Super Snakey Osage

This is a bow made from a very crooked piece of osage orange wood.  It is then covered with two rattlesnake skins.  It is 52 inches long and pulls 48 pounds at 26 inches.

Hickory Bow with Bloodwood Handle and Tips

I built this bow for a man who wanted an easy-shooting bow for his sister. I made the bow from a hickory board and decorated it with bloodwood handle and tips. As you can see, it is only an 18-pound pull at 24" inches, but it has a very fine cast for such a lightweight. I love the shape of this bow--a sort of teardrop profile. I have used this style on quite a few bows lately and I really love it. It is very easy to tiller and performs well.

Hickory-Backed Hickory Bow

This type of bow is another of my favorite styles. It is composed of two thin strips of hickory glued together in slight reflex. A handle composed of several different wood types is then glued onto the belly of the bow and tips are added that reflect the handle design. This bow is very fast, light and smooth. Bows of this type were made famous by Mr. Perry in flight shooting contests in Utah.

Yew Bow

Yew is a traditional bow wood that was used widely by the English longbowmen. It is a conifer, but it has unusual strength and flexibility that made it a fine material for crafting long-casting arrow launchers. In North America, the yew forests are mostly located in the west coast rain forests of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. This bow is made from British Columbia yew. It pulls 47 pounds at 28 inch draw. The tips are carved from whitetail antler.

Bamboo-Backed Bamboo Bows

Bamboo-backed bamboo bows are one of my specialties. These bows are constructed of bamboo cores backed by a thin layer of exterior bamboo with exposed nodes. When glued into a reflex-deflex design, these bows make very fast, silent, smooth-shooting machines. They are extremely resilient and tough. Here are some of my favorites.

My first BBO

Bamboo-backed osage orange. This is the fastest combination of materials that I have ever come up with. Following Dean Torges and others, I glued a thin lamination of bamboo to the back of a core of osage orange (bowdark or mock orange or hedgeapple wood). The shape is called "reflex-deflex," indicating the double curve shape of the bow. This particular bow is very fast. I would tell you how fast, but that information is classified!

Elm bow for CW

An elm bow with cedar arrows and leather quiver built for a young friend as a graduation present.

Copperhea​d Painted Osage Bow

I am really proud of this bow. This is an osage self bow that I made from a quarter log of osage orange. This highly-prized wood goes by many names, but it is absolutely the best natural material from which to make a bow. The French called it "bois d'arc," or bow of arc (arched bow) which became corrupted to "Bowdark" or "bodark," a name by which it still goes in the deep South and all the way to west Texas. In the Midwest it is usually referred to as hedge, since many long rows of the species were planted as fence rows and windbreaks during the early frontier days and after the Dust Bowl days of the 1930's. Elsewhere, the tree is called "Horse Apple," or mock orange. The fruit is distinctive: if you have ever seen a tree that looks like it has huge yellow green balls on it, you were looking at an osage tree. The wood is very dense (it won't float!) and bright yellow when first cut. It is extremely springy and strong, thus making it excellent for bows and arrows. This bow was commissioned by a friend of mine who wanted an osage bow with a copperhead design on the back. I handpainted the design and he was pleased with it. The bow is very fast. It pulls 57 pounds at 28" and is 66" long.

Bamboo-backed Osage Bow

Bamboo-backed Osage Bow in a Reflex-deflex Design

This bow belongs to a young lady who recently won an archery tournament with it. She purchased it from me in the spring of 2011 and obviously learned to shoot it very well. I am especially proud of the checkerboard woodwork design on the handle and the tips. The woods are black walnut, bloodwood and maple on the handle and tips.