This article is part of
Wilderness Way
VOLUME 11, ISSUE 4.
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Master Bowyer
Tim Baker
by Dude McLean and Alan Halcon
I’ve made over three thousand bows.
—Tim Baker
Wilderness Way readers may already know author and master bowyer Tim Baker, who has made over 3,000 bows. How did Baker get started on this path?
I was always interested in anthropology, and read the books about Ishi. How can you not want to make something after reading about Ishi? I took a couple of years trying to make arrowheads. I thought I was the only person in the world doing this (like a lot of other guys who thought they were the only ones). With a lot of practice, I got to where I could make a halfway decent arrowhead. Then, of course, I had to have an arrow to put it on. Then, I had to have a bow. Man-o-man! When I made my first bow, something clicked. I was instantly addicted. From then on, I had to make every kind of bow.
Eventually, someone told me about Jay Massey’s book. I called him and started grilling him about bows. He was a most generous and gracious guy. He told me about Jim Hamm. The most important thing to me was being told about Paul Comstock’s book The Bent Stick. Comstock was the main person who provoked me into doing bow tests.
Tim Baker’s interest in bows started in 1987. For Tim, it
was always about the enjoyment of figuring out what had to
be figured out in the bow-making process. He kept records
and statistics from all his bows. By studying those
collected statistics, he learned many details about the
individual bows. Tim emphasizes that you must keep records —
it simply is not possible to remember all of that
information from many different bows over many years.
Bow number 720 had this quality and that quality. You just
can’t remember all of that. But you can lay all the
information out like a spread sheet, compare one bow with
another, and why this one did that and why. That’s how you
learn.
He spent his first year trying to obtain osage and yew wood, because those were supposedly the only woods you could use to make a bow. When Tim met Paul Comstock, Comstock was making bows out of other woods. Tim said that for their first 3 months of conversations, he was arguing with Comstock, telling Comstock he was getting better results from other woods not because those woods were better, but because Comstock was a better bow maker.
“You’re doing something different,”Tim told Comstock. Everyone knows that osage and yew are the best woods.”
Tim was an Osage and yew guy, and says that Comstock got sick of him. In exasperation, Comstock said to Tim, “Look— you don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you made any bows from the other woods?"
Tim laughs and responded, “No, I haven’t.”
So Tim started making bows out of other woods and got a big surprise. If the bows were made the right way (for example, the lighter woods are made wider), they were outshooting the yew and osage bows. Tim kept detailed records of the woods and the bows.
The Bowyers Bible
John Strunk and Jay Massey suggested that Tim go the
Michigan Long Bow Association Meet where Tim set up a
workbench and started making bows. All of those guys were
fiberglass-bow guys. But Massey, Strunk, Hamm, and Baker had
a bunch of staves, and by the third day, over 30 guys were
drawn to the wood like bees to honey. With whatever crude
tools they could lay their hands on, they were making bows.
By this time, all the testing was pretty advanced. Tim had amassed a lot of real good information. Jim Hamm and Tim got together and decided to write the Bowyers Bible. Tim credits Hamm with coming up with the plan.
“Here’s something that probably has never been talked about,” said Tim. I doubt if anyone else in the world had any of the four or five perfectly matched qualities that would have allowed the Bowyers Bible to come into existence. Jim has a Bill Gates attitude, a wild Indian aspect, and the diplomatic skills to put up with primadonnas like — well, especially like me, who has to do everything their own way. You know, the Alpha males who say: “I’m right, it’s gotta be this way, or else I’m walking.” Somehow Jim could put up with that and make it all work. He had the writing and editing skills and all the patience. I can’t imagine any other human being having all of those qualities and added to that an absolute love of archery.”
So, the Bowyers Bible was born. And with these authors, Jim Hamm, Tim Baker, Al Herrin, G. Fred Asbell, Paul Comstock, Dr. Bert Grayson, and Jay Massey, they have set the standard for bow makers of the world.
This book spawned the great debates about osage and yew versus everything else.
The good happy news is that there are hundreds of woods that make perfectly good bows, If one is just one percent faster than the other, what difference does it really make?
Tim Baker is a master bowyer and a complicated man, who loves the bow and all that it encompasses with a passion. He stands by his theories and has proven them time and time again. He does not like to be called an “expert” because he is still learning.
Making bows will probably never be out of your life once
you’re in it. Anytime anyone wants to learn how to make
bows, I am happy to show them.
