...flattened away towards either end...

Drawing the Beothuk bow

Both reproduction Beothuk bows can be fully drawn now up to 30 or 32 inches.  I haven't checked the draw weight lately, but I can tell that its going up as they continue to dry.  One of the bows seems more or less stable.  If I set it down for a couple days it looks about the same the next time I pick it up.  The other one has a tendency to twist as it dries and I've been trying to stay on it with heat bending to keep up with the warping.  The one that wants to twist is noticeable stronger than the more stable one, perhaps both properties are related to the fact that it was made on the smaller of the two saplings.  Either way, I suspect that it will be the one that I keep for myself and send the more stable one to the client for their display.

Strung with rawhide

The rain finally stopped over the weekend and the rawhide bowstrings dried.  I added them to the bows today, but haven't trimmed them to length yet.  They're a nice addition, both aesthetically and functionally, they make a better, tighter bow.  The next time that I work on the bows, I'll probably start burnishing the wood with antler and then add the ochre stain.  I still plan to putter away at them over the next few weeks, occasionally stringing and drawing them.  I don't want to send one to the client until I'm sure that it will be stable.

The more I work on them, the more they start to look like each other.  The shape is partly due to the nature of the wood, the design elements that are unique to Beothuk bows, and my own input.

Drawing the second bow

These photos are my first time seeing the bows drawn outside of the tillering board.  There might be some small adjustments to make, but they aren't too bad looking.  When I was tillering, I kept in mind George Wells observation of Beothuk bows:

Beothuk bow fragments
from Howley 1914

They were thick in the central part but flattened away towards either end, where the spring chiefly lay. George Wells 1886

Based on this statement and the photo of the child's bow, I knew that I wanted to concentrate most of the flex in the limbs.  When the bow was drawn, I wanted the centre to have little or no flex to it, while the limbs should noticeable bend.  In the photo of Beothuk bow pieces to the left (taken from Howley 1914) the child's bow labelled D and E show the slight bend in the middle of the limbs that I was trying to match in the reproductions. Imagine that bow strung and drawn and that's the shape I was trying to accomplish on the tillering board in these scaled up adult sized reproductions.

Photo Credits:  Tim Rast

References:
Howley, James P. 1914 The Beothuck or Red Indians: The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge

Tillering and some fall scheduling

Tillering a bow with a stone flake

I spent a few hours working on the Beothuk bow reproductions today, although the rainy weather has kept me inside for most of the tail end of this week.  I'm still plugging away at the prep work for this fall's workshops and demonstrations.  In St. John's, I'll be returning to The Rooms at least twice in October; once for an Open Minds workshop with school kids and then again on October 19th for International Archaeology Day.  I'll be volunteering with the Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society on that day and demonstrating flintknapping.  It will be a casual open house type event and I'll be working some Ramah chert throughout the afternoon.  I'm sure that I'll have the Beothuk bow reproductions there as well, so if you want to see them and have a chat, please stop by.  In November, I'll be heading to Nunavut for a couple weeks for workshops sponsored by Parks Canada.  I alluded to these workshops about this time last year, but they were put on hold for a few months.  I'll be in Resolute Bay from November 11th to 15th and Grise Fiord from November 18th to 22nd.  If you know anyone in these communities who might be interested in learning to flintknap and haft stone tools, please let them know that registration for these workshops will be taking place shortly.

Drying the bow over a hotplate

Back in the workshop, I returned to heating, drying, bending and tillering the Mountain Ash Beothuk bow reproductions.  They dried noticeably on their own over the past couple of days in the cool dry basement.  One had started to develop a slight twist in the limbs, which I wanted to get ahead of before it set in permanently.  I twisted the limbs back using dry heat and continued to dry  the bows over a small hotplate for another hour each.  This hour of heating made the bows much stiffer than they had been yet, so I decided to do a little more tillering.  I'm not counting on the wood being stable yet, so I didn't tiller them all the way to a full draw, but they are coming along nicely.

Utilizing a flake to scrape the belly of the bow

I used a chert flake to scrape inside the belly of the bow while it was drawn on the tillering board, to help the limbs bend evenly.  I don't always use stone tools when I'm in my workshop, but if they are the best tool available for a particular job, I don't mind working with them.  For example, when I drill holes in slate, I genuinely prefer to use a bow drill with a nephrite bit, because its quicker than an electric drill and it makes a more authentic looking reproduction.  Today when I was looking around my shop at the metal files, knives, and scrapers that I have on hand, it was this little stone flake that caught my eye and turned out to be the best tool for the job.  It had the perfect edge shape, angle, and sharpness to quickly and carefully scrape the belly of the bow.  There's also no danger of it leaving the wrong type of tool marks on the finished bow.    Whatever trace it leaves on the wood will be correct for the time period and Beothuk culture that the bow is meant to represent.

This is the unmodified flake that worked so well.  I primarily used the distal edge of the flake (the bulb is towards my palm).  At first glance its a fairly straight edge, but it actually had a soft concave section in the middle that worked well along the edges of the belly and a convex section towards the point that worked well for scraping into the middle of the flat wood.

The camera flash kind of washed out the edges of the tiny usewear flakes that appeared along the edge as I worked the wood, but I think you can make out a slight polishing along the edge with some shallow scalloping above it where millimetre long flakes chipped off.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

String of plaited deer skin

Two strands of rawhide twisted into a cord for a bow string.
The sheet of rangifer tarandus rawhide that the strips were
cut from is in the background

I've taken the Mountain Ash Beothuk bow reproductions as far as I'm comfortable going while the wood is still so green. I may continue to season them over a fire or I might set them aside for a few weeks and instead work on bows made from the fir staves that I collected a couple weeks ago.  The weather will partly decide this for me, as it looks like we might be in for a fairly long spell of rain, which will force me inside to work on the fir bows.  In the meantime, I'm twisting some rawhide bow strings.

Stretching the rawhide cordage,
one cord is done and the two
strands that I'm holding are
about to be twisted.

The rawhide cordage is fairly straightfoward to make.  I just cut thin strips of reindeer (caribou) rawhide a foot or so longer than I need and soak them in warm water before twisting two of these strips together into a tight strand.  I'll let it dry under tension.  I could have twisted together any number of strands, but two seemed to be about the right thickness for a bowstring.  My inspiration for the rawhide bow string is this statement  from George Wells as recorded in Howley's 1914 book, The Beothucks or Red Indians:

The string was of plaited (twisted)(?) deer skin. George Wells 1886

The bows are both tillered to a
22 inch draw.

I'm happy with the bows to date in all regards, except for their draw weight.  They look right; they are made in the correct style from the right kind of wood in the correct dimensions, but the green mountain ash is still very flexible.  I've tillered the bows to about a 22 inch draw, which is probably a little farther than I should have taken them while the wood is still so green.  At that draw they are in the 12-15 lb range.  This is very light.  The wood is so flexible that there is not much spring in the limbs, which makes the bows very weak.  

The bows took similar profiles, which was a little bit
accidental.  I made them both along the natural curve of  the
wood and they both happened to have an outward curve at
the midpoint.

The fire drying has had limited effect on hardening the wood so far, and, in fact, the humidity in the air seems to creep back into the wood during the nights.  As the bows continue to dry, the wood will harden and the draw weight should go up, but there could also be twisting and the limbs that draw evenly now, might stiffen unevenly, so I'll need to tiller the bows again when they are dried more.  If I've removed too much wood now, there won't be enough to work with later on.  I'm not certain that is going to be a problem yet, but its a possibility.

John Guy meeting  Beothuks.  Take the details of this
engraving with a grain of salt, the artist never saw the
Beothuk for himself, but the bows are not unlike
my reproductions, perhaps a little more recurved.

I'm of two minds on the reproductions at the moment.  On the one hand they are exactly what I need for the display that the client wants.  The bows look right and once they get their ochre covering, there will be no mistaking them for anything other than Beothuk bows.  And since they are relatively weak, I'm not too worried about them snapping or the string breaking or something else going wrong in the display case.  But on the other hand, I want to make something that will be a reasonable reflection of the actual power of a Beothuk bow.  We don't know the draw weight of Beothuk bows because none have survived, but I'd bet a nickel it was more than 15 pounds.  

This is not a crossbow.  One of the bows is in the tillering board with the string drawn to 22 inches.  The arrow is there to show what the full draw would look like at 32 inches.  I intend to get them to that point, but I want to dry the green wood more first.

I don't leave the bows strung for more
than a few minutes at a time.  I don't
want them to set in this bent position.

As a sort of benchmark, the current bow hunting regulations in Newfoundland and Labrador state that you can't use a long bow to hunt small game unless it has a draw weight of at least 22 lbs at full draw.  For big game the minimum draw weight allowed is 45 lbs.  Full draw on these bows should be around 30-32 inches to fit the yard long Beothuk arrows described in the 18th and 19th centuries.  If the wood dries hard without twisting and I can return to tillering, I think the bows will cross the small game threshold at full draw, but I'm skeptical that they'll pass the 45 lb mark.  

Photo Credits:

1-4, 6, 7: Tim Rast

5: Detail from a 17th Century engraving by Theodor de Bry.  You can read more about this engraving here: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/avalon/history/bry.html and here: http://oldprints.ch/2008/11/28/a-controversial-engraving-as-an-early-version-of-a-picture-story/

...seasoned over a fire.

Beothuk bow reproduction,
ready to tiller

I was back to the Mountain Ash Beothuk bow reproductions today.  I've been going back and forth between the spokeshave and fire trying to trim the wood down and drive out the moisture.  So far, so good.  I got to the point where I'm ready to start tillering the bows tomorrow.  So they should either start to take shape or break.  

I've been using heat to drive moisture out of the green
wood, straighten bends, and harden the bows.

For this project, I need one Beothuk bow that will look good strung in a static museum display.  Ideally, I'll get a couple functional bows done and save the best one for the client, but minimally, I need to get one done to the point where it looks good strung.  There are a few historic reports of Beothuk bows, but right now this short description is what I'm using as my roadmap:

The bow is about five feet long, made of the Mountain Ash (Dogwood), but sometimes of spruce and fir, seasoned over fire. - W.E. Cormack undated

I was happy to see a channel appear in the middle of the limbs where I shaved the sapling down to its soft centre.  The channel in the reproductions is the pith canal in the middle of the tree.  The little inset photo is a photo of a Beothuk bow fragment, showing a channel running lengthwise in a similar fashion.  I don't know for certain that they are the same thing, but I think its an intriguing possibility.  Those channels on the Beothuk bows are weird, but I think this might be their explanation.

The second bow on the tillering board.  They both need a lot of work.  This stave has a lot of natural bend in it.  I was going to leave it in, but I might heat bend it into a something a little bit straighter.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

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

Finished Atlatls

Four new atlatls

I finished up those four atlatls that I started on Monday.  The bodies of each one is more or less the same, but I played around with different spur and finger loop designs as well as hafting materials.  The one that is going to the client in Alberta needed to be fairly robust and suitable for a lot of wear and tear from elementary school children.  For that one I went with artificial sinew and epoxy to hold it all together, while I used sinew, gut and hide glue on others.

The one on top is the one that I'm sending to the client.  Like the other three, is is made from maple, with a moose antler spur and leather finger loops.  The lashing on the spur and finger loops are artificial sinew and epoxy.

Ready for a dart

The only real disappointment is that I probably won't get a chance to play with them at the venue I was testing out.  I was hoping that we could include an atlatl toss in an upcoming Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society event, but the field we have available at the venue is a little too cramped to do it safely.  The security guard who asked me to stop throwing the darts agreed that it was an unsuitable venue for atlatls.  It will have to be another place and time.

They range in length from 47-55 cm long

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Roughing out a few Atlatls

Maple atlatls with antler spurs

I set aside the Beothuk bow project for the day and switched to atlatls and ochre staining.  I have a couple quick jobs that I want to finish up before I return to the bow later in the week.  One of these atlatls will be going to a client in Alberta, but I'll be hanging on to the others for the time being.  I'm hoping that some of these will be used in a public event here in St. John's in a few weeks, but I can't say for certain now. I'll finish a couple with epoxy and artificial sinew to make them a little more durable and weather-proof and the others I'll tie together with gut and hide glue.   I'll probably make a stone weight for one or two of them as well.

The four atlatls are all similar designs based on plains atlatls and are all more or less the length of my forearm, from the tip of my fingers to my elbow.  They are made from maple, with moose antler spurs.  At this point they are roughed out enough that I can duct tape the spurs in place and test them out on darts to make sure that all the spurs work.  There is usually a little bit of tweaking to make sure that the spurs stay in contact with the dart for just the right amount of time.  Once they are tuned, I'll attach the spurs permanently and add the leather finger loops.   When I test the spurs, I'll also be judging the field where the event might take place to make sure its big enough and that there won't be any danger to cars or pedestrians if we go ahead with the toss.   I'll let you know how it works out.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast