Will a 70 YEAR OLD fencepost make a Hunting Bow!-!

So this is a 70 year old fence post that I pulled out of the ground and on the outside it looks rotten as can be But on the inside it's hard as a rock. Today I want to see if I could take this rotten old log and turn it into a bow. So I originally wanted to call this Segment will it bow but after talking to some people about it I realized that there was another youtuber who had already come up with that idea and he has some really cool stuff I think his name is Cramer Ammons. He's got a lot of really cool Will it bow videos? This is the same concept. I'm testing obscure Things and seeing if they will bow but I'm not gonna steal his name So we're just gonna see if things will make a bow without a real title name for this segment of the show So these logs I pulled out of the ground two years ago And I've looked back at the property records to see who might have put these posts in and I believe that they were put in the ground 70 years ago at a minimum as you can see, they're just rough and gnarly on the outside But I've dug into the inside of them a little bit and they're hard as a rock I originally suspected these logs to be Osage logs because of how long they've lasted But as I've worked with them a little more and talked to some people who know more than I do I'm starting to think that they're black locust logs I'm still not sure but we're gonna get into this and I'm gonna show you how hard it really is in the center So as you can see as soon as I peel back just a couple of layers you get into some really solid wood here That I believe can make a bow So you might notice this piece of wood is too short to really make a bow and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut the wood and splice it together with two separate logs and My other concern was is there a piece of wood clean enough in here that I can make just a regular Self bow and the answer to that I've quickly found to be no And so what we're gonna do is make what's called a bamboo back bow Just like this where you put bamboo on the back and then you use a strip of this wood as the belly wood And so this is not technically a self bow self bow means that it's one piece of wood relying on itself for strength This is not technically a self bow But believe it or not this wood right here is actually the wood from one of these fence posts I started this project about two years ago and I have captured it fully as I went Let me catch you up on what I've done to get to this point first And then we'll jump in to see if this will make a bow. I cut down this fence post two years ago It was in a row that was on the backside of our mule pasture We no longer needed them because the trees were holding up the fence And so I decided to cut them out and see what was inside of them. So this is David Bond He's a bowyer and he's been my mentor since I've started making bows We start by cutting apart the fence post and trying to find two usable slabs We'll then cut those slabs into the shape of the limb. Give them a slight taper and splice them together We use a really strong glue to hold everything together We then take a piece of bamboo and we thin it down to where it's about the weight that we want our bow and we Glue the two pieces together After we let it dry for 24 hours We then come back to it and we add some handle material at this stage. We would refer to this bow as a blank We weren't sure if the two slabs that we were able to cut out We're gonna be able to handle all the compression that they needed to in order to be a bow So that leads us to here. I've got this bow bending and It is about ready to tiller. So the first thing I'm gonna do is throw on some tip overlays So for the overlays on this bow, I'm using this right here, which is water buffalo horn I got that at Target matter of fact go to the pet section and you can find real water buffalo horn I'm not exactly sure how it's sourced. But uh It's there and it was like five bucks So I got a little piece cut out here that I'll start on the first overlay with All right, so there is overlay number one just roughed out now, I'm gonna cut out number two All right, I've got a little TB3 so you can almost guarantee that these aren't coming off as long as I put them on well All right, so I've got both tip overlays glued and clamped on so now I'll let it sit for 24 hours And I'll come back and shape them up. All right, it's been 24 hours. So let's shape these overlays All right. I've got these overlays roughed out now both of them that water buffalo works pretty nice It's real easy to work with it's pretty soft. Really it polishes up really nice So whenever I finish this out whenever I sand it up and finish it out That is gonna be very shiny and that's kind of what I like about it and it's crazy that you can literally just go buy it at the pet store, but the next step is now to Get a tillering string on it Tillering string is just a longer string that requires the bow to bend less in order to get it strung up in order for me To get this bow to where I can put a tillering string on it I need to take a little bit of weight off because right now it is Stiff it is very stout. I would say that's close to a 70 pound bow But the thing is is we made the bamboo thick enough for a 45 pound bow And if I were to go string this up right now It could overwhelm the bamboo because it's not thick enough for a 70 pound bow so what I'm gonna do is take some weight off the belly of the bow and I'll do that by taking my draw knife and Scraping off wood And you get nice clean shavings, so I'll count how many passes I did on this side And then I'll do the exact same on this side That's some good fire starter right there All right, so that was pass number one. I did ten long strokes on each side now. I'm gonna test it Not bad. I need a few more I would say I probably need to do maybe 30 total strokes, but we'll see I Think it just needs a few more That's pretty good this style bow is called reflex deflex bow so basically it Reflexes out here Deflexes in here what that does is it makes the limb want to snap back to how it was so whenever you shoot There has a little more energy into it. That's wanting to go back to how it was Resulting in a quicker bow what I love about these bows is the profile whenever you draw them back the profile Is very cool and very unique. I think it's about to the point to where I can put a tiller string on it Wow That is pretty cool. That's this bows first time being strung up so I can already see it's stiff right here right here It's bending up right here. It's arcing down There's no cracks or anything that I can see All right, that ought to be good. Let's try that So because this is so new this style bow and this tiller bow I'm just going as slow as possible because it's super easy to ruin a bow right here to make it too light So what I'm doing is I'm just going very very slow Trying to really understand what I'm doing before I do it and so right here what I'm seeing is This side is Lopsided right and I'm trying to figure out if that means it's weak or stiff and so far I think that means it's stiff, but I'm not certain and so I don't want to rush into it And so I'm feeling how thick it is on this side so I can tell there's a stiff spot In here. All right, so I see it getting better almost Instantly I think that this style bow is Super sensitive to the tiller. For example, I just took off just a few passes there and it instantly Changed the tiller Dramatically and luckily I don't I don't think it's bad. I don't think it changed it too much I don't think it took off too much weight, but it does mean I got to be careful man. That is such a cool profile on a bow I Really like that so one time I was talking to one of the best craftsmen that I've ever met and we were talking about something made and I Asked him how long it took for him to make that and he said I don't know and he told me that time is Not really a factor that he considers whenever he's making something that time is irrelevant Whenever he is putting his heart and soul into Something that he's making and he told me that if you put a time limit on something then you've already gone wrong That's your first mistake. And so anytime that I make a bow or anything really if I would turn something I don't put a time limit on it I try not to even though there's always factors coming in trying to put some sort of time limit on it and I found that whenever I put a time limit on a Bow, that is my biggest mistake and that's whenever I rush it and make it weak or break the bow And so on this bow I'm just trying to work through it very slowly not rush it and just kind of find the bow as I go what that leads to is My best work, I'll do my best work whenever I put the most time into it of course, I say that and then as soon as I get it on the tiller and rack it might blow up, but Though sage the squirrel dog. She seems to be pretty happy that winter's over and so am I turkeys are about to be goblin All right. The bow is officially ground tillered now. It's time to get it on the tiller and rack So this is my tiller and rack And then I take this rope with a hood on the string It runs through a pulley down here and then I can step back from the bow and watch how the limbs bend It's definitely stiff right in here So this bows now to a point to where I could do a lot of the tillering with just a card scraper Sometimes when it's hard to tell what's going on Flip the bow around to the other side and sometimes it just helps it make a little more sense And right now I'm kind of struggling to tell exactly what's happening on these limbs. So I'm just gonna flip the bow Every time that I take a little bit of wood off I like to bend the bow a few times to kind of let that wood settle into the Changes that I just made on it slow trap likes hanging around the shop. He's kind of like a big dog. I Want it to be which is 42 43 pounds. I want this to be a lighter bow. We kind of made the bamboo for a lighter bow So that's what I'm after I would say right now it's 51 52 pounds somewhere in there at 28 inches and I'm not drawing it all the way back Right, whenever I have the bow about here, that's where I want weight wise I want that same weight, but whenever I'm back here So here's another little tillering trick is to take a card scraper and to run it up the limb wherever There is a gap like right there The gap gets a lot bigger than it was over here Wherever there's a gap means it and then wherever it just flat lines means there's a stiff spot. So right here is a little stiff Alright, so now to see how many pounds this bow is I'm gonna put this fish scale on it Pull it back to 28 inches and see how heavy it is Unfortunately, I weighed a carp with this scale the other day and now it smells horrible Just touching it has already made my hands smell like fish And if you've handled carp, you know that that pretty much means your hands are gonna smell like fish for the next week And that's a pretty good tiller. I really like that tiller a lot The limbs just been pretty evenly all across that should be a decent shooting bow But I just drew it back to 28 inches, which is the furthest that it should be drawn It hasn't blown up yet. And now the bow is officially Tillered the next step is to shape the handle and I've got a lot of wood to work with here So I think I'm gonna do kind of a recurve style handle Which basically just means it's a big handle with a big heel and deep shelf That's kind of how I like to make most of my handles typically with a self bow You make a smaller handle you just kind of want to make something that you can do the same thing with every time I like a bigger handle even on a self I add a lot of material on to the bow itself to make a bigger handle with I just find that helps me to get a better grip and Be able to do the same thing every time most people with a self bow like to do a simpler handle smaller handle That's definitely a more traditional way to make a self a handle So the way I do it isn't quite traditional, but I'm making these bows to be 100% Functional. I'm not necessarily trying to be primitive in the making of them. Just trying to make my own weapon So I usually go bigger handle So I'm gonna draw the handle out here So I can kind of get an idea and this is also the point where I need to decide which limb is the top Limb, which limb is the bottom and this limb here is slightly stiffer than this limb here And so I'm gonna put the stiffer limb going down so you really only need about four inches to make a handle with and my center line, let's see is right here and You want to go up from that center line about? Inches That's where your shelf is. So here's where I'm gonna cut the line for my shelf and typically on a Handle like this you can have a really big sight picture Which basically means the what you can see over the shelf of the bow. There's a rough shape of my handle Y'all aren't gonna believe this Whenever I've marked out the bow I had the top facing up and I put the shelf on the left side Which is usually how I mark them out except usually I have the top facing down Meaning I actually made this bow a left-handed bow and I'm right-handed So I went ahead and just shaped the handle, you know as if it was as if I shoot left-handed and just did everything I usually do but backwards. So as you can see here you hold it with your right instead of your left. I Cannot believe that I just is exactly what I was saying not to do earlier Which was rush it went ahead and rushed it anyway And here I am with a left-handed bow being a right-handed shooter case in point. Don't rush it take your time, but I Actually have been thinking for a while that I need to make a left-handed bow just to try it because I've heard I know some guys who have switched from being right-handed shooters to left-handed shooters and not running into any issues because You know, if you think about it your brain split left and right whenever you shoot with your right hand You're getting used to that your brain gets used to that, right? It's only using one side of your brain for all the different things like like I might use your left side of your brain For your right hand pulling back and the right side of your brain for your left hand pushing out I don't know how the brain works, but I know it's it's something along those lines Well, if I switch over to the other side then everything gets reversed and my brain has never done that before so it's like Restarting and relearning to shoot from scratch except I know everything but have zero muscle memory whenever I've been drawing this bow back It literally feels like I've never shot a bow before which is super interesting and I have a hypothesis I don't think I have a hypothesis. I know I have a hypothesis and that is that you can shoot right-handed one way And shoot left-handed a totally different style of shooting and not run into any issues I think I could shoot instinctive with my right hand and then gap shoot with my left hand and it not affect One or the other they're both separate from each other. That's my hypothesis and I'll probably try that in the future It'll take a while before I really have some concrete results But I'll let you know when I do if you know anything about this Please do let me know in the comments because I'm extremely curious to see if that is even remotely true or if everything I said was just Absolute nonsense, and I'm really happy with how that that profile turned out that riser turned out handle feels pretty good I've got some little stuff to do to it shelf looks a little blocky still, you know It just looks like do do I'd like for that to be a little more rounded So I'm gonna I'm gonna work on that but overall it's actually pretty cool. And I really like that Bow, I mean, it's just a cool It just makes me feel like I'm hunting with a recurve or shooting with a recurve as opposed to a self bow I got my handle all wrapped up. So now it is time to make it look pretty my shop isn't too well ventilated So I always do my sanding outside. I think I'm gonna start with a 120 work up to a 320 time for the 220 now the 320 For these tips, I'm gonna polish them up to 600 because these shine up real nice if you if you sand them good So I always like to get the overlays real shiny on if I'm using water buffalo So usually when I'm making a bow by this point, I would have shot it probably 200 times at least just to make sure everything was good and wasn't gonna break before I Put in all hours to shape the handle and sand the bow and seal it up But because this bow is a test and I'm trying to see if it's actually gonna make a bow We save that part for the end So I'm gonna do all the work on this bow before I even shoot it and see if it works So now I have sanded the bow. I've sanded the overlays I'm gonna seal the bow up and we're gonna pretty much complete this bow before I even shoot it So that way the stakes are that much higher so far I feel pretty good about how this bow is turned out The one concern I have though is on this bamboo It started to crack a little right here on the riser and that's just from filing that shelf down whenever I would go Against the grain on that bamboo splinter whenever I would draw it back. It kind of that crack started to expand So I'm gonna wrap maybe a little tiny Bandage around that hope that it doesn't break. We're experimenting here So so something that I'll do on a lot of my bows when I'm sealing them up is I'll take a drill and I'll drill a Little tiny hole through the tip overlay so that way I can run a wire through it Hang it from something and seal the whole bow at once But what it also does is it may it provides a place where you can stick a feather What I like to do on a lot of my bows is I'll take a feather and I'll slide it in that hole I'll strip a lot of the feather off except right at the tip and I'll slide the stem of the feather in the hole and Glue it and then it acts as a little windicator on your bow and it doesn't cause too much movement if you do it like that Whereas if you had it on a string and it was wind was blowing it would kind of be fluttering whenever you just stick the Stem in there You can just like watch the tip of that feather go back and forth and be able to tell the wind direction So in this bow, I'm gonna use this true oil, which is a gunstock finish It's pretty good because it it can flex and it won't crack. I do find that it's kind of a fragile Sealant the bows that I've sealed in true oil They get chipped and roughed up and whenever something chips it it actually Separates the sealant and lets water get in whereas like other sealers They just push the sealant in instead of separating it I'm not the biggest fan of true oil, but it does look really good If you put a bunch of coats on it, it can act pretty good But it's kind of what I have right now, so I'm gonna use it So now I'll let this sit for 24 hours and come put another coat on it and I'll probably put Five or six coats on it over the course of the next week But I love this part because you start to really see how pretty the bow is how pretty all the wood is the sealant always Exposes the beauty that's in the wood the natural beauty like on this spalted maple here That's ball thing was kind of hidden until I sanded it and then put the sealer on it And it really made the spalting pop even this crusty old fence post now looks really pretty I think that's pretty cool because that fence post was out in the mule pasture getting kicked on and beat on by a slow trap and Looked crusty and dusty whenever I pulled it out and saw that it was hard as a rock I knew that there could be something made out of it. And so now here it is That's really pretty bow you it would have been so hard to see that whenever that fence post Was in the ground over there, but it just goes to show that there's beauty hiding everywhere You just got to go seek it out that is what I was trying to do in this bow see what I could find in something as ugly on the external as that log was and Here we go, but I don't want to speak too soon because I haven't shot it yet. So if this explodes Scratch all this tomorrow. I'm taking this over to Cane Creek archery and I'll see David Bond there He's gonna have a look at it. Tell me what he thinks sealed it Look at that. Unfortunately, it turned out left-handed I don't even know how to shoot a left hand. Oh, there you go. You hold it with your right hand Man, it's pretty. Yeah, it looks good Looks really good. We're gonna go test it. See if it'll actually shoot You might shoot better left-handed That's that fence post from the where's the fence post this That's the fence post from the mule pasture. No way. That's Oh sage. Well, we think it's black locusts. Oh Man, that's beautiful. I like the the you can see the bamboo ribs on the top. Yeah, that's what I liked about it Yeah, and it's got a cool profile to like the reflex Deflex like it kind of gives it a unique killer Well, who's gonna shoot this thing since it's left-handed hard to say well to find something that you'll never make that mistake again Probably not. All right. What's it cool? There it is What do you think you notice anything weird about it Left-handed that is left hand. I accidentally made it left-handed an accident That's all you I'll leave you alone for one minute Once I got into it you could definitely tell it's it's black locusts. Oh, yes. I sure thought it was. Oh, yeah I had my doubts. I really did Beautiful piece right there This combination of woods and the disclaimer I always said was, you know, just don't put my name on it All right, so I've finished up the bow completely and usually I would have shot at a bunch by now But because I'm trying to see if this will make a bow I'm saving that for the end And so here is the first shot where I draw it all the way and I'm shooting left-handed Which I've actually never done before until right now It shoots Shoots, I hit the tree, but it shoots. I'm pretty happy with that. It shoots pretty good I'm gonna have to try that more before I can actually get proficient with it. So for the integrity of the experiment I'm gonna go ahead and Shoot a few arrows with my right hand so that that way I can get it to full draw because I don't think I'm getting It to full draw with my left. It's kind of weird I'll just have to keep the bow straight up and down to keep the arrow from falling off. Oh So hard because my fingers whenever they draw back I'm used to a Left-sided shelf. So I spin the string this way and it pulls that arrow off So I got to kind of like pre spin it, you know what? I'm just gonna shoot off of my knuckle from my right side like that kind of marring up the true oil, but So this right here was an old rotten log sitting out in the mule pasture and two years ago I pulled it out of the ground and now It is a functional bow left-handed functional left-handed bow it will in fact Make a bow. So that is it for this video. Thank you so much for watching We've got a video coming next Friday. And as always mosey on