Building a primitive recurved self bow with hand tools. I used European yew branch for this project. It was croocked and full of character but I managed to find a bow inside. It was a challenging one, but turned out to be very rewarding!

To make a recurve bow the bowyer has to apply bends on the specific parts of the stave. On this particular stave I used natural deflex to end up with deflex-recurve style of the weapon. For bending recurve I used my trusted technique - steam bending.

Each end of the stave was steam for 30 minutes before bending. Then the wood had to cool down in the jig, before more work was applied. The bow ended up drawing 30lb at 23" (54" ntn).

8 minutes of traditional woodworking. How to make a fully efficient bow using only a few tools and a piece of wood? Find out watching this video!

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