Bowyers create traditional archery pieces.
NEW BERLIN - Several dozen roughhewn sections of logs lay piled on a table at Ojibwa Bowhunters.
To the unenlightened, the 8-foot pieces appeared ready for a bonfire.
But the creative and industrious men, women and youth assembled in the club’s pavilion knew better.
The pieces of osage orange, black walnut and hickory were destined to provide more than heat — they would be handcrafted into supple, working pieces of art.
The wood would, in as little as 16 hours, assume its next shape and function: Self bows.
Change rarely happens so carefully, so purposefully, so beautifully and with such great anticipation.
“It’s a transformative process,” said Perry Anderson of Amery. “It’s working to find the bow hidden inside the raw hunk of wood.”
Anderson, 63, was the lead instructor at Bow Jam 2017, a bow-making gathering held at Ojibwa Bowhunters club grounds in New Berlin.
The event was organized by Wisconsin Traditional Archers, a group that promotes archery and bowhunting with the classical “two sticks and a string” equipment that defined the sport throughout most of its history.
A self bow is made from a single piece of wood. Extra material may be added to the handle or ends, but the bows are marked by simplicity.
The oldest known archery artifacts on earth include self bows found in northern Europe. The famed English longbow is one example of this class of equipment.
The contemporary archery market is dominated by compound bows which feature pulleys and are made of multiple pieces of synthetics or alloys.
The archer of 2017 has to want to shoot a one-piece wooden bow.
Such archers may be in the minority, but they are out there. Wisconsin Traditional Archers has about 500 members, and dozens of clubs across the state, including Ojibwa Bowhunters and Racine Instinctive Bowmen, each have hundreds of members who have a lasting allegiance to traditional archery equipment.
And some of them want to not only shoot with a stick bow — they want to make their own.
“Self bows are so light, so handsome, that many of us don’t want to ever shoot a compound bow again,” said Gary Vanden Langenberg of Green Bay, the president of Wisconsin Traditional Archers. “And if you’ve taken the time to make one, they are all the more precious.”
The strong attraction to making a self bow was evident in the bow jamboree at Ojibwa — 40 paid participants were on hand, a record for the annual event.
The bowyers ranged in age from 10 to 78.
“These folks are as dedicated as they come,” said Anderson, who has been teaching self bow classes since 2009. “They’d rather spend dozens of hours working on wood to make their own bow than buying one in a store.”
Anderson brought a trailer load of staves, the long wooden blanks that will be worked into bows, for participants to chose from.
The bow-making jamboree was held over a weekend in April at Ojibwa. The event provided a rare, intensive opportunity to learn and make a self bow with expert instruction and in a communal atmosphere.
For two days, the Ojibwa pavilion was a bustling bowyers’ workshop.
A band saw was set up at the northeast corner of the space. Nearby was a tillering tree, used to flex and test bows as they were honed.
Dozens of draw knifes, ferrier’s rasps, scrapers, shavers and planers were splayed on tables and available for use.
The center of the pavilion was dotted with shave horses; participants sat on the structures to “tiller” or work the staves into shape.
After a stave was selected, the wood was split or sawed to reduce its width and the bark was removed. Then a design was outlined on the wood.
Anderson described the process as “layout, cut out and then tiller until we die.”
The open-sided room resonated with the sound of rasps on wood; shavings piled up on the floor.
About once an hour, Anderson held a five-minute instructional talk about a specific part of the process or technique.
“Shape the wood from handle to tip and from back to the belly,” he advised on Saturday afternoon.
After a few hours, the wooden blocks began looking more like bows. It takes most people from 24 to 40 hours to complete a self bow, Anderson said.
Participants traveled to the jamboree from all points in the state.
Ed Mathews, 53, of Milton attended the clinic with his sons, Justin, 25, and Austin, 16.
The elder Mathews made a self bow 20 years ago.
“I came here to find out I had done just about everything wrong,” Mathews said. “It’s a lot of fun. Me and my boys are just loving it.”
Mathews was making a bow out of osage orange.
John Mabry, 53, and his daughter Haley, 13, also were on hand. They drove down from Marinette for the clinic.
“I’ve made two before, but I must have missed a weak point and they both broke,” John Mabry said. “We’re hoping to be flinging arrows with one of these this fall.”
It’s possible two of the bows made at Bow Jam 2017 will be used in competition this year. Steve Huggins, 34, and Stephanie Neuman, 25, both of Waukesha, are self-described “archery nuts” who won the men’s and women’s 2016 Wisconsin Traditional Archers state titles in the Big River Longbow category.
They are contemplating using their creations from this year’s jamboree in this year’s state shoot.
“I like being able to say ‘I made this,’ “Neuman said. “It adds a whole dimension to shooting.”
Joe Duffek, 78, of Tichigan worked on a stave he started winnowing about a year ago. His goal is to shoot with a bow, arrows and arrow tips he’s made by hand.
“I saw a movie once where a guy on horseback broke off a branch and shaved it down with a knife and a couple minutes later was shooting it,” Duffek said with a laugh. “It doesn’t work that way. But this is a very satisfying project. I can put it down and pick it up whenever I want.”
The youngest participants of the clinic were sisters Calla, 11, and Olive Fritz, 10, of Big Bend.
They’ve been making bows out of sticks found in their backyard since they were about four, and now the members of Ojibwa Bowhunters are refining their skills.
“I think this one is going to be stronger than anything I’ve made before,” Calla Fritz said as she tested her bow on the tiller tree.
Anderson said most self bows are made to have from 30 to 50 pounds of draw weight.
He said the goals are to make the bow “uniform, symetrical and graceful.” The wood should have no nicks, stairsteps or corners.
On the second afternoon of the workshop, Calla Fritz had finished her bow. She made three sets of grooves in each end to attach the bow string, allowing the bow to shoot at 21, 26 or 30 pounds.
Under a bright spring sun, she set out to the range at Ojibwa. Her second arrow found the heart of the 15-yard target. “Bull’s-eye,” she said. Most of the participants continued working on their bows after the jamboree.
Someday soon, though, they will also get the pleasure of shooting an arrow from their one-of-a-kind creations.
“There’s a magical moment when you release the first arrow,” Anderson said. “You become a bowyer. And your stave becomes a bow. There’s nothing else like it.”