Finished another

[cmoore]

Hey Gang

Just thought I'd share with you all a little osage selfbow I just finished, It's unbacked and has a little horse hair tuft on the upper limb. Draws 30# @ 17" and is quite the little thumper for it's size
Also in the pics is the first 'primitive' arrow I've made with 7" turkey feathers which were cut down from full length (14") feathers which turned out to be quite the bother

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[Gringa Bows]

Looks good

[UPTHETOP]

Looks great Cmoore, a little like the American plains bows. Gotta love the Osage.

Cheers Wayno

[bigbob]

Looks like a nice little bow!

[greybeard]

The bow has turned out well, was it copied off a particular region/tribe design or what the osage billet dictated?

From the photos it looks like a single growth ring bow.

Daryl.

[cmoore]

Cheers for the kind words gentleman.

Your on the money with the single growth ring Daryl . It is a copy of a Cheyenne bow from the Nez Perce tribe who inhabited the pacific northwest region. This particular bow (namely the artwork on the back) belonged to Yellow Wolf who was a chief of the tribe who died in August of 1935 which is not that long ago when you really think about it ..... wish I could find a photo of him holding his bow as that would be quite a treat to see

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[Dennis La Varenne]

Good on you, cmoore. I am glad to see somebody having a go at these bows. Have you got copies of Jim Hamm and Paul Alely's encyclopaediae of American native bows and arrows?

I have made a few similar bows from Osage, but closer to 50" n-n. They can certainly be thumpers, but require a bit of training to shoot accurately. I used to draw mine at about collar bone height and point and shoot. I got reasonably good at it for very close range shooting.

My bows were plains bows from the northern areas. All the central plains bows from Canada down to Mexico were much the same double curved build with a bendy handle and they too had the horse hair tuft on the upper pin nock. They were generally narrower and thicker than yours but most were made from norther American Ash and sometimes northward traded Osage which must surely have cost a good horse or a spare wife unless one could obtain one made from the horns of one of the mountain sheep. Those must have cost a whole herd of horses and all one's wives.

I don't have any plains bows now. I gave them away. My heaviest one was 74lbs @ 23" from memory. It was a real brute, but I did manage lighter ones which seemed to shoot just as quickly as the heavy one using the same 5/16" arrows. There will be an engineering explanation for that.

My flights were long like yours, but I cut mine down to 3/8 to 1/2" high with a slight helical twist. My sources showed the central plains arrows as having very low flights usually. Perhaps such low flights stood up better to zipping through buffalo without matting down with gore.

Your bow does have the Pacific north west designs. Many of the tribes a bit further south used the so called 'paddle style' bow very broad at the flares and tapering elliptically to about 1" pin nocks. They are usually referred to as Modoc bows and were adorned similarly to yours.