Book of the Month

As featured in the June 2008 issue of Practically Seeking

Jim Hamm

This is what happens when true Masters of the craft collaborate!! I was excited to see this new volume published, and the further I got into this book the more excited I became.
Even though this is the fourth in the series, you by no means need to have read the first three before diving into this one. Yes, it definitely helps to have some bow building background when you launch into this book, but it's not a prerequisite. And while I hesitate to say that it makes The Traditional Bowyer's Bible Volume 1 obsolete, Volume 4's revised section on bow design and performance, as well as the section on building character bows, constitutes a GIANT step forward from the first book.
TBB v4 contains, without a doubt, the finest information available on building a self bow. The authors have gone back to the beginning, revisited the basics, and essentially removed the guesswork and intuitive variables from the bow building process. For example, this volume will teach you how a wood's specific gravity relates to what constitutes a safe design. It will show you how to get the smoothest, fastest, most efficient bow possible from almost any wood, and contains the groundbreaking science to prove that sinew backing, recurving etc. are shown to have no real performance advantage over a well-designed long bow! (The abbreviations can be a bit confusing at first, but I suppose that one desires to write "specific gravity", "moisture content" etc., only so many times!)
I must admit, part of what really excited me while reading this book was the fact that my own bow building style has evolved along the very path of efficiency that the authors have concluded is "the way to go" when building a self bow. It was great to have confirmation that many of the bow design conclusions I have been arriving at over the past 30 years were indeed well-founded and justified. On the other hand, much of the science presented has caused me to seriously re-evaluate my methods and reasonings in regard to backing bows. And I think that's fantastic!
I could go on and on about all the great information in this indispensable new volume. The story of the Turtle Bow alone is worth the price of admission! But suffice it to say that if you do now, or ever in the future decide to build bows, read this book before you take another scrape!
And to all of the fine bowyers who contributed to Volume 4, Thank you and Well done!