Hunting an Osage Bow

This page is designed to show my steps and stumbles through creating a bow using the incomparable words of wisdom found in Dean Torges' book "Hunting the Osage Bow".

The first step (after reading the book a couple times of course)

Get yourself a log. I found this advice very funny when I first started into this Journey a couple years ago. How was I, a suburbanite living in a major metropolitan area going to get himself a log?! Well through wits and wile, I figured out that most farmers aren't too crazy about osage anymore and will likely let you cut a good straight one if you're nice about it. So here we are in Trimble County Kentucky walking an old county road looking for some "Hedge". We walked about 1/2 mile downhill before we even spotted one. This is very unusual in Trimble County since it's usually overgrown with the stuff.
The first one wasn't worth considering but then we walked a bit longer and THERE IT WAS! Standing like a beacon in the darkness of scraggly osage. A tree that had fallen and sprouted other trees. These "baby" trees had to compete mightily to get some sun in the dark canopy so they grew straight and because they were sheltered from the wind, with no twist. I got to the largest of the 4 "babes" and as I was tracing the bark, looking for twist, my buddy Kenny exclaims "Good thing your wife can't see you stroking that tree like that. She'd be a might jealous!"
So we get to cutting. Unfortunately, my lumberjacking skills leave much to be desired and I fought with trying to get the tree to go where I wanted. Finally, the thing decided to split right on up the length of the good part before binding the blade and putting us in a quandary. I was not happy! We struggled for a while to free the saw and through luck and unsafe practices we got her free. We topped it and discovered the unintentional split wasn't all that unfortunate and hauled her up the hill. Here's the first of the photos describing our journey. Click the thumbnail for "The Big Picture".

Here's the contraption I called my steam tube. Hey if it works...:-)

Back from the steam tube. We got some reflex in it but the lower tip crept back to its natural deflex. I'll have to steam it again but I'll take it down to floor tiller first.

Here's a view of some of the knots and other character I have to deal with. Should be interesting. I'm going to take her down to floor tiller and put her in the hotbox for a few weeks. Should be ready to tiller by Late July.

August 20, 1999

We've come a long way since last time I updated. I've got the bow down to floor tiller. I had to steam the lower limb to remove some deflex that crept back after the initial steaming but she looks good.

For now, I'm cutting the nocks and then I've got to put some rawhide on the back. This stave has real thin rings and I don't really trust it to hold. I'll put up some photos of the backing process later. I'm following Dean's method described on the Stickbow.

Go to Page 2 of this Journey for the rest of the story.