Beothuk Bow Blanks

Ochre stained arrows

It didn't really seem like one of those weeks, but in retrospect, it was one of those weeks.  The time I spent in the workshop was productive enough, but I had lots of computer time prepping for fall work to attend to and then we also had plumbing problems in the house.  I'm halfway tempted to add "Washing Machine Repair" to my skills on LinkedIn.  On Monday, we had water back up into the washing machine and burn out the drain pump, so there were multiple visits from city crews to deal with the drainage problems. Then I made a mid-week tour around the city to all of the appliance parts stores until I found the one with our model of drain pump in stock.

The two mountain ash staves that I picked to work into bows and two pine Recent Indian or Beothuk arrows.  

Beothuk (Little Passage
really) arrows

In the workshop, I finished staining a Beothuk arrow or two and made some small progress on the Beothuk bows.  I trimmed down two Mountain Ash saplings to the point where I want to dry them over a fire to try and get ahead of any warping or bending that might want to take place before I move to the next stage of tillering the bows.   When I was about to start the fire this afternoon, it started to rain.  That was two hours ago.  Its beautiful out now and as soon as I'm done typing, I'm heading outside to fire harden the bows, but in the meantime I've spent two hours rebooting my computer and trying to get Blogger to load so that I could publish this post.  *sigh*  There's probably some sort of lesson in here.  If its about bow making, I'm going to go ahead and believe that the Beothuk worked their bows from green wood, because if you wait for the weather and water to cooperate in this province you'll be waiting a long time.  I'm getting a beer and a propane tank and heading to the backyard with a couple bow staves.  I'll see you on Monday.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast