Advice for Beginners

There is a Primitive Bowmaking Group on Facebook and the same questions keep getting asked,

1. What's the best wood?
2. What tools do I need?
3. Can you recommend some books?
4. Can you give me some general advice/pointers?

1. Almost any wood will make a bow, maybe only a low poundage one, but just getting any wood that is relatively straight and knot free will allow you to start. Season the wood, ideally for a year, but 30 days somewhere warm, dry and airy will do for some firsts attempts.
 The sooner you start, the sooner you will gain experience and understanding. As kids many of us make stick bows, they work at least for a while and they provide some foundation in understanding how bows work and how they fail. A more specific answer depends on where you are in the world. In the UK I recommend Hazel as it is plentiful, straight, knot free and easily worked.
Personally I don't make board bows, but for some who don't have access to staves, that is the way to go.

2. You can start with just an axe! A draw knife, spokeshave, a big rasp (farriers rasp), a tape measure/rule and some string . Some way of holding the work securely helps, a bench with a vice and a support which can be clamped to the other end of the bench is good, or a shave horse. A tillering rig is IMO vital, ideally with a spring balance/luggage scale or some weighing device and a pulley and rope so you can watch the bow as you flex it. Details and pictures of all this stuff is elsewhere on this blog...
I've included a pencil in the tools... you can't do too much damage with a pencil!
A cabinet scraper is handy too, but that is more of a finishing tool (or at least that's how it's used in the UK... they tend use 'em for heavier use in the USA)
Note:- New tools generally need to be sharpened and/or adjusted (cheap tools can be good if you do that)

3. There is almost too much choice. The Traditional Bowyers Bible vol 1 is very good (the others are probably for later). There is plenty on Youtube too, some better than others. My channel  is Del Cat, (it didn't have adverts at the start of the vids until Youtube got greedy and put them on there without me "monetizing" the chanel!) (note once on that channel you can search for topics that a general youtube search would miss). There are build-along play lists for a variety of bows.



4. General advice.
The sooner you start, the sooner you will gain experience.
Two of the hardest skills are "getting your eye in" to be able to see the curve of the bow, and learning how much wood to remove to achieve a desired result.
If you want to rush at it, do it early! It's easy to loose patience later in the process at exactly the point you should be slowing down!
You should spend as much time looking and thinking as you do removing wood. It is not a race.... slow down... enjoy the process.
Beginners usually want to make too high a poundage from a stave that is too short.
Leave your bow at least 2" longer than you want... you can always cut it shorter later on. Start with at least 62" (or 74" for an English longbow).
Have a target draw weight and draw length... a cheap luggage scale will weigh up to 50# and accurately.
We often see pictures of bows flexing very slightly at either an unknown poundage or say 30# and asking for a critique, when there isn't enough bend to see, and no information about draw weight.
If you want a 40# bow (a good weight to aim for)... you must pull it to 40# (unless you see a problem, like an uneven bend).
Each stroke with a tool should have a purpose, so you need to look and see if it has achieved that... it's easy to watch one edge of a stave as you are shaving it down and forget the other side... only to find that side is now too thin because the stave wasn't even thickness right across.
A final word:-
Keep it simple. Please don't try fancy recurves until you have made a good few decent bows.