1. To you, a compound bow is just a gun that fires arrows, not a Bow.
2. The expensive Martin recurve you purchased is gathering dust while your handmade bows get lavished with attention. (this one is me right now :p )
3. You find yourself looking at hardwood furniture as potential bow materials instead of as furniture.
Add your own if this looks like fun to you. Otherwise, ignore it :p
1. You do 35 in a 55 zone looking for rivercane growing in ditches.
2. you find yourself pulling dried layers of titebond glue off your hands at least 3 times a day.
3. your wife/girlfriend asks you where all your new tshirts have disapeared to and you reply that you used them for tung oil.
4. when you pull a wad of dollar bills out of your pocket it is always accompanied by a significant amount of sawdust or wood shavings.
You slow down and check out straight trees as you are driving to work/home...
(Then you wonder about how hard it would be to cut it down and sneak it out...)
Ghee, I've got it bad and I'm not nearly as accomplished as most the bowyers on this site. Actually I don't call myself a bowyer, but I do most of the above.
I go around hardwood flooring companies asking for offcuts and old sample boards. Make great handles, powerlams and tip overlays!
if you look at a bonfire with disgust.
If you go buy a cord of firewood and think to yourself, "What a waste!" Jawge
If you had more fun trashing your first stave than shooting the bow you already have.
Paul, my wife won't let me drive anymore LOL
Stiks
in SA we BURN a fabulous hard wood called leadwood/hardekool and its equally magical cousin rooibos or redbushwillow. Ok so they make braaied meat taste like heaven..Both are heavier than water- they sink. My pile of take outs for bow handles and tip overlays, knife handles is larger than the wood we plan to burn...
chrisg!
1. if you nearly have a car-accident cause you check out trees standing beside of the road,
2. your girlfriend or wife call you a "bowbuilding-addict"
3. i you are trainig your form under the shower (or everywhere you feel unobservated)
4. checkout the whole www for bow-building materials and tools
5. after finishing and shooting your new bow, the next bow grows already in your mind.
6. a simple question from a non-bowyer about bow-things ends up in hours of explanations.
and so on...
greets herm
QuoteOriginally posted by walkabout:
1. You do 35 in a 55 zone looking for rivercane growing in ditches.
2. you find yourself pulling dried layers of titebond glue off your hands at least 3 times a day.
3. your wife/girlfriend asks you where all your new tshirts have disapeared to and you reply that you used them for tung oil.
4. when you pull a wad of dollar bills out of your pocket it is always accompanied by a significant amount of sawdust or wood shavings.
I have to laugh at how every single one of those has happened to me :p
1. You just laid down a new bamboo floor, and you were hoping for a couple left over boxes of bamboo (regardless of cost).
2. You keep your bows on your bed so you can feel graceful curves while your sleeping.
(what can I say)
When you are hunting, you are too busy looking at prospective stave trees to see your quarry.
You have so many bows you can't decide which one to shoot.
Your first deer with a primitive,self made equipment felt like your first deer ever.
You gentlemen are very very sick, and should seek professional help immediately. HA HA it is a wonderful sickness isn't it.
1. You have yet to make the perfect bow ('cause if you did you wouldn't be making bows anymore)
2. Your wife starts telling you what wood combinations look good together.
3. You shoot more than one bow per day.
you blow your nose and it's yellow
1. All your clothes have yellow stains from osage dust.
2. You have ever grilled with osage for charcole.
3. You have ever drove seven hours to sleep in a truck just so you can make it to OJAM.
4. You have spent more than four hours at once reading through the archives
Dang . And to think theres no cure. I think I do all the above.Tell your wife that those are not sticks growing there thats new arrows.
You look at a section of the chair rail at work and think it would make a nice board bow!
-Jeremy
someone asks you about the spicy new deodorant you have on, nah, thats Padauk, no not paprika dust, PADAUK
chrisg
you can't stop yanking on a drawknife even though your wrist has been fused, you have a compression fracture in the T8 mid-spine and your shop is over 90 degrees!
QuoteOriginally posted by kodiakkid:
you blow your nose and it's yellow
Hehehe :) Now THIS one is definately me! However, its not yellow. Its a load of other woodrelated colors tho!
If you take your bows to class and draw illustrations on the board to show your students what you've been up to...
1. Every where you go, people ask why you stare at trees.
2. You go to sleep planning the next days progress on the bow you are building. Honest truth, I woke up standing in my workshop downstairs one night at 2:30 am.
3. You have staves stashed everywhere.
4. You ask every one you know to save deer legs and turkey wings.
5. Your favorite store is 3rivers.
you get disapointed when you hear "tiller" and it doesnt pertain to bow wood
you see trees blown down by a storm in a local neighborhood and say " be a good time to go looking for bow wood"(got hit bad locally by a storm, neighborhoods are in bad shape)
Loving this thread....cracking me up :)
Jeremy
If someone can tell exactly where you've gone by the trail of wood shavings falling off your jeans...
You reach for change and come out with sawdust and bark.
If you are constantly searching other threads on how your bow should look or how to fix your latest error in an attempt to save all the work you've done
QuoteOriginally posted by Rain Man:
If someone can tell exactly where you've gone by the trail of wood shavings falling off your jeans...
Lol, man does my wife get mad when I come in after the shop
QuoteOriginally posted by kodiakkid:
you blow your nose and it's yellow
I just shot purpleheart dust out of my nose from laughing at that one!!
And the ones about the sawdust are true to their core as well.
And yes, I can't stop looking at trees anymore either!
How about when you'd trade a perfectly good 6-pack of budweiser for the wings of a dead turkey!?
QuoteOriginally posted by scrub-buster:
4. You ask every one you know to save deer legs and turkey wings.
This one is all me!!
Great thread!
Every pair of pants you own have a glue botch on them somewhere...
"I'm just quickly going to check something in the workshop, so no need to change from my work clothes" usually ends as half a night working on a bow wearing your "sunday best" :D
you've spend an entire day at a lumber yard checking individual planks over and over and then left not buying any. Which frustrates the crap outt the salesman who KNOWS you'll be back within the week to repeat the whole exercise in case you "missed a good one" :D
You can't go out to eat and see all of the woodworking without thinking, wow that one would make a bow.
Have a hard time saying no when someone brings you a free log even if the grain is twisting around it.
You have graduate level homework to do and still find yourself scraping a stave.
Your garage is full of split staves and boards and there is no car in it.
You have a row of osage trees growing in your garden alongside of the greenbeans.
Neighborhood kids come to your house so that you can refletch their arrows.
Not even yard tool handles escape the possibility of become your latest attempt at getting another bow built.
Hint: check out the post hole digger handles the next time you hit a hardware store..lol
God bless,Mudd
You got a nice stave for your wife...... and consider it a good trade.
You are maybe a little self conscious when looking for good arrow shafts in the dowel section or looking for good boards for kids bows at Lowes.
You wonder if people think you're wierd.
This is a great thread! I guess I'm guilty of all of the above. Here is one I have'nt seen yet:
Your wife keeps nagging you about all the yellow shavings tracked through the house!
You make too much of a mess starting the wood stove with your bow shavings.
There is no room for cars in the garage, because of too many staves and bow tools.
The park Ranger questions you why you're hanging out in the rivercane patch!
Terry
* If you spend $4000 on tools to make a $200 bow.
You mulch your garden with bow shavings...um, guilty as charged!
the people at the post office ask you to let them seal the tubes that you mail your bows in so they can see the bows first.
You watch your friend prepare to smoke some ribs, with hickory chips, and wonder if there was a bow there.
-Jeremy
* If you spend $4000 on tools to make a $200 bow.
Well said Pointman!
QuoteOriginally posted by Johan van Niekerk:
you've spend an entire day at a lumber yard checking individual planks over and over and then left not buying any. Which frustrates the crap outt the salesman who KNOWS you'll be back within the week to repeat the whole exercise in case you "missed a good one" :D
Exactly how it goes.
If you've tillered a stick of edge moulding then lodged a dowel rod in a cardboard box full of broken limbs and assorted scraps.
I got another one.
You drive 150 miles one way in a 15 mpg truck to meet two guys named Ed Scott and Gary Davis.
1)you ever skipped work to work on a bow. When you went to work the next day, your coworkers laughed and asked if you had "bow fever"?
2)you carry around half finished bow in the truck in case someone wants to see them
3)a complete stranger offered you a free osage log, because he saw three broken bows in the corner of your office
4) you take bows to work to show everyone, every new completed step
5)coworkers run when they see you coming with a bow in hand
6)anyone asking you how you made that gets an explanation over two hours long
I'm new at this but I'll try...
You ride through an area with some storm damage looking for potential bow wood...and find it.
Scored a big black locust tree and 3 or 4 permisson trees about the size of your leg. ;)
The scrap wood pile in your bow shop becomes so huge you have to burn it or abandon the shop. As you look through the worthless scrap you keep pulling pieces out thinking "kids bow" "tip overlays", "handle sections", "tool handles" and such.
When, with much sadness, you finally light the fire, you can't stand to watch the yellow wood burn so you are compelled to go elsewhere until the dirty deed is done and the pile is consumed by flames.
The smell of Smooth-on is a aphrodisiac :)
Guess that would make URAC foreplay?
...girlfriend ...wives ... whats that !!!!
...you supply half your county with kindling !!!
1. When you are running out of room and wall space to hang your bows
2. When everyone tells you to sell some of your bows (but you just can't do it)
3. When you iust stand there and look at your bows and it makes you feel wonderful.
Lots of fum guys!!
When you sit watching TV with a partially finished stave/bow in your hands because it just feels good.
Stan
You look forward to every chance you get to use the bathroom because you keep the bowyers bibles and the latest 3R mag on the back of the stool.
How about,
When your wife and kids ask, "So how many times can you read those Bowyers Bibles and not get bored!
Or you pull off the side of a major interstate during rush hour to chop off the wings of recently hit turkey, and make your friends in your car wait while you do it!
Guilty as charged, "Red Hill"
Your wife says to you
"Why don't you take up something cheap like cocaine" :laughing:
... if you do flemish strigs out of every rope you can get in your fingers... even of used dental floss...
greets
you're mentally planning your next bow while busy sanding the last touches on the current riser by hand...
you post picturs of all your efforts online and then check a hundred times a day in case someone replied ;)
I thought it was just me, Johan! Nice
Stan
You have followed this entire post and have identified with at least 10 things.
You ration reading your traditional bowhunter magazine because it only comes once every 2 months and you want something new to read.
ANY fluffy animal (including household pets)gets "eyed" with the possible intention of turning him/her into string silencers...(if no one's looking ;) )
your blue t-shirt looks a little green from osage dust.
you reach in your pocket for a pencil and a nock file comes out instead
Hey, here's one that happened to me the other day:
When a few limbs from my pear tree fell off during heavy winds, and I tell my wife not to throw them in a burn pile cuz I want to look them over for some good bow wood. She just rolls her eyes and says, "Of course you do". - You might be a tradganger.
If the PERFECT bow....is always your NEXT one...
You always wish glue would dry faster.
If your friends ask you about your new cool designer shirt and where you got it.
Oh, this is a just the shirt i was wearing while glueing up the last two bows and the fancy design is made of epoxy patches...
----------
Andy
you store pieces of wood specifically to stir glue with
You have a couple dozen 90% finished bows in the garage 'cuz you moved on the make the "perfect" bow.
You can't hit anything because you shoot so many different bows all the time.
You fantasize about sneaking into your neighbors yard at night to chop down that nice tree.
If you miss an entire conversation with a cute blond because you are staring at the tree behind her adding up the number of stave's in it... you might be a tradgang bowyer.