Clay Hayes Hunter Building a Pacific yew bend – from start to finish

Clay Hayes Hunter Building a Pacific yew bend – from start to finish

For this video on bow building, I’ll start with a log and show you the whole process of building a Pacific yew recurve bow. Pacific yew is very similar to the European yew that was historically used to make the classic English longbow. We start by splitting a good bow stave, removing the bark and cutting the stave to length. One of the great characteristics of this particular wood is that the sapwood is highly resistant to tension and the heartwood is resistant to compression. By leaving a thin layer of sapwood on the back of this selfbow, we obtain a natural support. This stave has a thick layer of sapwood, so I thin it to about 1/8″ thick. We then lay out the bow limbs and handle, remove any excess wood with a draw knife and rasp, and begin to carve the bow. Tying consists in removing the wood from the rigid parts of the bow, while avoiding the weaker parts. This allows the branches to bend evenly from side to side in a beautiful arc. Finally, I cut out a shelf for the arrows, sand, straw the steel wool and burnish the wood before shooting my new primitive bow.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. Every week we post a new video on one of the following topics: archery, bowhunting, bowmaking, survival techniques, bushcraft, self-reliance, primitive techniques, primitive bows, hunting, camping, fishing, and much more!

Many thanks to our partners who help us finance these videos!

Backpacks – https://kifaru.net/
Archery equipment – https://www.3riversarchery.com/
Tents and tarpaulins – https://seekoutside.com
Binoculars – https://www.vortexoptics.com
Arrowheads – https://siriusarchery.com/tuffhead-home/
Bow arrows – https://surewoodshafts.com/
Clothing – https://www.firstlite.com/

You can also contact me on my other media!
Website: https://www.twistedstave.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clayhayeshunter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clayhayeshunter/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/clayhayes (tagsTranslate)self bow

source
We make the best traditional archery, bow making, recurve hunting, craftsmanship and survival videos on the web.

Join Clay, Liz and the kids on their outdoor adventures, from bowhunting deer and elk in the mountains of Idaho to hunting wild hogs in Florida, and practicing crafts and survival skills. We hunt and fish because we love it, but it’s also how we get most of our meat.

Hunting is our way of life. We also cultivate a large garden on our Idaho property. This, combined with hunting, fishing and gathering, is how we obtain most of our food.