Glass: a few follies

[Pappy]

This is getting good,it reminds me of the Dean Torgus thread. ::)I had the guy from 21st century
long bows at the Classic last year and wanted to shoot the Iron Arrow competion and didn't have a selfbow and had never shot a selfbow so I lent him one of mine and he shot the course with it.When he came back in he told me he had a whole new thought on selfbows,he said he thought they were way below his bows and others that build custom glass bow but that now he knew that wasn't right,the biggest different is you have to take a little more care with them.He was very very surprised and I was very very pleased.
   Pappy

[StanM]

I've built both kinds of bows, and seen really nice examples of both glass and selfbows.  I think making both kinds of bows is easy.  I think making really nice bows of either kind takes an incredible amount of skill.

As others have mentioned, the skill set is different.  To me, it's sorta like furniture making.  I like making furniture, too.  Glass bows would be like making traditional furniture, while selfbows are more like rustic furniture.  One of the skills to making a traditional table and set of six chairs is how exactly you can reproduce each chair.  It takes a skilled craftsman to turn each leg exactly the same, set the curve of the back exactly the same and make each peice fit flawlessly.

A rustic table and dining chairs, though, is a different animal.  The skill is not in its sameness. The skill is in using wood found in nature, through dilligent search, that fits the function for which it is intended.  After that, the skill is fitting each peice together so that the chair is as comfortable, or effective, as any traditional piece.

Both are easy to do, neither is easy to do well.

Stan

[George Tsoukalas]

David, some things are best left to the imagination.If I wanted to be clearer I would have been. 
Due to the magic of copy and paste we don't have to speculate on what you said. Now don't go trying to make me the bad boy.
"Fiberglass, in terms working properties, exceeds wood by a good measure.  It's no wonder master craftsmen prefer it for their work." Let me help you extricate yourself from this quandary. Perhaps this is what you meant  to say.
"Fiberglass, in terms (of) working properties, exceeds wood by a good measure.  It's no wonder(some) master craftsmen prefer it for their work.
Torges, Baker, David Mims, Marc St Louis, Ryan O'Sullivan, Comstock, Pat, Gordon,  et al (forgive me if I left  anyone out) to my knowledge prefer wood; thus the insertion of "some" seems to work for me. I should have been a politician. Jawge

[DanaM]

I'd vote for ya Jawge You could start the Primitive Party

I wouldn't mind trying glass somewhere down the road. To me the satisfaction is in making a
functional bow with my own hands. That said I would never pay $500, $1000 or more for a bow.

DanaM

[DCM]

George,

"It's no wonder(some) master craftsmen prefer it for their work."

Which distorts the truth to protect a few folks' ignorance or prejudice.  If I'd wanted to say that, I would have.  In fact, master bowyers who use glass outnumber all wood masters by 20 to 1, at least.  But that does not imply, and I did not imply that ALL master craftsmen prefer it for their work as you have suggested.  This is where you went astray, and I have to wonder why.

"Don't know where you pulled that one from but I could speculate."

Then you insinuate my idea's aren't my own, as if I were parroting someone elses thoughts, a blind follower.  If you want to leave such things to your imagination, please do.  But a public forum on the internet is decidedly not your imagination.  And I still want to know what you imagine my motivation was, who or what was behind it, now that you've spilled your imagination into the public domain at my expense.

We having fun yet?  LOL

[tom sawyer]

David, I typed a post much like your original comments, but wisely deleted it before posting.  Since this is the primitive archery forum I wouldn't expect your comments to be taken kindly, even though they are techniclaly correct with respect to performance and longevity.  If someone wants to think their wood bow is faster than a glass bow, who are we to stand in their way?  A lok at the recent TN Classic results should provide some unambiguous data though.

I don't know that more craftsmen are using glass in commercial construction because it is superior in every way.  I think thats what the public wants, at least those who don't want wheels on the ends.  That and it would be really difficult to produce enough bows of adequate consistency, to fill hundreds of orders.

I don't think Jawge was supposing you were parroting, I think he was saying you pulled it out of your hiney just to be funny.

[DCM]

Lennie,

Oh!  LOL

I'm not actually serious.  I just figured folks were cruising for a flame fest.  Somebody has to take a turn in the barrel.  Don't tell George.  Maybe we can get him all riled up and see some real sparks fly.  As regards what bowyers use and the public demands, that doesn't change the reality of it.  Master bowyers still prefer glass over wood, regardless of their rationale but I doubt it's because it sucks in comparison.  Kinda like them fellas that make fancy drawings on the sidewalk in New York City with chalk, masterpieces, but most artists pick a medium with a little more resilience.  I'm actually more like the sidewalk chalk bowyer, but at least I know what I'm doing and take that path with eyes wide open.

[George Tsoukalas]

Dana, thanks. I may need all the friends I can assemble after dismantling DCM's arguements. David, naw I don't thinks so. You object to the word 'some". However...
"But that does not imply, and I did not imply that ALL master craftsmen prefer it for their work as you have suggested.  This is where you went astray, and I have to wonder why."
Sure sounds like an implicit "some" there.
"Then you insinuate my idea's aren't my own, as if I were parroting someone elses thoughts, a blind follower."
No, you misunderstand. I do believe these ideas are your own. Where they came from is still the question. I have the same problem sometimes. That's why it gets hard to think when I'm sitting down. LOL.
Yes, this is fun.
Jawge

[George Tsoukalas]

Ya right. You are going to get me all riled up. LOL, David. It's even better when I am misunderstood. I told my brother the same thing. He's a computer tech. Just passed a very difficult Novel "administrator's" exam. I told him it was because he just finished his colonoscopy and accompanying  prep. Made room for the entry of more knowledge. Jawge

[Badger]

      In defense of my own methods as far as being primitve go, I have no clue how to use supertiller or any other computer math oriented program. My mass method is basicaly just based on taking bows that took little set and performed well from a variety of different sizes shapes and styles and then finding the link between them which happened to be mass weight of the bows. I am not particularly bright but not stupid either, after you make a few thousand bows you just start to see links and trends that make sense and hold water. I found out the mass method was used by the turks long before i ever came around so it is not really anything new. Working with demensional formulas based on species was just far too inconsistent for me. I have said over and over that by far the best method is to read the wood as you progress in tillering, throw away the tape measure and the scale. I now use the scale primarily to know when I should back off a bit and not ask too much from the wood, others may tend to not ask enough from the wood and use the scale in an opposite manner. I tend to get a little defensive and slightly frustrated when I see my methods being passed off as tecnical when they are really just experience based. I enjoy for much reading the tecnical repaorts even though I understand very little of it. I appreciate seeing our theories being tested and probed and often challenged.  right or wrong I hold the belief that bowyering is an ongoing trade that we continue to learn and advance at and much like any trade or craft we advance at a level that is in relation to how much we put into it, wether that be shop time or educating ourselves or a combination of both.
     As for wood bows competeing with glass or synthetic materials, I think good wood bows can compete with mediocre glass bows, I think a rare specimen might even be able to match the top glass bows on occassion but never match them in all criteria such as durability, repeatability etc.
    As for David Mimms and Jawge, I hold both these guys in the absolute highest esteem and respect for both their skills and dedication to what we are doing here. I have considered DCM a personnal mentor for most of my time on line and have in the last year come back to Jawges way of thinking in many many ways in regards to building good wod bows. Steve

[DCM]

Time for the group hug already?  And it was just getting good.  LOL  Ole George 'll be steaming till he wakes from his nap and sees how it has turned.

I learned a ton from George, mostly to be tenacious, to have some courage and drive early on, when all is dark and foreboding, when minor and common missteps which a seasoned hand takes in stride can put a fresh recruit on the deck.  And I learned a butt load from Steve, and most of you nare-do-wells that have been around a while.  And I continue to learn, from Gary Davis recently a brief tidbit which was so nearly drowned out by my own talking when I should have been listening, that it did not occur to me until I replayed the exchange in my mind some days later.  But I don't just accept without question, particularly in light of contradicting experience, and that I think is the tap root of advancing one's craft.

[tom sawyer]

So you gonna share the Gary Davis tidbit?

He gave me the "bamboo-backed bow" versus "bow backed with bamboo" speech.  There is a difference, according to him.

[DCM]

I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yers.

Gary stopped me to say he liked that little character bow I had at Tn Classic.  So, like any full of hisself young bowyer would I commenced to yammerin' about one thing or another as if I knew what I was doing.  This bow had a whoop-d-do I didn't/couldn't get out completely with heat correction and commented on how the bow shot perdy good despite the extra limb mass.  He said, paraphrasing "even thickness for straightening, then uneven thickness for bending."  The even thickness for straightening was a clarification, a simplification of common sense crafting which I'd understood rhetorically all along and yet not put into practice in this case.  In essense, you need the surrounding wood to use for leverage against the area you want to move.

[Kegan]

Wow, I didn't know my little post was gonna go this far! Should I feel proud or ashamed ?

[tom sawyer]

I don't get it.  he's saying you needed to leave the area thicker around the whoopdedoo?  Or that you needed to straighten it before you thinned it?

Gary was telling me he wrote a letter to the editor about somebody (I forget who, I think it was in TBB) calling a bamboo-backed bow, a bow backed with bamboo.  And to top it off they called it a selfbow in the article.  His contention was that the correct term is a bamboo-backed bow.  A bow backed with bamboo, to his way of thinking,  means it is a bow before it gets backed.  Which most of your belly slats wouldn't qualify, nor do they have to.  It was just Gary being Gary.  He's always got something profound to offer.  I wish he'd do the net, but there's little chance of that.