat to do the work to pull them out of the water,
• 1:19:12
  whereas men were trying to muscle through it and pull up
• 1:19:15
  and and get into. And I I think that probably
• 1:19:19
  applies to a lot of things, including bow making.
• 1:19:21
  And I can see men making more mistakes by forcing it, trying
• 1:19:26
  to like really get in there and RIP away layers where women
• 1:19:30
  maybe are will finance it more. I don't know.
• 1:19:34
  Muscling through it is right on point if you're talking about
• 1:19:38
  the archery form. So my experience with teaching
• 1:19:43
  archery, not home making archery is since women don't have such
• 1:19:49
  an excess of power like right from the beginning, their form
• 1:19:54
  usually is way way better than the man 1.
• 1:19:57
  I agree with that, yeah. Yeah, so when doing archery,
• 1:20:01
  like women immediately get all the power lines, how to align
• 1:20:06
  yourself? To get a clear shop shot and and
• 1:20:10
  man, yeah, they can be sloppy with the form because they have
• 1:20:14
  so much more upper body power. Yeah, I actually just heard
• 1:20:18
  maybe yesterday on a podcast I was listening to that in
• 1:20:22
  archery, especially instinctive or primitive archery, there's
• 1:20:26
  very little difference performance wise between men and
• 1:20:28
  women, unlike in other sports where there can be a big gap.
• 1:20:32
  And it's when you get into archery and shooting, you know,
• 1:20:35
  with, with gun shooting as well, sometimes the women will
• 1:20:38
  outperform the men. Yeah, I believe 30.
• 1:20:43
  Yeah. So where were we?
• 1:20:46
  Yeah. So, yeah, considering a design,
• 1:20:50
  you know, bow length is always an issue.
• 1:20:54
  The longer you make the bow, the more relaxed it's for me because
• 1:20:59
  the chance of breaking is less. But performance wise you don't
• 1:21:04
  want it to be too long. Like usually a shorter bow
• 1:21:10
  shoots the error faster. So there's always these
• 1:21:12
  trade-offs with bow making. They're always like trade-offs
• 1:21:17
  all the way through. So once we've decided on a
• 1:21:21
  design, they are carving out a rough shape, which usually takes
• 1:21:27
  them half a day, maybe longer. So the goal there is to have
• 1:21:36
  some band in the bow so we can start the tillering process.
• 1:21:42
  And when the people are roughing out the bow, the shape, I don't
• 1:21:47
  have to do that much. So at the beginning I talk a
• 1:21:51
  lot, introducing everything. So it's like one hour of
• 1:21:54
  non-stop talking and then people are starting with the tools
• 1:21:59
  they're working and it gets a little bit easier for me.
• 1:22:04
  But once the tillering starts, then like the stress immediately
• 1:22:09
  kicks in. Yeah, and for the tools mostly
• 1:22:13
  handles alt handles. Only hand.
• 1:22:16
  Tools so. It's a draw knife.
• 1:22:19
  Draw knife basically. I have very good rasps.
• 1:22:23
  So depending if if the mood is easy to you to work with or
• 1:22:30
  sometimes it's very splintery. Yeah, by now, after so many
• 1:22:36
  workshops, usually just by listening to the sound of the
• 1:22:40
  tools, I can tell you if people are doing it OK or not.
• 1:22:46
  Yeah. It's just one of those things,
• 1:22:49
  you know, I immediately when I hear a certain kind of noise
• 1:22:54
  make make they made with the tools, I can immediately tell,
• 1:22:59
  OK, something is off even if I'm not looking.
• 1:23:06
  Yeah, tailoring. I know some of my colleagues are
• 1:23:13
  have the opinion that you can't let the people deal at the bowl
• 1:23:18
  themselves, like the professional, so to speak,
• 1:23:24
  should do most of the work. That's not really the way I do
• 1:23:29
  it. So in a perfect workshop, I
• 1:23:34
  never ever touch the bowl of my workshop participants.
• 1:23:40
  So this would be like my ideal, you know, minimal, invasive, I
• 1:23:45
  call it like never, ever touching the boat, just telling
• 1:23:49
  them what to do. But they can't do it all
• 1:23:51
  themselves. But of course, some people, and
• 1:23:58
  they're especially it's women, they don't want to get into the
• 1:24:05
  tailoring process. They don't want to commit
• 1:24:07
  themselves to being careful looking.
• 1:24:11
  You just can tell. Yeah, I just want to have a
• 1:24:14
  finished bowl. I don't care how to get there.
• 1:24:17
  And that's perfectly fine too. You know, for some, it's the
• 1:24:20
  process of the bow making. And for a certain percentage,
• 1:24:26
  it's I just want the finished bowl to show to my friends.
• 1:24:30
  I build a bowl. I don't care how much you help
• 1:24:32
  me, that's fine too. So with some bows I have to do a
• 1:24:38
  lot of work and with others I have to do none.
• 1:24:42
  It really depends on the people and you'll get a feeling for it
• 1:24:47
  very early on what kind of type they are.
• 1:24:50
  If they're like, I want to be self-sufficient, leave me alone.
• 1:24:54
  Or if it's I need your help all the time and and clinging to me
• 1:24:59
  all the time, and you do it, you do it.
• 1:25:02
  Can you do the next round of tailoring for me?
• 1:25:04
  Yeah, sure. That's my job.
• 1:25:08
  And so once they have a fairly tilt in shaped bow, are they
• 1:25:13
  doing any sort of enhancements to the aesthetics with handle
• 1:25:18
  wraps with after? They after they, they finish the
• 1:25:22
  tilling process like the draw weight is in the ballpark.
• 1:25:28
  Next step is doing the handle like the shape of the handle and
• 1:25:35
  then it's off to the range to do at least fifty shots.
• 1:25:40
  OK. Well, I recommend they they're
• 1:25:43
  shooting to go at least 50 times.
• 1:25:45
  And some of these are first time Archers presume.
• 1:25:48
  Yes, I'm very tolerant if it comes to form, if they're not,
• 1:25:55
  if they're not hurting themselves or other people,
• 1:25:58
  yeah, it's the bow doesn't care if they have a good form or not.
• 1:26:02
  And it's that's not the topic of the workshop.
• 1:26:05
  Like I can give them tips, of course, but that's that's just
• 1:26:11
  not in the focus. So they're doing 50 shots and a
• 1:26:17
  certain percentage of bows. They changed their shape
• 1:26:22
  slightly while shooting, so you'll sometimes have to retail
• 1:26:28
  the bows. So after the 50 shots I check,
• 1:26:33
  I'm checking the shape again together with them.
• 1:26:36
  We're looking at the balance of the limbs, how straight is the
• 1:26:39
  bow. We're looking at the at the
• 1:26:43
  tillering board, how is it bending?
• 1:26:45
  And if everything is OK, then comes the aesthetics, not
• 1:26:50
  before. So like, my preferred finish is
• 1:26:55
  like sanding and oiling the bow. But some people want some.
• 1:27:02
  Yeah, colourful painted bow. Yeah, I'm not judging it.
• 1:27:08
  It's their thing. If they want it, I'm fine with
• 1:27:10
  it. Self knocks or horn overlays.
• 1:27:16
  If they want horn overlays we can do that.
• 1:27:19
  But yeah, usually the people don't care so self talks are
• 1:27:24
  perfectly fine and a leather handler Rep is like the last
• 1:27:28
  step of the process. OK, and what about an arrow
• 1:27:31
  shelf? Well, well.
• 1:27:37
  Very contentious topic. Like I had a guy here on the
• 1:27:45
  weekends like yesterday who built a horse bowl with a huge
• 1:27:50
  shelf. Snap.
• 1:27:55
  No, no, it works fine, no problem.
• 1:27:57
  But this is like it's, it's a strange Frankenstein bowl, you
• 1:28:04
  know, having a horse bowl with a like almost a pistol grip and a
• 1:28:10
  huge shelf. That's a strange fit.
• 1:28:13
  But I told him, yeah, you know, that's not traditional.
• 1:28:18
  He doesn't care. He never wants to participate in
• 1:28:21
  any tournaments where it would not be allowed to shoot in the
• 1:28:26
  hospital class. So yeah, OK, if they, if they
• 1:28:33
  decide on it, that's OK with me. So shelf.
• 1:28:37
  Well, The only exception, of course, is the traditional
• 1:28:40
  Longbow that's bending in the middle.
• 1:28:43
  We never do shelves. There, so and in your own bows,
• 1:28:47
  are you doing shelves or not doing shelves?
• 1:28:49
  Never. Ever.
• 1:28:50
  No. OK, no, me too.
• 1:28:52
  So I don't think I've ever shot one with a shelf.
• 1:28:54
  Actually, I don't know that I have because I love shooting
• 1:28:58
  ambidextrously, so I make my bow so I can shoot both sides.
• 1:29:03
  Yeah, my right eye is not up to that.
• 1:29:05
  So I'm shooting left-handed. Also, I'm I'm right-handed and
• 1:29:10
  since I'm participating in those prehistoric tournaments, all my
• 1:29:16
  bowls are very traditional self bowls.
• 1:29:21
  Excellent. Not that I'm biased, why I am
• 1:29:25
  biased, but yeah. And then do you do arrow passes?
• 1:29:30
  If they want to. Yeah, OK.
• 1:29:31
  What do you normally use for those?
• 1:29:34
  Whatever they want. I have those shell Shelley
• 1:29:37
  things. I have horn.
• 1:29:40
  I have all kinds of woods, Yeah. So some sort of inlay?
• 1:29:46
  Some sort of inlay, yes. Awesome strings.
• 1:29:51
  Like it's not really necessary from from it's it's, it's a nice
• 1:29:56
  thing to have. It's a yeah, something extra,
• 1:30:01
  but you can't use up a bow, a wooden bow, by shooting it so
• 1:30:06
  often that's eventually you have like a hole or a divot or
• 1:30:10
  something in it. It's just not a thing.
• 1:30:13
  No. And then are they making their
• 1:30:16
  own strings? If there is enough time and
• 1:30:19
  they're interested. So I have, of course, ready made
• 1:30:22
  strings. Yeah.
• 1:30:25
  It's it's the same with the arrows.
• 1:30:27
  You know, if there is enough panic, they can build the arrows
• 1:30:31
  themselves. If not, or if they're not
• 1:30:34
  interested in. Yeah.
• 1:30:36
  In which shafts are they using for the arrows?
• 1:30:39
  Wooden, of course, so. Specific type of 1.
• 1:30:43
  I don't really care. I tried basically all kinds of
• 1:30:48
  of arrow woods. There's not a huge difference.
• 1:30:54
  But one thing I heard is like we in Europe, we don't get first
• 1:31:01
  class cedar wood, which I'm not sure if it's true or not because
• 1:31:07
  I tried cedar arrows, which a lot of people are really fans
• 1:31:15
  of. You know, they say cedar wood is
• 1:31:17
  the best arrow wood. Yeah, in my experience, not
• 1:31:22
  really. But then I heard like, yeah, we
• 1:31:24
  only getting like the second class cedar woods to Europe.
• 1:31:30
  And what kind, what kind of cedar?
• 1:31:32
  Because there's so many different types of cedar like.
• 1:31:34
  I think it's red cedar. Red cedar, OK.
• 1:31:36
  The The Good Smelling 1. Yeah, well, they all smell
• 1:31:41
  pretty good too. But because here and we have an
• 1:31:43
  abundance of red cedar and I know a lot of the shafts that
• 1:31:46
  are made from this area are out of Firwood.
• 1:31:49
  So I don't know. I don't even.
• 1:31:52
  I don't know if I have any cedar shafted arrows but OK.
• 1:31:56
  Yeah, so. Are participants staying off
• 1:31:59
  site or on site? Off site, except like if they
• 1:32:05
  have an RV or they can pitch a tent like this week, Saturday,
• 1:32:09
  Sunday, a father and I think his 14 year old son are coming and
• 1:32:16
  they asked me if it's OK if they pitched a dent and they said
• 1:32:19
  yeah, of course. Like for 15 acres I don't care,
• 1:32:23
  but usually it's offsite, yeah. OK awesome.
• 1:32:28
  Well that sounds like a beautiful bow making experience.
• 1:32:33
  And another thing, like I'm having a kind of a success
• 1:32:40
  guarantee. So with let's say 200 people a
• 1:32:44
  year, I would guess like 5 to 10 bows a year, break in the
• 1:32:49
  building process. It just happens.
• 1:32:53
  Sometimes it's their fault, sometimes it's the woods,
• 1:32:57
  sometimes it's my miscalculation, but it doesn't
• 1:33:01
  really matter, you know, it happens.
• 1:33:04
  So when it happens, they can participate in the same workshop
• 1:33:10
  again for free? Yeah.
• 1:33:13
  So usually with a normal workshop, I have four people.
• 1:33:18
  But if bigger groups want to come to my place, I can cater up
• 1:33:24
  to a group of 10. But of course, if there are like
• 1:33:29
  8 or 10 people coming on a workshop, you have to reduce the
• 1:33:36
  program or extend the time you need longer.
• 1:33:40
  So there are like certain trade-offs, the bigger the group
• 1:33:44
  is. Right.
• 1:33:46
  Yeah, that's a lot. 8 or 10, That's a lot to handle.
• 1:33:50
  So, fun fact, can you guess my record number of participants in
• 1:33:56
  a one day workshop? One day did they all
• 1:34:00
  successfully build about. Most of them.
• 1:34:03
  Most of them 14. More.
• 1:34:08
  Wow, 20. More Well, it was 6060 people.
• 1:34:18
  Wow. It was like the convention, like
• 1:34:24
  the organisers, they contacted me, yeah, they want to do
• 1:34:27
  something fun for the press mainly.
• 1:34:31
  So we set up this workshop like with 60 slots and it was free
• 1:34:38
  for the for the guys we had like sponsors.
• 1:34:41
  So they got the free wooden long bow and a string and three
• 1:34:46
  arrows. And out of the 60 people I would
• 1:34:49
  guess like 55 went home with a workable bow.
• 1:34:54
  Wow, so how do you have that many vices and tools?
• 1:34:59
  Well, there was a list of tools they had to bring themselves, so
• 1:35:04
  we set up the tables and everything.
• 1:35:05
  We had all the ball making material, but they had to bring
• 1:35:10
  a certain kind of tools to work. Yeah, that was a fun thing, but
• 1:35:15
  never again. I can imagine why that's.
• 1:35:20
  Crazy. At least I can say I had a
• 1:35:22
  workshop with 60 participants. Incredible.
• 1:35:28
  Yeah, that's but normal is like 4 people is a good number, so
• 1:35:34
  that the quality is is really high.
• 1:35:38
  Yeah, so as we wrap up here so we don't lose connection again,
• 1:35:44
  what does bow carving still bring to your life today after
• 1:35:50
  so many years of carving bows? Actually, I miss bow making a
• 1:35:58
  little bit because I'm so busy with my workshops where I'm not
• 1:36:02
  making bows of course, and I only need a bow once a year or
• 1:36:09
  once every two years depending on how much I'm shooting.
• 1:36:16
  I kind of miss it. So for the next few weeks, I set
• 1:36:22
  myself the goal of making like 5 Osage flat bows.
• 1:36:27
  No, just to, to get into the feeling again.
• 1:36:30
  You know, I put them on stock, so to speak, to sell them on a
• 1:36:37
  later date. So I have no order for them.
• 1:36:39
  Yeah. But sometimes I'm, I'm just
• 1:36:43
  itching to build the bow for myself.
• 1:36:49
  So just one or two days. Our life is very busy around
• 1:36:52
  here, just one or two days for myself in the workshop,
• 1:36:57
  concentrating on one thing only because there's so much going on
• 1:37:01
  all around with our farm, with the people visiting us, with the
• 1:37:07
  workshops, that I'm really looking forward to a period of
• 1:37:12
  just being in my workshop on my own and not being in a hurry.
• 1:37:18
  That's also a big thing, not to finish quickly, but just to
• 1:37:22
  enjoy the process, you know, looking at the woods, looking at
• 1:37:28
  the lines on the growth and just, yeah, making something
• 1:37:33
  nice out of it. Well, thank you so much for
• 1:37:36
  doing this with me today. It's been really fun.
• 1:37:39
  Enjoy chatting with you know you.
• 1:37:41
  Hi, where can people find out more about you in your
• 1:37:43
  workshops? So the homepage is my most
• 1:37:48
  important marketing tool. It's www.mindboogent.at.
• 1:37:56
  But if you're they're putting in bow making workshop and my name
• 1:38:00
  Gad Wiesler, yeah, you should find me.
• 1:38:04
  So I'm doing my workshops all year round.
• 1:38:11
  So basically I have no break. But usually after Christmas it
• 1:38:17
  kind of tapers off. There is less interest and as
• 1:38:21
  soon as it's getting warmer, like spring is around the
• 1:38:24
  corner, the workshops are picking up again.
• 1:38:29
  And summer is usually crazy busy.
• 1:38:32
  Like in Austria we have 9 weeks of summer holiday in July and
• 1:38:37
  August, which is a lot and people are looking for stuff to
• 1:38:41
  do with the kids or without the kids.
• 1:38:45
  And now at the beginning of September it's getting a little
• 1:38:50
  less hectic. But the other thing, like my
• 1:38:54
  farm, I have a walnut orchard. So end of September, beginning
• 1:39:02
  of October, there will be a few weeks of of walnut harvest,
• 1:39:06
  which I didn't plan for the world, I planned them for the
• 1:39:09
  nuts. You could definitely use it.
• 1:39:11
  But I think I'm one of the first ones in Austria who planted like
• 1:39:16
  Hickory trees. Nice.
• 1:39:18
  It's one other thing that came to my mind.
• 1:39:22
  So if people want to stay at our place, we're also like a work
• 1:39:27
  away host. Are you familiar with Work Away?
• 1:39:31
  Familiar with on our farm we used to do whafing.
• 1:39:37
  Yeah, it's it's quite the same. So if people stay at our place
• 1:39:42
  for a few weeks, usually they can participate in their bow
• 1:39:46
  making workshop for free just as a thank you.
• 1:39:49
  OK, Yeah. So if any one of your listeners
• 1:39:54
  wants to stay in Austria on our farm, we are not doing it in in
• 1:39:58
  winter like December to February, March, but the rest of
• 1:40:03
  the years, we always have like guests from all over the world
• 1:40:06
  staying at our farm. Nice.
• 1:40:09
  That's beautiful. So the walnuts, are you doing
• 1:40:12
  that as a crop? You harvest those and sell them.
• 1:40:15
  So it's walnuts, it's lanches. Well, I have around 100 walnut
• 1:40:21
  trees which I planted like 15 years ago, and they're getting a
• 1:40:29
  decent harvest by now. I have chestnuts, and that just
• 1:40:36
  started with the pecan nut. Pecan, Yeah.
• 1:40:40
  And so you're not using the wood at all.
• 1:40:44
  Not in my lifetime, no. Maybe my grandchildren, but.
• 1:40:52
  Can you make yourself bowl from walnut?
• 1:40:55
  It's it's not especially good, OK bow woods, but it's OK.
• 1:41:03
  But walnut wood is very expensive.
• 1:41:08
  It's one of the most expensive woods.
• 1:41:10
  It's used for other things. So if you have a nice trunk of
• 1:41:14
  walnut tree, usually in Austria, get a few €1000 for it.
• 1:41:21
  So it's one of the most expensive hardwoods, but then
• 1:41:27
  other things, yeah. Yeah, I have one on my farm.
• 1:41:31
  It's kind of like 2 two that's split off and I just sit there
• 1:41:35
  and watch the squirrels this time of year ago and get every
• 1:41:38
  single one of my walnuts. So usually nowadays they're
• 1:41:42
  making when you're out of it. Yeah.
• 1:41:47
  But in historic times they also used it, like for rifle stocks.
• 1:41:53
  It was their favorite word for for rifles.
• 1:42:00
  Amazing. Thank you.
• 1:42:01
  It's been really fun. Nice.
• 1:42:04
  Talking to you? Yeah, Awesome.
• 1:42:07
  Are you coming with us? Yeah.
• 1:42:09
  Have you any plans to to travel again?
• 1:42:13
  Oh yeah, yeah, it was secretly not so secretly.
• 1:42:16
  We're hoping to do a Volume 2 of the book.
• 1:42:19
  Yeah, OK. How many books do you have to
• 1:42:22
  sell? Yeah.
• 1:42:24
  Oh, that's the thing. We have to.
• 1:42:27
  We basically our first edition printing is 2000 copies and
• 1:42:31
  basically need to sell all 2000 copies to justify planning a
• 1:42:36
  second journey. So that's that's the goal.
• 1:42:40
  We've done a pre sale through our website and then actually
• 1:42:43
  tomorrow hopefully we start a Kickstarter campaign, OK, which
• 1:42:48
  is a website that buyers care, backers can fund projects.
• 1:42:53
  And so we're selling the book, selling the book on Kickstarter,
• 1:42:58
  but also what's it's to help to be able to fuel the second
• 1:43:02
  volume. And so that's kind of what we're
• 1:43:06
  hoping. So if that all goes well, the
• 1:43:08
  book hasn't even released yet. It comes out October 20th.
• 1:43:12
  So I imagine Cells will be pretty good once it comes out.
• 1:43:15
  It's a beautiful book and I think a lot of people outside of
• 1:43:20
  the world of of Bo carving will be interested in it as well.
• 1:43:23
  And of course, anyone who. Does.
• 1:43:25
  Yeah, to be honest, like the to name it like a coffee table book
• 1:43:32
  is kind of derogatory, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:43:38
  Yeah, they're called kind of like art books is kind of the,
• 1:43:43
  the the category. But yeah, there's I've heard
• 1:43:46
  that a lot with with books of this nature.
• 1:43:49
  There's not really a good, good name for them.
• 1:43:52
  But it's more than just a it's definitely not a help.
• 1:43:56
  What's that? Do you think not a?
• 1:43:59
  Two book and it's filled with beautiful photos and it's kind
• 1:44:03
  of a bit of a bigger book as well, so.
• 1:44:08
  Do you think, yeah, do you think it will appeal?
• 1:44:13
  Do you think it will appeal to a general audience or is it just
• 1:44:17
  people interested in bow making archery?
• 1:44:22
  No, I think it definitely will have wide appeal and it's just
• 1:44:26
  going to be a matter of getting people to be exposed to it.
• 1:44:29
  And so we have set it up so it is not a how to bow carving book
• 1:44:34
  at all. And each chapter features one of
• 1:44:37
  the 14 bowyers that we visited with.
• 1:44:39
  And so each chapter is more of a story of his life and journey
• 1:44:45
  into bow craft, which includes personal challenges, personal
• 1:44:49
  triumphs, of course, bow carving related things as well.
• 1:44:55
  But it's so much more than just bow carving.
• 1:44:57
  It's each chapter is a profile of each Bowyer in their life and
• 1:45:01
  it includes beautiful photos of their craft, their workshop
• 1:45:06
  themselves. And so I think anyone who's
• 1:45:08
  interested in any type of woodcraft or hobbies or pursuit
• 1:45:15
  of a passion, there's the father daughter angle, 'cause my, my
• 1:45:19
  daughter and I created this together.
• 1:45:22
  Everyone who's seen the advanced copy has loved it, whether or
• 1:45:25
  not they're into archery or not. So I think it'll have a wider
• 1:45:28
  appeal. Anyone who likes history,
• 1:45:30
  there's a a fair bit of history on, on different bow types.
• 1:45:34
  And it really the topics depend on who we're interviewing.
• 1:45:38
  So for example, if if I had known about you and we had come
• 1:45:42
  to visit you, part of your chapter would probably be
• 1:45:45
  talking about your farm and about your walnuts and your
• 1:45:49
  chestnuts and about your world journeys with your family.
• 1:45:53
  And so every chapter has its own personal kind of twist depending
• 1:45:58
  on the life and journey of each Bowyer.
• 1:46:01
  So it's, I think so it, it read, I think it reads well.
• 1:46:05
  It's very interesting. People love, I find reading
• 1:46:09
  about other people and their passions.
• 1:46:11
  And this is a group. I'm already sold.
• 1:46:13
  Of. Course.
• 1:46:17
  So that's, and before we start working on volume to once it is
• 1:46:22
  released, we're planning on doing a little bit of a tour
• 1:46:26
  with it to at least a number of archery events in the US.
• 1:46:31
  So next April, I think we're going to try to go to the
• 1:46:34
  Tennessee Classic, which is a big archery here.
• 1:46:38
  There's a few other events that we're eyeing up as well.
• 1:46:41
  So we don't have solid plans for those, but that's kind of our
• 1:46:45
  our general plan next April and May do some traveling around the
• 1:46:49
  US and go to some different survival craft or both specific
• 1:46:54
  events. OK, sounds great.
• 1:46:58
  Yeah. And then if.
• 1:46:59
  We are fortunate enough to start working on volume to well then,
• 1:47:03
  yeah, we'll be doing some big travels again.
• 1:47:06
  So I wish you all the best. Thank you all with your same
• 1:47:10
  project. I'll definitely buy a copy and
• 1:47:13
  I'll recommend it to all of my English speaking friends.
• 1:47:19
  Yeah. Thank you, Gerhard.
• 1:47:21
  Feel free to translate it into German if you want.
• 1:47:26
  Yeah, OK. But the German market is, I
• 1:47:31
  guess, it's so much smaller. Smaller, but it's it's there's a
• 1:47:35
  lot of of die hard bow years and in in Germany and Austria.
• 1:47:40
  Traditional bow making and traditional shooting is very
• 1:47:44
  strong in the German speaking countries, yes.
• 1:47:47
  Yeah, well, good. Luck to you with everything.
• 1:47:51
  Thank you. I wish to continue success with
• 1:47:53
  all your workshops and let's stay in touch.
• 1:47:55
  Look forward to meeting you in person.
• 1:47:56
  Someday, definitely. OK, Bye.
• 1:47:59
  Thank you. Thanks for listening to Project
• 1:48:07
  Quiver on Salish Wolf. Follow our journey on Instagram
• 1:48:10
  and YouTube at Project Quiver Official as we discover the
• 1:48:13
  world's most extraordinary traditional bow years, and join
• 1:48:16
  our newsletter at projectquiver.com.
• 1:48:19
  Quiver, the art of Life through Bow Craft, our photographic and
• 1:48:22
  narrative exploration of traditional bow carving
• 1:48:24
  published by Trope, will be available in fall 2026.
• 1:48:28
  We are honored to share with you the beauty, tradition, and magic
• 1:48:32
  of the bow and arrow. The book is Quiver.
• 1:48:34
  The journey is Project Quiver. This is the Salish Wolf podcast.