This article is part of
Wilderness Way
VOLUME 14, ISSUE 3.
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Meet Joe Dabill:
Bowyer Extraordinaire
by Christopher Nyerges
I was one of several students of Joe Dabill during our week-long stay in the woods of the Sequoia forest. Dabill is a master at the art of bow-making, and all the related skills. He handed each of us a stave that he had cut and split a few months earlier. My stave came from a California bay tree. It was nearly five feet long. My job was to reduce that stave to a functional bow. Dabill’s job was to mentor me in each step of the process.
I liked the look of my raw stave, and was eager to see it become a bow.
After Dabill explained some of the basics, I clamped my stave to a wooden table, and Dabill carefully looked it over. The stave was over an inch thick in sections, and as much as 2-1/2 inches wide in parts. Dabill took his carpenter’s pencil and marked my stave to indicate those sections that should be completely removed. Taking a spoke shave, I began the process of shaving off wood, always from the belly of the bow (the side that faces you when you shoot it), and never from the back. I spent several hours shaving, though some of those hours were spent resting. Dabill, and his assistant Sig Nubla, would periodically come over and look at my work and make helpful suggestions. (I began to refer to Sig as Dabill’s disciple.) As the stave began to look more like a bow, I began to use the Shinto wood rasp, which shaves off lesser amounts of wood. Dabill or Nubla would come by, make a few comments, put some more marks on my soon-to-be-bow, and then I would get back to work.
Some time during the second day, Nubla looked at my “bow” and told me I was only 20% done. Fortunately, he was kidding, as I had done considerably more than 20% of the work. (Hadn’t I?) I also used a flat rectangular piece of metal to scrape the belly and the sides of the bow. This removed fine slivers of wood, and helped to smooth out the surface.
Eventually, Dabill removed the bow from the clamps and filed nocks into each end. I had already twined a bow string from linen, which I then waxed with beeswax. Dabill strung it, and tested the tiller (how evenly each side of bow bends). He and Nubla then carefully examined the strung and pulled bow, like two scientists. They pointed out the still-stiff areas and then Dabill marked those stiff areas for further reduction.
“It’s getting there,” said Dabill. “A little more and you’ll have a bow.”
I clamped the bow back to the table, and began the careful end game. I reduced each end a bit, as per Dabill’s instructions, and did some careful thinning in certain areas.
After
another two hours or so of off-and-on work, Dabill tested
the bow’s tiller again.
“Looks good,” he said, and he fired a few arrows to a nearby tree stump.
“Shoots good,” he said with a smile.
I was happy, and would have been happier to final-finish the bow. However, after a powwow, Nubla and Dabill did a little more “fine-tuning,” so my “finished bow” was now “a really good” bow.
We were all spending a week in California’s Sequoia Forest for the annual Dirttime event. Dabill’s bow-making and arrow-making classes were just two of the many classes offered during the week-long event.
After having made a baywood bow under the direction of Dabill, I sat down with him in the early morning one day around the fire. I wanted to learn more about this bow-maker.
Sixty-something Joe Dabill got interested in archery at around age 15. He was living in Lompoc, California, and had read about Ishi, the last wild Indian in California. “I idolized the Indian lifestyle,” explained Dabill, “and I wanted to become an Indian.”
Dabill did his first hunting with a fiberglass bow and modern arrows. He learned how to make arrowheads from an archaeologist who had documented a Chumash site.
“I started practicing making stone points using modern methods in the beginning. I had a board with a carpet on it that I worked on. I used obsidian and a copper chipper. I was obsessed with this and did it every day for six to eight months. Today I can make points using modern or primitive methods,” said Dabill.
By age 17 he was making crude bows from willow and juniper. “I did it because I loved it,” he added.
Dabill went on to learn most of the crafts of the Native Americans, and to teach those skills to others. In high school, he was a distance runner, studying the long-distance running methods of the Tarahumara Indians.
In the 1970s, Dabill offered his first bow-making class by posting fliers in the local shopping malls. He had five students paying $5 each for a class in Reservoir Canyon (near San Luis Obispo) where students learned about edible plants, cordage, soap plants, and woods for bows.
Dabill also spent some time bicycling around the western states, sometimes bicycling up to 100 miles a day. He described himself as a “drifter” doing those years, having no money, gleaning for food, and carrying only a sleeping bag with a few changes of clothes.
Dabill said that he has spent the last 20 years most intensely focused on the profession of making bows and teaching bow-making. He has also done landscaping work during this time with a boss who always allowed him to take time off to attend special competitions and workshops.
He spent 2-1/2 years at the Catalina Island Marine Institute teaching the Indian program to children. He gave dramatic presentations to students, and also taught groups about bead making, primitive fire-making, making arrow-heads and bows, and all the skills of the Chumash and Gabrielinos, who were the dominant tribes from Ventura through Los Angeles counties.
Dabill figures that he and his students make about 50 to 60 bows a year in his on-going classes. How many bows have you personally made, I asked Dabill. He smiled and nearly laughed. “I have made thousands,” he said.
And it is precisely because he has guided so many students through the process that he has learned what it takes to make a bow, and to teach a student how to make a bow.
Though he sometimes has students go out and select their own wood, most of the time he brings in pre-cut material that he has chosen because he believes it can make a bow. “I prefer regrowth from a fire-killed stump, as knot-free as possible. I want it about 1-1/4 to 2 –1/2 inches in diameter, and straight.”
He saws it to size and splits it, and then puts it in a cool place to season for 3 weeks to two months. “We must get the water out of it,” said Dabill.
He begins his classes by discussing wood selection and seasoning, parts of the bow, tillering and making the bow bend right, and the bowstring.
Though he makes bows with both modern tools and primitive stone tools, he usually teaches his class with a few modern tools since this is the easiest way for beginning students to learn the art. He shows students how to use the tools, and then he gives them each a stick and tells them to get started. He always makes the effort to match the right stick with the right student.
The stick is viced down to a table, and the student will reduce it down with spoke shaves (the primary tool), and with a wood rasp. Dabill constantly looks over the work of the student as the stick is progressing, and evaluates the stick and he indicates where to reduce even further.
“I have the student look at the stick with me, so they learn how to evaluate what to do. I show them where the wood is flat or thick and where it is bending or not bending,” said Dabill.
Depending on the wood used, it may take from five to six hours to get close to the final tiller. At this point, the student makes a bow string from linen (six-ply, twined, waxed, and stretched) and the bow is tested. There are several ways to notch a bow to receive the bowstring, but Dabill most commonly makes a filed notch. He sometimes makes a pin notch or a Plains Indian notch on some bows.
The bow is typically unstrung, and rasped and filed a bit more until the goal is reached of a bow that has a gradual arc with each limb pulling evenly. “We’re looking for a smooth draw, good stored energy, an elastic and fast response, and a fast cast,” said Dabill. Then there is a final sanding, and a finishing with many layers of linseed oil and a final layer of shellac.
“Some Native bows weren’t oiled at all, but bows last longer with oil,” he said. “The Plains Indians typically used animal fat to oil their bows.”
Dabill said that when he began making bows, he preferred juniper, but now he prefers the wood from California bay tree. He has been featured in the Traditional Bowyers Bible as an acknowledged expert in making juniper bows. “Some of the old-timers couldn’t believe I was using juniper and making bows,” says Dabill.
In making arrows, Dabill prefers two plants: the mock orange wood and Pluchea sericea, also known as arrowweed.
He uses turkey feathers, which are secured with sinew to the shafts, and points that he makes from chert or obsidian. Students are led through the process step by step.
Dabill travels four to six months out of the year with his wife, Amada. They go to such events as Rabbit Stick and Winter Count, with Amada Dabill often cooking.
People also go to Dabill’s home, camp in his backyard, and spend a few days learning the art of bow and arrow-making.
Dabill advises people to “get good instruction, because if you want to be good at these skills, it takes several classes. It is a difficult art, especially in the beginning.”
Readers can contact Dabill at 4950 Traffic Way, Atascadero, California 93422, or 805-466-4336. (No, he doesn’t have a fax or e-mail or web page — which puts him in the Stone Age in the minds of some people). You can also do a search for Dabill on the Internet, and you will learn more about him.
