Inside the first bow workshop

A weekend of staves, shavings and first shots

August 13, 2026

Workshop participants shaping bow staves on shaving horses outside the shop.

Six staves, a rack of drawknives and a group of people who had never made a bow before. Notes and photographs from the first workshop in the shop on Salt Spring.

The first workshop began the way every bow does: with a stave that looks nothing like a bow. A split length of yew, seasoned and unremarkable, sitting on a shaving horse in the morning damp while a group of people who had never made one before stood around wondering where to start.

The open-sided workshop under cedar, tools racked along the back wall. — The shop, and the first hour of roughing out.

A participant leaning into a drawknife at a shaving horse. — The shop, and the first hour of roughing out.

Starting with a stave

Most of the first day is spent removing wood, and almost all of the skill is in deciding which wood to remove. The back of the bow follows a single growth ring, and that ring has to be chased the whole length of the stave without ever being cut through. It is slow, and it is the part that cannot be undone. Everything after it is adjustment; this part is commitment.

Drawknives, rasps and scrapers hung in a row on the workshop wall. — Drawknife, rasp, scraper. Almost everything here is done with these three.

There is a particular quiet that settles over a room once everyone has found the rhythm of a drawknife — the sound of it, over and over, and very little talking. The floor fills with shavings faster than anyone expects.

A deep pile of pale wood shavings on the workshop floor. — An afternoon of shavings.

Hands working a rasp along the belly of a roughed-out bow limb. — An afternoon of shavings.

Tillering, and learning to read the bend

Tillering is where a stave becomes a bow. It goes up on the tree, gets drawn a little, and comes back down so a few strokes of the scraper can go where the limb is bending too little. Then again. And again. The temptation is always to take more wood than the bend is asking for, and the whole discipline is learning to take less.

By the end everyone could see it — the stiff spot near the fade, the limb doing more than its share. That is the thing worth taking home more than the bow itself. Once you have watched a limb bend badly and corrected it with your own hands, you never quite look at a bow the same way again.

A young participant in gloves working a drawknife across a bow stave. — The youngest hands in the shop that weekend.

You are not making the bow bend. You are finding out where it already wants to, and getting out of the way.

Stringing up

Nocks get cut, a string gets twisted, and there is a long moment where nobody wants to be the first to draw. Every bow made that weekend came to full draw and stayed there — which is not something to take for granted, because a first bow breaking is a normal part of learning and it simply did not happen this time.

Hands bracing a finished bow to slip the string into the nock. — Bracing up, and the first bow finished.

A young archer holding a finished wooden bow in the workshop doorway. — Bracing up, and the first bow finished.

Then everyone went outside and shot them, badly and happily, down the length of the road until it got dark.

An archer at full draw with a wooden longbow on a forest road. — First shots, on the road below the shop.

Workshops run in small groups, and they run at the speed of the slowest stave. If you would like to be told when the next dates are set, get in touch through the contact page and you will be on the list.