(upbeat music) - Hey there. I wanna talk to you about our show sponsors. First, let's highlight polite but dangerous tools. I've personally purchased three knives from Sam Curtis at polite but dangerous tools and later had them on the podcast. I use one of their super sharp nest mucks to skin out a bear just a few weeks back with ease. Use of discount code, all caps bowyer. That's B-O-W-Y-E-R in all caps to save 10% on your orders from polite but dangerous tools. If you wanna learn more about Sam and his creative process, check out polite but dangerous tools anywhere on the interwebs. Next up, we have Vuni gear. We've officially partnered with the great folks at Vuni. A few months ago, I purchased the vertical tee from Vuni for a pig hunt in Florida. After the hunt I wrote Brian, the founder of Vuni, to provide some positive feedback. And later, that led to a three hour long phone conversation. Then I tested the altitude pant and Helios hoodie during my Manitoba bear hunt. I wore the Helios hoodie for three days straight and was super impressed by the way the fabric maintained its form and lacked the tail tail odor of most synthetic materials. I'll be using the altitude pant and the Helios hoodie for all of my early season hunts here in North Carolina and I'm very excited to try out the insulation and rain gear during my Kodiak hunt in late October. Use the discount code bowyear15 at checkout to save 15% off all Vuni gear. Check them out at vunigear.com. That's V-U-N-I-G-E-A-R dot com. Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in. During this episode, Dan Santana and I introduce our multi part series called bowyear in the making where we walk through the various processes of making your own self bow from choosing a tree to making or acquiring a stave, hand tools, bow designs, tillering and finally putting a string and employing your new bow. Dan is a master bowyear and a YouTuber who wants to teach the world to make bows. He's obsessed with self bows, their rich past and the community dedicated to making them. He loves explaining the craft and sharing his rich art with everyone that he can. Dan's got a great YouTube which I've used for a couple of years now that I reference. I mean, he draws out schematics and goes step by step with how to make bows from different woods, whether it's from a piece of oak board that you get at the hardware store to harvesting a tree even a stave and bringing that piece of functional art to fruition. He also has a pretty impressive Reddit channel called our bowyear which we'll put in the show notes but that's where current aspiring bow years go on there and they post questions for some of the gray beards to answer whether that's, hey, is this a go good bowwood or hey, I've encountered some cracks or fractures in this bow. Is this something to worry about? How can I fix it? Can everybody give me a tiller check? It's really pretty darn impressive at how passionate Dan is and not just making bows but in educating people. He's made, he was put on this earth to educate. I believe it and he's very good at it and he's very passionate about it. But like I said, this is gonna be the first part of a series. Bowyear in the making is gonna be a five to six part series depending on how long each episode ends up being but it's also kind of meant to supplement from an audio format, some of the videos that Dan publishes on his own YouTube channel. And again, we'll put all this stuff in the show notes but in my mind, I learned best if I'm being told things over and over or I repeat them or something of that nature to where I can then apply that experientially. So a lot of this is kind of meant for when you're at the gym or you're driving to work and things of that nature, you can listen to the various steps of this process and then you can go home and re-listen to various parts if you want to as you're trying to make your own bow or couple that with some of the YouTube tutorials that Dan also produces. But I've rattled on enough for now for this introduction. I hope you really liked this first episode. It's meant to be kind of free flowing and organic but also give an introduction to this series that will end up being a lot more structured and tutorial. And also just ignore the noises in the background that is my phone going off because it's amateur hour and my dog is snoring. So without further ado, I want to get back to the show remind everybody to get outside, get a little dirty and learn something new. Thanks. - Hello and welcome to the Bogier's podcast where we explore the ancient art of bow making traditional archery in the age old pursuit of wild game. Together we're going to chat with masters of their craft to uncover the deeper why behind reviving the old ways in a modern world. Today I've got the great pleasure of sitting down with my friend and inspiration Dan Santiana. - Dan, how are you? - Oh great, I'm excited to be here. Glad to talk bows. - Man, I'm so glad that we finally made this happen. I feel like I'm part of the cool kids club now which means I have an Oscar syndrome. The fact that I get to talk to folks like you and Corey and I've never been on a podcast before. - Oh man, I hadn't until I started this podcast. I guess it's like I'm the wedding singer. You're like, I'm like, I get to do what I want 'cause I'm the guy with the microphone. So man, after I went to that course with Corey, I asked him, I said, hey, I need like material 'cause he doesn't have like a book. And at the time, I don't think he had a YouTube. And I was just like, I need constant feedback on this 'cause this is a path that I want to take. I love it, it's beautiful. And he was like, you've got to look at Dan Santiana and Wayland Olive. If you're not looking at those two YouTubes, like you're missing, there's going to be a huge void in your training material. - Yeah, he's awesome. - He's awesome. - He's so much from his videos. - Man, and I got to pay him a visit at one these days 'cause he's in the same state. He's in Western North Carolina. I'm out here on the East Side. Yeah, I'd be a good excuse to get to the mountains. But man, I can tell you, I've rewatched hundreds of hours of your tutorials that you provide on the old YouTube. And it's not just the, hey, here's my stave. And this is what I'm doing. You talk about what trees make good boa woods, which generally for you is almost anything where there are folks on, say, forums and Reddit and things that nature will tell you all. Like here's like these, you're like the top six species in the southeast. And here are the ones in the Midwest, and here are the ones in the Pacific Northwest. And you're like definition, if you can make a bow out of it and tie a string to it and shoot a pointy stick, it is in fact a bow. Now there are other variables, whether it's speed or longevity and durability of the bow itself and all these things that you outlined very well. But you probably more than anybody have lowered the barrier to entry to get somebody, to get a draw knife and a rasp and a piece of wood. And I think that's awesome. And I guess this is me saying thank you. - Oh, thanks, I appreciate that. Everyone gets so caught up on what's the best bow wood. And I don't think we're doing this craft 'cause we care about what's the best. If we wanted the best weapon, we might be shooting a gun or a compound bow. It's even if something's not the best bow wood, there's a bow in there. And then you can find it and that's fun. It's fun to listen to different pieces of wood and ask them like, what kind of bow is in you? You don't need the best bow to have an awesome time and have a meaningful connection with nature and trees growing around you. - That's true, right? Like it's the very like holistic nature of the whole process. And I think I've talked about it, Cori. I talked about it. It's like making custom bows for people. And while I love the fact that when I get to pass off a bow for somebody and they love it and they're shooting it and they send me little videos and thank yous is super rewarding. It's super encouraging. But there's also the like, here's a piece of wood and I know there's a bow in there, but I don't know what kind of bow it's going to be when you're trying to force an organic material like bow or by like wood into becoming a useful tool. It usually doesn't work out in your favor a lot of times. And if it does, there are a lot of obstacles along the way. If you find this organic material and follow what it's compelling you to do, I feel like it's a lot more fruitful in the end. - It's, you have to learn to not be a domineering with the wood. It's actually, it's such a delicate balance. Like it really is, it's like a relationship. - Very much. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it actually. Yeah, it was like a relationship. - Like you spend a lot of time with these pieces of wood. Like you're really good to know them. - Oh yeah. And especially the more troublesome ones, like I've got a piece of oat stage. There's a beautiful, it was a big stage. There was actually a split in two. So where I'm going to make two snakey bows out of it. But I've had these staves since the late June. And usually I don't have a robust collection of staves. And I don't have the oat stage out here in the southeast. Having them, I'm like, man, I'm gonna make these beautiful, snakey bows. But I also know that if I start getting a little agitated with the wood, I'm gonna make a mistake. And it's gonna be those mistakes that you can't turn back from. That's good. Oh, now I'm gonna make a really cool kids bow is what it's gonna be. And I don't wanna do that. So I've tried to exercise more patience with these more difficult pieces. At that point, you realize for every curve and every knot is in that piece of wood. So that when it comes out and it's a bow, you really appreciate those obstacles that you encountered, right? Because they probably result in beauty and character in a finished product. - Right. And then now you're shooting with something you have a deep relationship with. It's part of your arm, you know? - Yeah, very much. Oh, man. Yeah, this is gonna be fun, brother. So I guess I'll give a little backstory for listeners before we go into the Dan Santana origin story. But for those of you can't tell, I've really admired Dan. And I think he's not only a fantastic bow year, he is born to educate people. And he's got a gift at conveying his messages through video, but also through text and through visual aids and through like art via schematics and things that nature where Dan has produced. Like in my shop downstairs, I've printed off like schematics that you've made for bows and the grains of board bows and grains of staves and all this stuff. And it's down there as a reference material. It's both are folded up and stuffed inside the bow year Bible for me because I reference those things. - That's an ultimate compliment. - It's got my, I've got a cheat sheet of things. And because I-- - It's like working the bow year's Bible well. - I'm green enough where I have to reference those things on a regular basis still. - No, I try to read the bow year's Bibles again for the other year that's so important. - Yeah. - It really is. - It's always refreshed a lot, right? - Like you have a different angle on it every time. - And that's awesome. That's really cool. There are many authors that have many perspectives in there and why they may have agreed on what was put into text. You can derive a different angle for I think every time you're reviewing some of those chapters. - And the way they disagree with each other, that like really made me fall in love with the craft the way these guys are all trying to detect each other's BS and shut it down. - Yeah. - That was such a great dynamic. It really made me want to be a bow year. - Yeah, if you can't get inspired in those pages, I don't, you've got problems, right? - There's something magic in there. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And to continue this backstory is I would love and it's feedback that I've had, right? It's, hey, I know you're talking to bow years and it's great to tell their stories. People are like, I'd really like to figure out, use some of the material in the podcast to help inform me on how to start diving into this domain of self bows and bow ure and all this stuff and bow making and some materials. And Dan, I was so encouraged. I want to reach out to you with his ideas. Hey man, would you like to do this little journey together where we help build an audio series on how to make a bow from, from inception, from what makes you want to build a bow to some of the history and context to choosing a bow would to holy crap here. You made a stick that shoots plenty of sticks and now you can harvest animals with it. And that's what we're going to do, y'all. We're going to build a series, which we've titled bow year in the making and this is the introduction in volume one. And this will probably be a five to six part series that we're going to release each month. So one week a month we're going to release a bow year in the making and it'll be subsequent volumes where really Dan spearheads walking us through the process of making your own bow. Now we obviously have the absence of visuals. So you can certainly supplement and I encourage you to supplement the audio here with the videos that Dan provides on this YouTube which will absolutely provide in the show notes and things of that nature. But hey, I can't watch YouTube on my commute to work and things of that nature while I'm working out in the gym. And I think this is going to be a perfect supplement to that. And I hope that's what people will get out of it. So that's what we're doing here. So for the next six months or so, this is what you can expect to hear once a month. And I think both of us would get a lot out of the feedback that listeners are providing and things that you would also like to hear because we can call an audible and throw that into the next chapter that we have with our series and make sure that folks are getting the most out of their time which is scarce for a lot of folks these days, right? As they listen to us. So without further ado, Dan, give us your origin story, please, sir. - In 2015, I randomly decided to get into archery and I bought a cheap bow from eBay, fiberglass bow, modern with a big riser. And it was not a magical experience at all. I was like, this is cool. But something about the way it vibrates doesn't sit right with my soul. But I was very interested in archery. And since I was like down that rabbit hole on the internet, I started to see tutorials. And that just put the idea in my head to make bows. And I saw the backyard bow years videos with PVC and thought, wow, that's wild. You can just take a $5 PVC pipe and make a bow in an afternoon, that seems cool. And I didn't do it then, but I just put the idea in my head to make a bow. That's like wild to me that there are people doing this. And instead of following the tutorials, I decided to do it on my own. Just trying to reinvent the wheel and I just tried to figure out how to make a bow. And it's the worst bow I've ever seen. I don't know if I've seen someone else's first bow that is as bad as this one. Like I had the idea too. I didn't know that, 'cause I wasn't an archer at the time. So I didn't know how to adjust the bracelet of the bow. And I didn't know about bow years knots. So I had this idea that you could make a knock that rotated around and you would use this to tighten the string and raise and lower the bracelet. I didn't know at the time that bracelet is a trivial issue and it's not hard to adjust the bracelet. So I made a whole mechanism to so you twist the knock, you lock it in place and this changes the bracelet. And when I would shoot the bow, the mechanism would come off and the whole knock would spin around like a weed wacker. It was the most pathetic bow and it was absolutely terrible. And the whole experience really humbled me and made me excited to see how is this actually done? And then from then on, I read everything. I just watched as many videos as I could. And I've been making shavings almost every day since and it's the first arrow I fired it clicked. I was like, this is what I was trying to get into. It wasn't, I don't know, something about the fiberglass bow just didn't scratch the itch. And making it what wouldn't bow just really did. Just that simple thing about. - Yeah, it's a simplicity, right? The bareness of it too. I know where I'm like, I've got some recurs I still really very much but from the self bow side with a single piece of wood, it's so light and it's so minimal. And even when, especially when you don't have a quiver or anything like that attached, it's just, I don't know, for me it is a point of peace. I think I'm one of those types of men that struggles with peace. - Absolutely. - And maybe that's like a military background or maybe it's just in our DNA as men but there's always gonna be a battle to be fought, right? - That's universal. This is therapeutic for everyone. - And when you simplify something like that and it's raw, it helps bring peace for life's lives. - And you have to be calm to make a bow. So you have to learn to be calm. If you're not calm, you can't make a bow. You're gonna screw it up. - Yes, as I know very much from experience personally. - Force forces you to come down. - My campfire ringing out in the backyard has been fed a few angry wannabe bows. Definitely, we've all been there. But yeah, I think the bow making just scratched a really primal itch, I think, those mammals, like humans, we love parabolic arcs. I love things that fly in a parabolic arc and on a deep level, as a kid, I was obsessed with model rockets. - Oh, that's true. - I love building them. - It's like rewatch October sky all the time. - Yeah, hit the button and see the thing go. That was such a magical feeling, but it always broke my heart that you were expanding an engine. And then when I started making bows, I'm like, oh my God, I have every time I load up an arrow, that's a rocket. And I can just pull the bow back again and again. It's just, I'm the rocket. That was so cool. - It really is. And I love to shoot at targets and stuff like that. And obviously I'm a hunter. But man, it's even, I know some of the videos you have where you're just like shooting out here, you're getting these images where the sun, so the sunlight's in the background. You can see the tiller of your bow and everything else and you shoot at an upward angle. Well, the purpose of that is actually just like, it's satisfying to see that arrow make a long arc and just let it naturally come down, right, when you're shooting in a pasture. - That's what we're going to look to. - Why do we skip stones? - Yeah, right. - It's a slingshot. You get a slingshot and you're just shooting rocks into the lake or the river. And it's kind of you just want to watch them. - It's funny, flight orchard is one of the most controversial things to post online. I'll put up a flight orchard post and people are like, don't you lose your arrows? Don't you know you're not supposed to do that? You're sky drawing. Again, how are you supposed to shoot into the sky without sky drawing? - Yeah, I was just going to say, yeah, like you're not shooting at a squirrel. You're literally intentionally doing the opposite. I don't know, everybody's got an opinion when they've got a keyboard though too. So you made your first bow. - I followed Sam Harper's tutorial. - Okay. - So Sam Harper's, he did a boardbow tutorial and with fiberglass backing, which I don't like, but it's an excellent tutorial. It like, it still stands up today. - Yeah, so I went to Home Depot. I got a board, followed his tutorial to the letter and I got a shooting bow. I made two like that and I was completely hooked. Working with fiberglass was very disappointing. I thought that it would hold the bow together, stop it from failing and it really didn't. And I saw that on both of my first two bows. It failed on the belly, not the back. So the fiberglass was irrelevant and I hated working with it and I thought it made the bows really ugly. So as soon as I stopped, I felt forced to come taking off the leg braces and just running on his own. - Being liberated. - Yeah, like just making my first self bow was very special. Just back with air, felt so free. - You say back with air and it taps into the schema a little bit here because you harp on that in your videos, right? Like what's the best backing for a bow? - I feel almost still in that phrasing from the Boer's Bibles, I think that's timber. It's air and so many people are like, oh, I did this with rawhide or sinew or whatever else that is. And sometimes aesthetically, that's really cool. But for the most part, if the pinning the bow wood and the associated draw weight, air is that best back, right? - Yeah. - And why, may I ask like, why is that? - That's the poetry of a self bow. It's backed with itself, it's made of itself. If you have an intact layer of fibers along back, which is we say the bow is unviolated, then it's already backed with itself. Like you have a wood backing, if you added a wood backing, you have to add an unviolated backing, it's just the same thing, you don't need it. And that I always thought that was beautiful and there was something wholesome about a bow made from itself. And I'm putting something on the back, like even if it like looks cool, it's ruined that poetry for me. So that's, my obsession is with self bows. I like backed bows, but I don't think they're nearly as cool. - Yeah, I'm with you. I also just don't like to complicate it. - Yes. - One moving part. - Yeah, I am curious about, my curiosity has been sparked a little bit more about bending the tips or adding a little bit of recurve or something like that. I wanna dabble in it a little bit. A guy, a young man, provisioned long bows. - Oh yeah, I've talked to Steven a bunch. - He's super great, but he just sent me a form for a recurve tip. - Oh really, I started making those? - Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to start dabbling and trying that out, mostly just to add a little bit of speed, maybe from time to time. But I also am not one of those guys ever hooks up a chrono or anything out in the back yard either. - Don't do it for speed. You do it for superficial reasons. 'Cause it's just, you know. - Generally too, right? Like I am like, to me, it's just a, I'm dabbling. I mean, it's a dabbling reason is what it is. I just wouldn't do it because I think it might be fun. - I will say that recurves are faster and that, like, that may be true, for example, in fiberglass, but the problem with wood is you have to pull off the bow. You actually have to make it. And since the recurves stress out the wood more, you might just end up with a more over-stressed bow. So you can easily bite off more than you can chew. So really technically, what recurves do is they give you the ability to have better string angles on a shorter bow. - Yeah, on a shorter limb bow. - And so you don't need recurves to have better string angles. You could just make a longer bow. So that's why I really love long bows is 'cause you have the string angle advantage that recurves have. You just have to deal with the bow being longer. - Yeah, and I think- - I like the long and every bows, personally. - So, like I, where I went here in the Southeast, clearly in Eastern North Carolina, it's super thick and swampy. And having a 68 or 70 inch long bow is troublesome. - Yeah, it's real thick where I live too. We have a lot of like invasive multi-flora rows. - Yeah, they get you. - And the barberry. So it's thick and thorny. The thing I'll say though about long bows is long recurves are hard to be in the woods with, like a 60 inch bow and a 70 inch bow are the same to carry around if it's a straight bow. I feel like, 'cause you're carrying it sideways, like weaving in through holes is the same. So personally, I don't mind a longer bow as long as it's a straight, straight bow. Recurves when they're long get tangled in everything. - I'll add it, I'll add one more variable to it. And it's not playing devil's advocate, 'cause I'm not in disagreement. I was using one of the bows I got from Corey. I bought a long bow, a 66 inch. They had a little bit of snakiness to it was hickory, long bow from him last year. And I love that bow. And it's also the heaviest bow I've got right now is at 60. And it shoots dad gum laser beams. I'm super impressed with it. But last year I was out and I was hunting from the ground, but sitting on the ground. And that's where I was like, okay here, now I've got a little thing, trying to, I've got to can't it quite a bit more to get that bottom limb off the ground to draw back and release. But I also think for me also 66 is actually like a really comfortable length. Now having a nice smooth string angle with longer bow, I think it'd be fun and really smooth. But for me, especially for hunting off the ground, it would just be like me. But that particular situation, like that's where asymmetric bows really shine. 'Cause they've got more. - And I've never made one. - Yeah, it's fun to try. 'Cause we're just so fixated on this idea that like the bows got to be symmetrical. And for no reason, like the bow does not have to be symmetrical, but we just feel like it does. And like it looks weird when the bow is not symmetrical, which we just have this innate bias. - You just posted a bow and somebody had, I think it was on something and somebody was like, is that upside down? You're like, no, actually it's. - Oh, yeah, the lower limit, more deflexos. - A little bit more negative tiller than usual. - It was probably by just a couple of inches, but with the view, like photo of the nice tiller, it maybe looked more, but. - They were right, it did look a little different. - Yeah, but like as bipedal people, like bipedal people, as bipeds, like we've got two eyes, we've got two arms, two legs, like we're generally symmetrical, unless you're like me and you probably just look at what's his name, the weird guy from the Goonies, but most people look symmetrical. And I think when we look at things, we even try to impose nature to be symmetrical at times, right? Like we trim trees so that they're symmetrical, which is just so dumb, but like when you're looking at a bow, like there's something you're like, oh, like it's like the shelf or knocking point or whatever is in the middle, give or take it once or so. And then it's got a nice even bin on each side. - But you can't, the trouble is you can't both grip in the middle and shoot from the middle. You'll put an arrow through your hand. The minute you put your arrow above your hand, now you've got an asymmetric system. - Yeah. - So you might as well make an asymmetric bow if you want to. You don't have to. - That's good insight. And I love that you can challenge the, I don't know, the purists maybe sometimes. And that's what you do, I think really good at without being passive aggressive. Who says we have to do it this way? That's why it's been done that way. Maybe that's perpetuating mistakes sometimes too. Why not try it? - Well, it definitely hasn't. There are so many asymmetric designs from history, like that the Yumi is the dramatic example. The Andaman Islands bows are some really cool ones. - It's super neat. It's something I want to dive into. I also know that I had the attention span of a chipmunk. So I've got to only focus on one to three styles, or else I'll just like half ass a bunch of things. So I'm like, I can achieve proficiency at one to three styles. Like I'm pretty good, but that's why I get to talk to super smart folks like you that have achieved a depth of mastery and a lot of, and at least several things, you're constantly curious. And sometimes you're like, oh, just try this thing. And I'm like, man, I don't have time for that, or I don't want to mess up a stave or whatever. And so worst thing that happens is you mess up a stave, right? Like generally like it's, or you will intentionally make a bow and test it out, test its tension and things of nature. Can you overdraw bow and some of these things? And I think it is part of what we want to do on this series is lower that barrier to entry. So many people have fears that are imposed on them whether they're superficial or not. And it's what's the worst that's gonna happen right now, right? And that you spend eight or 10 hours on something that doesn't quite work out, but you learn from it. Like to me, that's still winning. That's a pretty sound investment. - The thing is with me is I'm a bow your first, and then a bunch of other things, and then an archer, that like I'm spending the shop making bows. That's it for me. It's not so much about the end goal of having the bow that I can shoot. I like shooting. I'm a mediocre shot and I don't practice enough and stuff. It's all about the bow making. So I don't care if I make an entire bow just to torture test it. At least like people are gonna see that and learn something. So that's totally worth it for me. - Where do you draw your inspiration from? Is it just natural curiosity? Is there literature? Is there like a background that you have? So I think it's related to this. Like where do you draw your inspiration from with a bow making? - Number one, like nature, I've always been obsessed with nature and especially evolution. I wanted to be an evolutionary biologist when I was a kid and I was obsessed with frogs, which is why there's so many frogs in the videos. - That's cool. - Yeah, so that's the first thing. I've always been attracted to how refined the designs in nature are. And human designs don't always have that same level of refinement that like a dolphin or a bird has. And I fell in love with birds with bows because they have this. Like they, since they've gone through an evolutionary process, possibly, I think it's actually an evolutionary process. We don't have to get into that. But sort of like tumbled through this process and refined. - Yeah, in a way there's an adaptation that happens, right? - Yeah, there's like cultural elements that are passed down and sometimes they're cloned in a way that there's error. And so there's actually like genetic drift in that way. So I think bows actually did evolve. I don't know if that theory holds up to water. - Yeah, so nature was always inspiring. And then other bow years, bow years from history. Like bows from history is the number one inspiration. And then other crafts every year I tried to learn a new craft and it just teaches me to use my tools in a new way or use new and different tools, learn new finishing techniques, learn new ways of carving wood and shaping it. All that kind of stuff. - You also use speaking of nature. You use a lot of natural dies and things of that nature in the bows that you make instead of a lot of polyurethane or store-bought dies and paints and things of that nature. How did you go along part of that? - It's a really cool community, the natural dies community. A lot of like really cool old ladies who are happy to teach you everything they know. So I use a lot of fugitive dies. Those are dies that will fade away over time, which is slightly controversial in the die community 'cause they want artwork that lasts forever. - Mm-hmm, preservation, right? - Yeah, but I'm okay with the bow fading and I'm trying to create textures and not necessarily on artwork. So it's okay if things fade. - I think even let's use something as basic as Osage, right? Like it's bright orange, but even over time and exposure in the sun, it turns like a nice honey amber color, right? - Yeah. - I think nature is supposed to change a little bit over time. And I have not, I've experimented only with turmeric and with beet on a couple of bows. And neither time was I like stoked about the outcomes. Like turmeric came out like bright-ass yellow. - It's hard to find ones that come out nice. - But you've, man, like just the unique colors and as you mentioned, the textures that will pop from the grain on those bows, I'm just like, man, like how, I would not have put those two together. Like I would never thought of that. And then all of a sudden it looks really beautiful. - So the things I've really been exploring last couple of years are dies that react with the tenons in the wood. So they react differently to every wood, which is cool. So I'm talking about like vinegaroon, iron vinegar dye. And then ammonia, which you can use ammonia to wipe on or to fume the wood. And then, oh, and then the other one I'm getting into is aquafortis, which is a, it's like vinegaroon, except that it doesn't react until you hit it with a heat gun. So it gives you the like refined control of a spray gun. - Interesting. - Yeah, fuming's really cool. There's a bowyer from Germany. Simon Seis, I don't know how to say his last name, Simon from Bavaria. And he makes amazing bows, primitive stone ways. I maybe get in that wrong. He's got an awesome website, probably one of my favorite bowyer's. - That's awesome. - I've got a couple of European bowyer's coming up over the next two months. One's from Sweden, the other one is from Croatia, but I'm not following Simon, but so now I want to and chat with him. - Oh, you've got to check out Simon. He's like top three, one of my favorite bowyer's. Like it's tied for first, he's amazing. - That's awesome. And plus I used to spend a lot, I lived in Germany for a few years. I used to spend a lot of time down to Bavaria too. So now I'm like, oh man, now I've got nostalgia. - Yeah, fuming is really cool. So fuming used to be like a special, you could buy a specially fumed oak. And that's when you just leave the oak hanging in a room with a lot of ammonia. And it turns black and different woods turn different colors depending on the tenons in there. And they originally figured this out because barnyards that were made of oak would turn black over time. So they realized it was all the ammonia fuming up the wood. - Interesting. - Yeah, now you can buy a bonya, but the old fashioned way was to do it with pee. But I'm not that dedicated to dyes. - You're not gonna start peeing on all your bows? - No. - So there's gonna be some weird niche where they try to get like celebrities to pee on people's bows now and like market that. - Especially fumed, yeah. - We're starting to go off the rails. Thanks to me and my tiny brain. - You can use some like flowers and herbs and stuff too for some of your dyes though, right? - Yeah, I use, so I don't like to extract dyes. I just, I rub them directly. It's 'cause it's already constant, the pigments are already concentrated in petals. So I just, I rub them directly. I try them out in advance and if they don't work, I don't use them. But the main one I use is corn flour, which is a really nice deep blue. It is, so it is an anthocyanin-based pigment so it will fade over time. But I've gotten years out of it. Like I have a little way. - Yeah, I have a bow I stained three or four years ago and it looks like the day I made it. - That's awesome. - The other one is a blood root. It's a really nice orange. I use that a lot. - Is that a wild flower? I'm not familiar with blood here. - Yeah, it's a wild flower and then you harvest the root. It looks like turmeric. - Okay. - And yeah, you can rub it on like a marker. It'll turn your bow orange. - That's really neat. Yeah, I've, not the only thing I've done any, so I do meningurine a lot. I just, it looks like, one, I like to do, I think it looks really good on Osage. I also feel like almost just makes Osage. Sometimes it'll make it turn like a darker brown and bring out some of the grain. Other times it just makes it look like that Osage has been out in the sun for two years, which is also fine. I've used it on Hickory and I was like, "Ah, it's okay." - It goes green gray. It's not good. - Yeah. - No, it doesn't pop too much. - But it gives it a cool like weathered, weathered look. - It does. Yeah, it looks, it's subtle. - Rugged, yeah, it gives it a little permanent look. - I like leather dialogue for whitewoods. - Man, I've got a whole shelf of the feeblings different leather dies that I've, a couple of, I've tried that I didn't like, it was just 'cause it was like, I think there's one that's like achy or something like that and it was like bright orange. And I use black less, but I might use it thinly like around the riser and the tips of the limbs. And then I'll rub it down with like steel wool to make it fade a little bit in. But yeah, there's a few, I think cardovan and I know they're like burgundy one that I really like those colors. - Yeah, I use the saddle tan one a lot and the black. - And I also just, you don't have the same amount of fumes and toxins and stuff like that and all those leather dies that you do. And so it's polyurethane style, which when people have their skin contact with the bow over time, if I want to try to make it as natural as possible. - That's why I love shellac, completely natural. It dries in seconds. - True. - And it's over several coatings that look, it still gives it that nice glassy look if that's what folks. - Yeah, you still get like a modern fine woodworking look to it, but it's natural. And I like working with it. I don't have the patience for Truil all the time. (laughing) - Also, yeah. - Even though it looks the best, but. - It does. - If you like a glossy finish. - Yeah. - So you've made a lot of different styles and I know you prefer like a long bow style. Do you have a, so we talked about some historical inspiration as well from historical bows that were made, is there one that you really like that is either one that you prefer to shoot or one that you prefer to build? - I'm generically inspired by bows from temperate climates with like similar forests to where I live, which is like the whole strip around the world, Europe and the US. There's a lot of places in the world with really similar forests. And they all made really similar bows to overgeneralize little. So I just, I love bows from Woodlands cultures in general. And they all, they tend to be, a lot of these are white wood bows. They're longer, they're fairly flat. We're a little taller than most people were back then. So I like to make bows longer than actual replicas. - So man sized bows. - Yeah. - It's not a little smaller if you go wider, but for long and narrow bows, I like them as tall as me. - Are you typically doing the flat bow pyramid style or are you? - So I, I don't know. - 'Cause there's only diversity in the Woodlands bows. What do you, what calls to you the most? - I do mostly parallel limbs for at least like 2/3 of the limb. I don't love pyramid bows because I always feel like I regret narrowing the outer limbs so much. I always feel like I want more bending limb in the outer limbs. And I don't love how like an equivalent pyramid bow is very wide in the inner limbs and narrower in the outer limbs. So you need a wider save for a pyramid bow. - I feel like my first few, like I was like, oh, I really, I do the profile and the look. And it's also just, there's some simplicity to the design, right? Like for, just for a new bow here, I think doing a pyramid style bow is like really nice because you've got, the measurements are relatively binary, but yeah, then there's, man, I've got this harsh angle from, on, especially in the middle and outer limbs. And typically now I've found that I like to go out like 12 or 14 inches from the riser and then I'll start coming in with that angle, just performance and look a little bit. Sorry, I interrupted with my. - Oh, no, I just like going for a little more like margin for error than a pyramid bow gives you. Like a little more width in the outer limbs. And that way you don't have to go as wide in the inner limbs. - I like that. - A lot of people say, a lot of people advocate for pyramid bows by saying that you can just give them circular tiller, which is like something people say a lot and is like half true. Like there are pyramid bows that would call for circular tiller, but most of them are going to call for some kind of elliptical tiller. - Yeah. - If there's any thickness taper at all, you're going to need a little bit of elliptical tiller. Outer limbs can bend to a tighter radius. - And we'll go into what thickness tiller is, probably more detail, but since we brought it up here, can you explain what you mean by thickness tiller? - So the thickness taper is-- - Deep rather, yeah. - Yeah, how the thickness changes from the inner limbs to the tips. So the thickness taper is determined by the tillering process. It's not really something you have control over, but depending on the design you pick, that'll influence the thickness taper you end up with. Now, the reason I brought it up is because if your bow has a thickness taper, it means the tips are going to be thinner than the inner limbs and thinner wood can bend to a tighter radius before it breaks or starts to take set. So if you have a thickness taper, that means your outer limbs can bend more than your inner limbs, which means that your tiller shave isn't circular. It's more elliptical. - elliptical. - You have like a warped circle. - I guess so with that, like we've got some taxonomy that we're describing here, right? So we've got our inner limbs, we've got our outer limbs. We know what our riser is. We're a handle, which some people will refer to, our fades. So as that, when we talk about thickness, we're talking about the thickness of that piece of wood. So if you have-- - Yeah, it's back to belly and then width is-- - Back to belly, there you go. I was gonna like be like, oh, if we're laid down on a table, this is what your thickness is and width. And that thickness and the width should taper like in parallel, right? Like in unison with each other a lot of times or not. - They're gonna be complementary, there we go. - Yeah, yeah. So for example, the more width taper you have. So if you have a pyramid bow is an example of a lot of width taper, wide inner limbs, narrow outer limbs, then you're gonna have less thickness taper. So a pyramid bow will have more circular tiller than a parallel limb bow, but not necessarily literally circular. And then on the other hand, if you have more thickness taper, you're gonna have less width taper. So like a parallel limb narrow bow is gonna have a little more thickness taper. - And we're talking about inner and outer limbs, right? So that you've got your inner limbs, which are the ones closest to your right or your handle in your middle limb and then your outer limb or your outer one third, right? Which is that part that's closest to the tips. So when we're using that was a nacular moving forward, folks will know what we mean, right? And the belly, most people, we're listening to the Bow Your Podcast, right? So most people know what the back and the belly are, but right, the belly is a portion of the bow that's facing your belly and the back is facing away from you. And how does that work belly and back for flexion and tension and things of that nature, Dan? - So the back is under tension, like it could be thousands of pounds of tension and then the belly is under compression. Wood is fairly, like wood is very strong in tension. So once you learn to pick a good board and make sure the back of the bow is unviolated, for the most part, like the back is pretty safe. So the limiting factor to performance for most bows is the belly. Wood struggles to keep up with the compression in a bow and rebounding to a straight state. So managing the belly is the big key to high performance bows, making sure your bows don't take a lot of set. And that primarily happens in the belly. - Perfect. Man, I definitely could explain it better. I can't wait to go into this a little bit further. I just wanna like, shall we get into some of that as a teaser for people, some of the things that we're gonna talk about, that'll probably be during volume two as we get into bowwoods and choosing your tree and things of that nature and how why we have to consider some of those things, right? Whether it's tension and flexion and things of that nature, why we pick certain woods. - Yeah, I don't like to just give people dimensions. I want them to understand the process so they can figure out the dimensions they need. - I think it's something different between training and education, right? Like training is teaching people what to think, education is teaching them how to think. And we're very much here trying to leverage education and tell people teach them how to think but the why's behind a lot of that, which it's the next segue was like really get into our introduction to bowmaking is generally what is a bow year? I think we probably brought this up on episode one of this podcast, but coming out of your mind, something that's a seasoned bow year Dan, what is a bow year? - I think once you get a string on it, it's a bow and you're a bow year. I don't think it's too complicated. There are different standards for being a professional bow year, but I don't like to say you're a professional bow year if you've gotten, if you've been paid for selling a bow at one point, right? - Yeah, yeah, a bow year is someone who makes bows. I don't think we need to keep that too much. - I love it. It's wide open. And again, it lowers that barrier to entry. And we bows are old. What's, do you remember recall that like the lowest, that the oldest intact bow, is that like the one, the home guard or? - Okay, I tried to shut up about history because I'm not an expert. Like, I've seen numbers like 10,000 years old, numbers like we've been making bows for 40,000. I don't know and I'm not qualified to evaluate which of those are correct. - I think the oldest one that was been intact is like 9,500 years old. And so there are a lot of like bow years that are history nerds that will try to, will make replicas of that bow, right? Because it's got sentimental and things that nature and referred to as a man sized bow, but back then humans were generally shorter and so on and so forth. But there have been remnants of bows that have been, what they think they've carbon dated to be much older than that, but they, it's like dinosaurs, right? They change like every year that what a T-rex or a velociraptor looks like changes in the eyes of science. So they have feathers, do they not? Do they, were they having a big incisor? Do they not? Could they swim? Could they not type of thing? And I think that changes with these portions of bows and other primitive tools have been found, whether it's the date and age range or the actual usage and implementation and design. But generally, right? - Yeah, we're talking 10,000 years at least. - Yeah, let's just put around mumb runner, right? Like people have been using bows for around 10,000 years that we know of and, or what we believe. And for a lot of, for a lot of cultures, that simple stick and string and the ability to fabricate that tool and use it to harvest food or to offensively attack a foe or defend you and yours has set up cultures, whether they're gonna survive and be able to procreate and pass on future generations or not. If there's a village that's throwing rocks or there's a village that shoots bows and arrows, there's probably gonna be arguably a victor in that match. - I bet there's people from the bow is just a tool and they didn't really care. And then other people where the bow was like had religious significance, I bet. I'm sure there was like a very wide range in terms of like how we see the bow. I know in a lot of cultures, it was like a coward weapon. It's like looking at a bow is like staring into a fire. It's, that's magic. 'Cause it's just, it's a fast enough motion that it just doesn't make sense to your brain. So it's still, I know how it works, but it's still magic every time I see it. - It really is. - And that's actually what's so compelling or inspiring about it, right? Like it just, you don't get tired of it, just like you don't get tired of sitting around a campfire and staring at it. - You really need to think else. - It's fun every time. - Yeah. - And generally like bows historically have been used around almost every known culture civilization that we have, but they have very much different. So we've got woodlands, the design of bows with woodland indigenous cultures and plains Indians for example, do differ. And I'm sure in one of our series, we can do a little bit of a deep dive or something of that nature and dive into some of it. We've got a lot of literature. And the same thing goes across the North Americas and Latin America. We've also seen a lot of similarities and bow designs from say like Western Europe and former indigenous tribes in Europe as we've seen in North America also. And then there's different variables that go into play when we've got Vikings or in the Middle East or the Mongols. But when it comes down to it, there are a lot of really one bow making and shooting bows to either defend attack or harvest game, harvest meat have been in our culture for a good 10,000 years. - We all have ancestors that made bows and arrows. - Yeah, everybody except for Australians. But yeah, but generally everybody that's alive, somebody in their family tree, dating way back when has picked up a stick and string and flung a pointy stick with it. - But rounding up this hobby like brings you a connection to everybody. - Indeed. - Yeah. - Which let's look at this right now. Look at like the, you read it, our bow your forum and we'll leave a link to that in the show notes. There's people all across the globe that are on that forum that are designing and showcasing bows that they make in their backyard or in their garage and things of that nature. - And I can see my YouTube demographic is mostly international. - That's impressive. - Yeah, which I'm really excited about. It's 30 or 40% US. But I really love like using the translator talking to people in different languages. That's always fun for me. - It really is. Yeah, it's inspiring to know that you're reaching folks or at the very least have sparked their curiosity from abroad, right? - Oh yeah, there's viewers in India, a bunch in Africa, all over the world. The thing I selfishly wanted to get out of this since you've seen my tutorial so many times is what are the holes in the teaching? What stuff did you find that the tutorial didn't help you with where you had questions or what are the blind spots you think there might be in my content? - Is that a direct question to me? - Yeah. - Man, I guess only because now I've a couple years into this journey and I've rewatched a lot of that content, it might be easier to highlight. But really, I'm a visual learner with things, which is, but I also, if it's gonna be an audio, I'm one of those people that I listen to and I repeat. If it's a non-fiction book, for example, that I wanna listen to, but I wanna make sure I understand history or context or something like that, I'm probably gonna listen the same thing a few times over. It's just, I don't have a giant brain, it's just the way I do. Man, the only thing I would say is like having, you do really well at writing down the schematic for things. - I know obviously I don't mean just like measurements, right? 'Cause the measurements don't work for everybody. Or every piece of wood or every bow. Or let's say, all of your staves are hickory and you only wanna make one style of bow. Your measurements are still gonna change a little bit, probably every single bow. But it's just those visuals, like those schematics. I wish they were like not schematics, but the drawings of grain and things of that nature, also I would screw up drawing a stick person. So the fact that you have a gift with a pencil and paper, I would wanna see five times the amount of like drawings, a showcase, those things. 'Cause sometimes when you explain your thoughts, I'm visualizing it and I might not be visually the eyes of it the right way. So like I think for folks that like, we're talking about some of those things is like just having more of those artistic visuals that you present sometimes. - Yeah, I like that. I'm always trying to add in more of them. I like couldn't draw it all when I started the YouTube channel. I had terrible handwriting growing up. And then I just had to make diagrams. And was like, okay, we'll sit through YouTube tutorial and try to make my handwriting better and learn. And then I got into restoring vintage fountain pens. - Okay. - Yeah. So I started buying fountain pens that are like a hundred years old and still have gold tips. And the thing that's cool about them is that the tips are flexible. So the harder you press, the times will spread apart and you get a wider line. So you can have character to the way you write. - Do you do calligraphy and stuff as well? - Badly, I try. But I'm trying to learn just so I can make better diagrams. - Yeah, man, 'cause I'd like screenshot it. Some of the drawings you've made on YouTube and that's what I've printed out. - And to accumulate enough that I just, I have a book in drawings. I would say I'm like somewhere between like maybe a half and two thirds of the way there. - Huge endeavor, so good on you. - Yeah, I'm chipping it away at it a bit by bit. - But that's it, to be honest, man. I think the fact that you include, it's not just a clip on, it's like a hunting video, right? If somebody just had a hunting video and it was just like of them climbing a tree and shooting a deer, that would not be entertained. Some people might find that entertaining, but there's not a story. - Brian Gell makes it worth watching. - You include a story with you, you almost every one of the videos and you've got music and you're like, oh, this music is brought to you by my talented cousin and wherever Paraguay or Argentina, I'm probably just picking random Latin Americans. - He's in Uruguay. - Uruguay, Uruguay. - Yeah, yeah. - You've arrived, my folks are from Brazil, but my dad's born in Uruguay right now. - And then, but you also, you're like, oh, like there's videos of the creek water running in the background or leaves falling or frogs or birds and like, and it just sits, there's a certain, just a vibe, right? It makes you want to sit down and watch it and take notes and rewatch it and then try to perform it. So I don't know, man. I'm a voracious consumer of the stuff you produce. - Thank you. Bo-making is about putting roots down in nature and I'm just trying to capture that vibe a little bit. It's also just for me. Like I have enjoyed using my YouTube money to get nicer cameras and lenses and it's my own hobby to film all these amphibians and then I force you guys to watch them. (laughing) - Oh man, they're liberally sprinkled out throughout but it's in short doses, so it's good for all of us. - I'm also, this year I got into a building drones. So there's gonna be more and more aerial footage coming. You just don't sit still. Like you're just like, oh, and then I started trying this thing and I did blacksmithing 'cause you did do blacksmithing. You're not-- - I do, I do. I'm excited to get into it this winter. - Yeah, when it's not so blazing hot outside. - Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm the proportion of the tool that I have that I've made is slowly increasing over time. Trying to get that up. - I think it's great. All right, so as we're talking about this, we know what a bowyer is. We know some inspiration that you've had. Wave top view of history, right? The bows are really ingrained into our DNA. What literature have you really found to be most useful? Whether it's for historical cultural references, if you wanna make replicas or the tutelage that's involved for designing bows, tying strings, making these are more primitive and designed and things of that nature? - To start the bowyer's Bibles, one through four, all of them, and I really think it's worth insisting. You might, like they might be too much at first. If I think the first time you read the bowyer's Bibles, it's a little too much for everyone. Like, why do I need to know all this technical stuff? And it's hard to, like, it's hard to make pictures of what's going on in your head when you don't have real world experience with all this stuff yet. So the first few times I read the bowyer's Bibles, I think a lot of it went over my head. But they've been essential. Like, you can't learn to walk from reading, but if you wanna be a specialist in walking, like, you need to learn a lot of anatomy. Like, I'm always split on, like, how much, like, how formal should the teaching be? You can teach a kid to walk without using any anatomy terms. And I never know, I'm always flip-flopping on, like, how formal should teaching bowmaking be. But we're adults, we're not learning this as kids. So I think some of it needs to be formalized, but maybe I do too much sometimes. Maybe not enough, I don't know. Oh, man, I dig it all, I think, again, it's all very welcoming. But there's some more things I wanna talk about, but I also want this to be a seamless transition to the next kind of, like, volume of the series. So, man, I think this is a good opportunity to actually just say without me going in and trying to flatter you more, he is like, "Oh, your YouTube is so good." So as people prep to start listening to the next volume in this series, I wanna encourage them to go and start checking out some of your videos and tutorials. So they'll see why you have the credentials as an expert. And I know if you call yourself an expert, it's douchey. But if somebody else calls you a master of your craft or an expert, it's okay. So I'll call you this, that you've honed and you've achieved mastery of your craft. But I wanna be, I want people to start checking this, your YouTube out and see some of the videos that I've talked about that have been so compelling and inspiring to get me to hone my skill, right? Over time. And that being said, like where's the best options for folks to find you? You've got the YouTube, you've got your own website. There's also the Reddit forum, which, man, I don't check Reddit at all. I'm not like a social media forum person, but Arbo, you're is like the only thing that I look at because it's the only thing that interests me on there. So I know I'm prematurely not saying what it is, but hit us with where we can find you. - Oh yeah, Arbo, you're is a, Reddit's a back alley, but Arbo, you're is awesome. It's such a wholesome group of people. So yeah, I run that forum, you can find me there. That's the best place to ask me questions. It's where I like put the most effort into the answers. And I tried to, like my guarantee on there is that everyone who asks a question or posts a tiller check or something, like we'll get qualified good answers. So if I'm not answering a question, it's because I think like the other moderators already gave a great answer. But otherwise I'm answering everything on there. - That's impressive, man, 'cause standalone forums don't even have that much attentiveness, right? You'll get 120 or more like opinions that are all like differing. And there you've got a handful of like folks that are genuinely interested in providing that critique, whether it's positive or negative, but it's gonna be useful and relevant. - I like I hand picked all these moderators. These are people that are like wholesome good people who know how to talk to people and be nice, but they're also design fluent voters and know how to explain the craft. And they all just like talking about both. So I think that's the best forum as a beginner to go on. So you can find me there. You can find me on YouTube. I think the best place to start out on YouTube, I have a playlist of beginner essentials. And those are the important videos, separating a lot of the, there's some stuff that's a little more fluff than some of the other stuff. But those are the important videos. - Oh, they're very strict word. Whether you're starting with a board or a stave, I think they're very informative and you can use literally like step by step of the process. - Oh, yeah. And I have a website too. I'm not keeping up with the blog too much, but there are some detailed instructions on there for the board bow tutorial that could be pretty helpful. And other than that, I hang out on all the bow making forums. We didn't finish our book recommendations. We can do a few more of those. - We should. Yeah, man. So I'm just like, yeah, I probably just interrupted. - Oh, no worries. But yeah, bow years, Bibles are really worth. Some people just don't click with them and they're like, this is too technical and it's frustrating. But I think so many people have fallen in love with the craft through the bow years Bibles. I think it's worth insisting. Even if you try them and you don't like them, I think it's worth forcing yourself a little bit. They're so special that there's such a good collection of books. Jim, the late grade Jim Hamm, his last book, what I wish I'd known when I started. I think that's such a good book for beginners 'cause it's a very small book. He distills it so well. It's just like everything he's learned from teaching, from being in the community, like all the pitfalls, he just navigates the minefield for you and makes it so simple. So I really love that book for beginners. - Yeah. And Jim Hamm has several books, Native American bows and arrows and all that, I don't have the title right now, but yeah, his books are all exciting. - All his books are worthwhile, definitely. Dean Torges is a huge inspiration. I love his, especially his book, "Hunting the Osage Bow." When I read that, I was like, he put words to a lot of the like, feelings that I had about this craft. And I thought it was interesting just how many things I agreed with him about without having talked to him about it, which is something that I've noticed with so many boars. It's interesting how without sitting down and planning, there's so much stuff we just agree about 'cause I guess like this is a craft governed by physics and like there are some like repeatable aspects to the craft. So it's always interesting looking at a bow and 1,000 years old and just going, my goodness, I agree with this bow here about all these decisions. (laughing) - Yeah, that's awesome. Oh man, but also I think it shows that your depth too, right? So despite all the modernization of the world, like this is still a proven example of what a bow should be when you look at it and examine that. - And the designs are distilled. They're like improved through hundreds, thousands of years. - Mm-hmm. - It's like you get that with a lot of like a lot of the... So that's why I like traditional tools 'cause they've been refined for the reason that an axe handle is shaped the way it is. It's been refined over hundreds of years. So like some guy just thought, this looks like it's ergonomic. It looks like it'll sell, let's try that this year. (laughing) - Yeah, this should fit a hand. - Which is so many modern tools look ergonomic. (laughing) - Yeah, but they don't have that like simplicity that's been distilled over thousands of years. - Yeah, like everybody wants to be the inventor of the new thing when it's just making the thing that was already really good, probably not as good. - If you wanna reinvent the wheel, like that's awesome and I'll hug her back, but it's hard. You're not just gonna have a new idea and suddenly you've reinvented the bow. Like 99.99% of the time you like have a new cool idea. Somebody's already done it and there might be a reason that other people don't do it. - Mm-hmm, very true. So, Jim Hamm, Dean Torches, the all four volumes of the bow your Bible, I'm not gonna lie, man, I only own volume one. So I do need to do my due diligence and dive into their three volumes. - Yeah, no, they're all worth it, especially when you get into the white wars. And then they say all clash over this whole is Osage King discussion. And that's a fun one. I won't spoil it for you, but-- - Thanks, yeah, I'm gonna dive into it. I want to. That's actually been what's something that's so gratifying too, right? It's like hearing all these other perspectives. Whether it's designs or bowlets or even string things of that nature, because typically they're associating decades or historical reference, which is hundreds or thousands of years and a lot of data points to come up with their own deductions. And they're probably all right or all wrong when it comes down to it. It's like when it comes to just being a bowyer, though, what's making you feel fulfilled and gratified? Then you pick that path and go. - I'm trying less and less to work towards end goals and just enjoy doing it. - It's hard though. Society tells us there's always like an end goal inside that you're working towards. - Yeah, like I had my whole life path that was chosen for me and I quit that to be a bowyer. - Well, it wasn't a life path, share it. - I just want to be doing this. I dropped out of college and started making bows. I was studying evolutionary biology. I was going to be a food scientist, which is fun. I like it. I just didn't want to, I didn't want to work for Coca-Cola. Kind of, you know, push big sugar. - Yeah. - You don't? - I was like, I was going to school in the Coca-Cola auditorium. The whole, everything was paid for by big sugar, big corn. - Oh, yeah. I could see why you think that you were working for the man in that case. - Nothing wrong with that. I just, it wasn't doing it for me. And. - That's a fun move though, man. It's so good on you. - I like making bows and making videos and my favorite thing ever is passing on the craft. It's been crazy to me that like other people appreciate it the same way I do. I think it's not surprising when I just started. This was just me and my basement. I didn't know this, like a whole world of other people that would share this. - I don't know, man. I think there's something beautiful about that. And I know over this introductory episode with us, as we probably covered many paths that were in parallel to the path we intended to walk down our conversation. And I'll take ownership of that with my, again, my good thing to just be a goldfish, but it helped me get to know you better and understand your thought process. And I think it's not gonna help folks understand where we're moving into the future on our future conversations. And we're to find you, right? So folks are gonna go to our bowyer on Reddit. You're gonna look up your YouTube and review some of these videos. And is it just Dan Santana Bowes on YouTube, Dan? - Yeah, Dan Santana Bowes.com. Dan Santana Bowes on YouTube and R/Bowyer on Reddit. - And the old Instagrams? - Yeah, I'm on Instagram too. I don't know, I'm not too dedicated to Instagram, but I do post on there. - It's got pretty pictures though. - Dan Santana Bowes as well. - Right on, man. - Yeah, Instagram's the weakest of the social medias. It's the one, the only one that bothers me on all of them. - Okay, and that's the only one I can keep up with. The rest of it is just, like, I don't have the mental bandwidth for it. - Well, I've only had one or two not shallow conversations on Instagram, everything else is like shallow support and stuff. On the other ones, I talk about Bowes, so it doesn't feel like social media. - I would agree, I agree that the R/Bowyer is, there's a lot of depth in those conversations. - We're showing it with the people, so it doesn't feel too much shallow social media. - Yeah, I get that. - All right, so Dan, we're gonna get rid of hop off here, so we can give each other our Friday evenings with the fam, and I stay out of trouble with the misses and the kiddos. But when it comes down to folks, this is bottom line up front, this is the first introduction to this bow making series, and it'll probably be around a six part series. And we just wanted to, if you're not following Dan, or if you haven't been on YouTube, I wanted you to get to know him as I've been able to, and realize that not only is he a master of his craft, but he's an awesome human, and he was born to educate people. And I know you can't see his face on this podcast here, but when he talks about wanting to educate people and pass down the craft, he's got a big cheesy smile on his face. And I think that's very noble. As we look forward, here in a few weeks, we'll come out with the next in this series, and that's where we're really gonna start diving in to bow making, right? We'll talk about design and layout and the various tools that you'll use. I think you'll find out that you don't need hundreds or thousands of dollars of tools to make yourself a bow. There's only a handful of hand tools that you really need. And bowwoods, it's great if you just have a couple of trees in your yard and you wanna chop down a limb, but we'll go over some of these woods that are known to be tried and true, but also some of the woods that Dan has found through his years of experience, that if he can harvest a piece of wood, dry it out enough and put a string on it and shoot an arrow through it, it is indeed a bow. And we'll talk about some of the pros and cons of various woods that we have out there, and what might be easier to find your specific geographic area. And then we'll go on a taxonomy of bows and then the tillering process and so on and so forth as we move through this series. But I look forward to laying the foundation out next to these, our next volume in this series and letting you all really get into the nitty gritty of this. And we'll also share some of the literature in the show notes. So if you wanna review some of the literature that we've talked about, whereas the bow, your bibles or John Hamm, some works and things of that nature, we'll share that so you could pick up a book if you wanted to and read that or use it as a reference material. But again, this is meant to be an audio guide to carry along with you on your either current or prospective bow making journey. So with that, I'll close here, Dan, seriously, brother, man. Stay on the line, but thanks so much for this. I am beyond excited for having this series and I think it's gonna be the first of its kind. - Awesome, I'm a boner at Harkswam. I'm excited to talk about those some more. - All right, brother, man. You have a good rest of the day and let these people go for now. - Yeah, you two men, take care. (upbeat music)
During this episode Dan Santana and I introduce our multi-part series “Bowyer in the Making,” where we walk through the various processes of making your own selfbow, from choosing a tree to acquire a stave, hand tools, bow design, tillering, and finally putting a string and employing your new bow. Dan is a master bowyer and YouTuber who wants to teach the world to make bows. He’s obsessed with self bows, their rich past, and the community dedicated to making them. He loves explaining the craft and sharing this rich art form with everyone he can.
Find Dan on his website, YouTube channel, or the r/Bowyer forum.
www.dansantanabows.com
YouTube.com/DanSantanaBows
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bowyer/
Check out our show sponsors:
Polite But Dangerous Tools- Use discount code “bowyer” to save 10% off orders.
https://politebutdangeroustools.square.site/
Vuni Gear- Use discount code “bowyer15” to save 15% off your order.
https://vunigear.com/
