Years ago a friend gave me 3 of the ugliest staves you can imagine, crooks, knots, twists, you know the ones...firewood! Well, that winter I was determined to build at least one bow from the three staves. They were big, clunky osage so I split 2 of them and started to work. I studied each stave to determine what was the best route to take.
By the next spring I had 5 shootable bows. Not pretty, not necessarily strong but all were shootable. I learned more about building wood bows then in all the years before. That wood taught me a lot about working wood bows, around knots, about twists, checks and all the things that we usually turn wood into firewood for.
I also keep a corner of shame. I rarely throw a bow away. Every once in a while I'll pick one of these "orphans" and rework it, studying it's problems and see if I can remedy it . Some of these have turned out to be great little bows.
