Juniper sinew backed bow 1/2

[wstanley]

Hello,

Time to finally show some of my bows. This is one of two. Little background about me, been making bows for the last 4.5 years. Have made 8 so far, three have broken. I heard if ya aint breakin em' you aint makin 'em! I do other primitive tech stuff and its hard to produce more than two bows a year on top of job and family.

Juniper sinew backed bow. The juniper I cut out of 4' diameter Juniper on a private parcel of land just outside the Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierras of California. Worked on it green and then applied sinew after 2 months of drying. The bow is 56.5'' TTT, 35#lbs, draws  28.5" and likely more but I don't push it. The arrow I am holding is 32'' (elderberry with black oak foreshaft). I steam bent reflexed tips to 2'' and now it has 1'' reflex unstrung. It was the first sinew backed bow I made (3 layers of sinew). Been shot a lot. Sinew string. Nocks were too thin and broke early. I had some thin diameter dogbane cordage at the time so I wrapped it around the ends to make a shoulder then put pine pitch glue on it.  I love shooting this bow, smooth.


I shoot Ishi style/N. California style and taking a photo to represent the bow symmetrically was awkward.

Thanks for looking!

[bassman]

 Looks like  you got the bug. Good for you. I have made some Ishi style bows ,and tried his pinch style grip. It felt to awkward for me , and I shot terrible. If I shoot that style of bow with the arrow on the left side, and three fingers under with a very sharp cant I do pretty good out to 20 yds. Our Natives were amazing people, and the west coast bows, and arrows were works of art. Nice bow.

[Whiskeyjet]

Really cool bow, great tiller!.   I've yet to have any luck with Cedar but I've got a couple int the works.

[PaSteve]

I really like the looks of your bow. Well done.

[WhistlingBadger]

Ah, sinew backed juniper--that's one of my dreams, right there.  Thanks for sharing!
Thomas

[Traxx]

 I have made some Ishi style bows ,and tried his pinch style grip.

Ishi Used a thumb draw..

[wstanley]

Thanks all. Juniper/sinew combo is something else. Can’t wait to make more.

[simson]

Looks like an interesting well made bow.
I would like to see more pics, and a bit bigger sized (my eyes are old).
We do not see Ishi style shooting every day, I've tried it - but had not much success.

[wstanley]

Hi Simpson, I can try and post some better pics. Honestly I have no idea how some of these guys get such nice photos with only a 150kb max photo size.

Maybe this weekend I’ll post a video link shooting ishi styke.

[wstanley]

sorry Simson, not Simpson. I should mention the juniper I cut the stave from is alive. Cut and split it out in about 2 hours with a dull hatchet. Another cool native method, I'm sure you are all aware of. Unfortunately I don't have those pics anymore, lost the phone they are on. Allows you to get a super clean stave with no knots. Doesn't kill the tree. The branches on the junipers where I live are hard to get to and pretty nasty looking. Otherwise I would go for them. Juniper grows above 7000-8000' where I live and tend to be all trunk and pretty beat up by Sierra winters.   

[mmattockx]

Honestly I have no idea how some of these guys get such nice photos with only a 150kb max photo size.

They host the picture on a third party site like Imgur and link to that image instead of uploading it to this site directly. No need to resize all your pictures that way, either.


Mark

[wstanley]

thanks mattockx. But what about these posts that have no third party link or attachment in the post (paper clip) and they have wonderful large nicely pixelated photos? how are they doing that? An example is the post right above this one by sniper regarding the black locust sapling. The photos are great but no link or even that the post shows an attachment (paper clip)? I'm a millennial and I still don't get this stuff, ha.

[mmattockx]

thanks mattockx. But what about these posts that have no third party link or attachment in the post (paper clip) and they have wonderful large nicely pixelated photos? how are they doing that? An example is the post right above this one by sniper regarding the black locust sapling. The photos are great but no link or even that the post shows an attachment (paper clip)? I'm a millennial and I still don't get this stuff, ha.

The pictures apear directly in the thread, there is no visible link. Like this:




This picture is being hosted on Imgur and using the image tags the link directly loads the picture into the thread. This picture is found at https://imgur.com/TXrv4dH but using the insert image button just below the B button above the text box you can directly insert the picture into your message without having to upload it to the PA site.


Mark

[simson]

sorry Simson, not Simpson. I should mention the juniper I cut the stave from is alive. Cut and split it out in about 2 hours with a dull hatchet. Another cool native method, I'm sure you are all aware of. Unfortunately I don't have those pics anymore, lost the phone they are on. Allows you to get a super clean stave with no knots. Doesn't kill the tree. The branches on the junipers where I live are hard to get to and pretty nasty looking. Otherwise I would go for them. Juniper grows above 7000-8000' where I live and tend to be all trunk and pretty beat up by Sierra winters.

I know this method of harvesting juniper. I have some articles and a bunch of pics from trees where the natives have harvested from.
Here in Germany we don't have juniper growing large enough to try that.