An Archer was born

Once upon a time, a fellow Trad Gang member from Norway reached out to me while anxiously awaiting the birth of his granddaughter 9 years ago....He said he would love to see her born with a bow in her hand, and asked if this is something I could do? I told Trond I would be delighted to build something special for his new grandaughter.

So I rolled up my sleaves and built a little self bow from maple. I had so much fun with the project, I had to build arrows and a quiver to go with it. It's 24" in length nock to knock.

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The day a proud Grandpa Trond was looking forward too finally arrived, and he presented baby Thea Louise her first bow on the day she was born...


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Well little Thea Louise didn't take long to start growing up......Here she is at 1 years old getting a feel for her first longbow...


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Here Is Grandpa Trond showing her the stump shooting trail ....

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Another year passed......... and little Thea at age 2 she needed something a bit  more practical than her first longbow to consider using for her  training to come.... In 2015 I had just come up with a miniature Recurve design that I thought might fit the bill nicely.  I designed this little bow to replicate the old 60's design recurve, and these run 37" nock to knock in length.


Here is Thea at age 2 checking out her first recurve bow...

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And here she is trying to figure out how this thing works...

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To be continued  shortly....

So sweeeet ::: Love to see children involved in archery 

Some time has passed, and in a few short years little Thea Louise has almost out grown her little recurve bow. Here are a few shots of her in action.

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Here is a good one at almost full draw....Her form is starting to shape up now but the bow is starting to come to its limits.

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Here are a couple of other Sasquatch Junior bows I have built . so you can get a closer look at them.

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To be continued.....

So this summer Trond contacted me again, and we talked about upgrading Thea's bow to something she can use for years to come. I recommended a Sasquatch Hybrid longbow in 60" length built from Walnut and curly maple. These are ultra light bows with these wood choices, and would  be perfect for her to grow into.

With that decided we talked about draw weight requirements that would let her shoot the bow right away, but would increase in draw weight as she grew, and her draw length continued to lengthen. We decided a draw weight of 30 @ 28" would be perfect....

Then Trond asked about building a heavier set of limbs that he could shoot? I recommended rther than building extra limbs , we build a Sister bow using the same wood and they could both have a hybrid longbow to shoot....

Well it didn't take long for him to decide.... Sister Sasquatch's it is!

Here are the finished products.... The lighter colored Maple bow has a small diameter grip at the throat to accommodate young Thea's hand that should work very well. And the darker colored bow is Grandpa Trond's....

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to be continued....

This is awesome Kirk!

Well the new bows reached Norway a couple weeks ago now, and I have some photos to share as Thea & Trond try out their new bows... Here is Trond and Thea with their new bows in hand. And Thea with her growing bow collection.

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Here are some in action shots for you...

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Thea is a lucky little girl to have her Grandpa get her into archery so young. I sincerely hope I get more photos as she grows up watching her progress. I'm a lucky man to have these folks share their pictures and the joy they have in sharing precious time with their granddaughter and introducing her to archery...

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This makes it all worth while to me...  Thank You Trond!  I cannot believe 9 years has passed since baby Thea Louise was born... 


I hope you enjoyed this story. And thanks again for letting me share it with folks all over the world.....   It means a lot to me...

Sincerely,  Kirk Lavender

Kirk, you rock! What a great story. Glad you shared it with us. I'm guessing only Grandpa Trond is prouder of Thea than you.

 

Thanks for sharing. 

I can assure you all that I am proud of my little granddaughter, and I am also proud to call Kirk my friend. He really is a great guy! I love the story, and I promise to keep you in Thea`s life for the years to come.
I can thank you all here on Tradgang for inspiring me to get into archery in the first place, enabling me to introduce it to Thea. Thank you, Kirk for being such a good man and an excellent bowyer. And a thanks to Arne Moe, who's instructing videos and good advice has got me where I am in archery today.
Again... The Gang is a great place to hang out.

Trond

Kids and bows...what's not to love?!
Nice work, Kirk. We need more generous people like yourself and Trond helping to keep passing the torch. 

That was a fun read !!!

That is awesome!

Outstanding!

 

Nothing short of wonderful...

Love to see stories like this. You are very talented Kirk.

What a great ongoing saga! Thanks for sharing such an uplifting story.

That is cool - I hope Thea keeps the love of archery with her for life.

Third time I read this post. Just puts a big smile on my face. My baby girl turns 20 this week. Oh my, it goes so fast   

You can say that again. It only feels like yesterday that my granddaughter was born, and now she's 9 years old already. It's when looking at the children, you really see how old you're getting...