Quick Drying Bow Wood: How to Make a Bow Without Years of Waiting 

Your bows are so awesome man. I’d love to learn to build a bow and showcase it.

Gee thanks! Honestly the reason I make bows is because I like drawknives so much

Wet wood is not that hard to cut

Sounds like you already got the bowmaking bug, welcome to the club! If you need any help let me know

Glad it was helpful!

or a third world cup!

it’s no surprise hickory has more flight records than osage or yew. Treat it well and it can be top shelf stuff!

Thanks for the additions Eric! Regarding your other comment, I don’t use your tillering gizmo myself but I do recommend them all the time and think they’re very handy. And you’re right I’m a bit unfair to moisture meters. I only don’t like the type with pins that read resistance and need different calibration for different species. I originally had a more detailed comment about that and ended up cutting it out for whatever reason. I usually don’t quick dry osage, especially not in the drying box-I’d expect to see cracking too. If I do use the box with osage it’s only for the last few percent of mc. most of this advice was definitely biased for white woods, although I do believe anything can be quick dried successfully if you adapt the conditions

Thanks Deborah! Everything was taught to me for free, I’m just passing it on

That definitely works too, and you can go a bit faster by force drying your way. I didn’t really cover it because passive drying to equilibrium is more precise and harder to mess up for an absolute beginner because you can’t overshoot it. I think heat treating over a fire is very worthwhile but haven’t ever been in a big enough rush that quick drying over a fire was worth the added risks. Personally I just cut whenever I feel like it and deal with the consequences by adjusting the drying method.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any trouble with your builds

always a pleasure my friend

Hackberry and elm are both super tolerant of this. Great stuff

I like pedantic, thank you for the correction. Here I’m using the terms loosely and not trying to get bogged down in semantics

Pro tip right there! You can also use a car on a hot day in that way

Thanks my friend!

I definitely don’t keep them shaving sharp, but i do keep the bevels nice and flat. Having a smooth edge is more important than a very sharp one. I’ve been meaning to make some videos about this, it’s up there on the list

You make it easy for me! Good ingredients are simple to cook

@@DanSantanaBows eso es cierto! :)

Missed your comment-yes I do but usually I shoot cheap mass produced wooden arrows. Usually when I make my own I split out ash shafts from staves

Arrow wood is what I like to use, it grows really straight and is easy to work with, you can even strip it green with out worrying about cracking. I think the scientific name is viburnum. You can easily straighten it with a heat gun or fire, or just straighten it when it's still wet. Some people like to use river cane but I have no experience with that.

@@Nate-bn5kk I have a couple staves of viburnum lentago I want to use for bows. Stuff smells like rotten socks though!

@@DanSantanaBows Hmm maybe it took on mold? The species I use always smells great to me, I think there's a wide variety of viburnum so maybe the species you have just smells bad lol.

I heard of this a long time ago, thanks for bringing it back up! Will have to look into it

I’ve had the same experience and heat treat almost all my whitewood bows. It’s possible to make a bow within 24 hours but I honestly don’t see a reason to other than internet appeal. If you’re in that big a hurry that you need a bow tomorrow, usually a bow isn’t the best thing to be making. Quick drying is very practical and I use it all the time, but you still need to take your time with it and it’s better not to rush drying if you can wait

@@DanSantanaBows True but that's how experimental things go you try to see what you can get away with. Sometimes you find out your within reason and sometimes you push too far. As far as should you make a bow within a day probably not but can it be done and with good to great results also yes.

@@severinevans346 For sure, speeding things up is worth experimenting with there’s eventually a point where the risks don’t justify the rewards

@@DanSantanaBows That's true also but you won't know till you try. Anyway keep making those bows man they are beautiful. Also where do you get your draw knives?

I haven’t made a full size bow with it yet but have done plenty of carving with it, and last year I planted about 100 wild plums on the farm so they hopefully take. It’s a wonderful bow wood but very hard to dry without cracking. This is one of the species you have to slow down drying with or else you’ll get bad checking

Good idea, anything like that will help greatly. I learned about using tarps and trash bags from a wood turner who makes plates and has a big issue with checking. The advantage in this case is you can change the coverage depending on how much you need to slow things down

i think it’s a bahco. Not sure about the model. Does the job

11-14%

It’s probably fine as far as the drying stage but if you dry to equilibrium you may overshoot it. Look up both the temperature and humidity in the attic on an equilibrium moisture content chart like the one in the video-this will tell you the mc of your staves if you leave them up there indefinitely. As long as you can get away with no cracking you can dry in too-hot conditions, but there’s just the risk of overshooting it. if you’re not very comfortable drying wood without cracking it, then it can be safer to take things slower

If you want to quick dry, shape the bow then dry. For normal slow drying split the wood into staves then dry. For small diameter trees it may be risky to split so it’s easier to rough out the bow then quick dry. Sometimes you can dry the log whole but usually it will split as it dries. Also see the other video “the back of the bow, 6 ways” for more about all this

You can do it with any wood, but some will be trickier than others. Keep your eye out for cracking, and if you see any, try to slow down the moisture loss

I don’t want to tell people what to do here because it’s an out of the frying pan into the fire situation. The video describes the risks both ways. If you take bark off you have to monitor for cracks and may split the back. If you leave the bark on, you may harbor bugs and increase rotting. Which risk to go with tends to be a case by case question for me and also depends what you’re better equipped to deal with

El tiempo varia mucho. Puede ser meses o años. Cuando la madeira queda de perder peso está pronto.

All woods can survive violation to some extent. Hickory is at one extreme, but there’s a continuum. It’s still better not to violate the back if possible

@@DanSantanaBows and its much more esthetic

100%! I’ve actually been planning on it, and we’ve got plenty of field space for it here on the farm. Covid kinda got in the way, but I’m excited to try to get one going

It’s all about the equilibrium mc. If the humidity is high you’ll have to go even higher in temp

If you wanted to keep most of it you’d probably have to heat treat. Drying on the form would help. I didn’t really want all that reflex so i took it off sooner

Sure thing. You can contact me through my website and see more of my work there. dansantanabows.com

See the part of the video about equilibrium moisture content. Yes wood can get too dry, but the wood in the barn won’t overshoot the equilibrium moisture content with the air in the barn. If you measure the temp and humidity in the barn and look them up on the EQ MC chart you will know very precisely what MC that piece of wood has. Post some pictures of the piece on r/bowyer and I’ll let you know if it’s worth it. Also see the board selection diagram (in chapter 1 of the board bow tutorial) or in the board bow chapter of the back of the bow video

The inner bark serves as a buffer to make sure you don’t carve into the wood. Plus it protects the back of the bow during the rough out. Later when you have a bow shaped object there’s less surface area so you can put in the time to do a perfect job without having to do the whole entire stave

I definitely would. Absolutely love snappy short draw bows

@@DanSantanaBows yeahh bro they are my favourite type and were used most recently in history, when our great grandparents were alive plains warriors would be chasing trains on horseback shooting these deadly shortbows. I see you have acess to alot of hickory :), the Eastern Lakota and cheyenne tribes on the plains made stout bison hunting B shaped bows out of hickory. Thanks

Not really, unless you’re talking about eastern red cedar which is really a juniper. See the video how to break a bow 2 for an example of a cedar bow

Hazel and blackthorn are both great bow woods. You can quick dry them, just watch out for cracking

@@DanSantanaBows thanks I'll give it a go!

Do you know the species?

I don’t but it’s pretty simply, just a poorly made box with three lightbulbs wired up to a dimmer switch. For more or less heat you can use the dimmer or change the type of light

Sure but it’d be a bit tedious. A bushcraft knife would work a bit better but at the end of the day anything works if you stick with it long enough

If it’s a hairline crack along the fibers then I wouldn’t worry too much. If the crack severs fibers that’s a worry, but if the crack is just separating fibers without shearing them then it’s ok. If it runs off the side due to runoff that can be an issue too. Imagine pulling two bows next to each other. That’s basically one big bow with a massive tip to tip crack, yet it doesn’t break…as long as the two halves on either side are sound. So if the two ‘bows’ on either side of the crack are still sound with unviolated backs you are ok. But if the crack violates fibers the. it’s worth worrying

Make a drying box, heat treat, and use a good moisture barrier for your finish

Sort of but some are better than others. Less dense trees will need wider bow limbs

Hickory, hophornbeam, and elm. I also really like sugar maple, hornbeam, hazel and witch hazel, apple, buckthorn, and many others. There’s plenty of good wood around here

@@DanSantanaBows for some reason I didn’t see the reply . Thanks for the info . I have a good supply of hornbeam and ash where I am in maine . I did manage to find some nice elm but find it miserable to work !?

Great tips! The car solar kiln is definitely a bowyer classic

I was thinking of using my attic. I have a metal roof and I'm sure temps in the attic must be hotter than blue blazes in the summer.

Yes but most people slow dry pacific yew and report it improves with aging. I wouldn’t want to quick dry something valuable

Likely many bows/staves were kept up high in the hut where the warm air from the fire would keep them dry. This is just conjecture but it’s hard to imagine this wouldn’t have been taken advantage of. I don’t personally believe the smoke is doing much here and it’s all down to the time, temp, and humidity and your EQ. moisture content chart

I consider it from time to time but think lever bows are best for industrial manufacture. the trouble is that Green arrows is one of the least viable of the superhero bows to make at home. A serious attempt at a lever bow made without a proper factory…I’d have to charge the price of car for that much work and difficulty…and it would be worse than commercial lever bows. Or I could go a gimmicky route and use PVC as others have. But it wouldn’t be a serious attempt at making a good bow of that design, a cosplay gimmick is the best I would be able to do.

@@DanSantanaBows Okay, you've put it very nicely and I understand the problem, however if you were to decide, in the older comics from the famous "golden age of comics", Green Arrow had more classic bows, not dissimilar to what you do currently. The only differences are in the interesting details no and possibly you can use a green bow colour hah.

Well that fixes everything, thank you. Green Arrow is back on the menu!

Pretty much anything that can clog up the pores will work, so I bet it would!

@@DanSantanaBows sweet thanks for the reassurance

it can be but quick drying also increases the risk of warp and alignment issues, especially with a lot of reflex

⁠@@DanSantanaBowsgot it! Thanks!

With a cheap little temperature/humidity gauge. Here they’re $5-10 often for pets or gardening. The type I recommend against are moisture ‘meters’ with pins that you have to stick in the wood, but those measure the mc of the wood not the air

@@DanSantanaBows thanks! This was a great guide!

Not really, it won’t loosen up the bark. You can use a hot shower instead. Some species will pressure wash very well too. Honestly I don’t mind stuck bark and prefer to use the drawknife since it looks the best

See the video for advice on using an equilibrium moisture content chart. Time is a very poor predictor of moisture content so I can’t answer that question

This is the way 😂

ha, pretty much! On the plus side you have a lot more control of the drying process when it doesn’t go so fast, and can always force it faster if you need. In a very humid place heat treating can really help reduce how much the wood is affected by moisture

Sounds close! It’s my middle name. Much easier to pronounce

@@DanSantanaBows ohh ♥️ . I love archery . In India there is a grantha name Mahabharata. There is immense knowledge about archery in Mahabharata. We indians just love archery . U got a subscriber mate. ♥️

drawknife. see my video about them

I’ve planted way more trees than I’ve cut and year after year I keep the forest nicer than when I found it. Deforestation is a huge issue but responsible use of sustainable materials is completely different. Tree branches rarely have good enough staves. I don’t know any serious bowyers who primarily use branches

Oh,okay

any glue or spray is fine. I’m using spray shellac here. Wood glue cut with water is most common

great tip!

Why would you post such an ignorant comment. You think we were cavemen?