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Snoqualmie Valley Record • January 15, 2014 • 3
BOWMAN FROM 1 But he is also clearly a teacher, relishing each opportunity to share his sport and his craft with another generation. “I’ve enjoyed doing the kids’ bows,” St. Charles says on a tour of his small shop, where classes of sixth graders, Scout troops and 4-H groups have all spent a day learning to make, and to shoot, their own English-style longbows. Well, what the youth actually do is finish the work that St. Charles has started for them, but it amounts to the same thing. “They start with something that’s a lot further along,” than the plain wooden staves his adult students work in the three-day workshops he offers in the summertime, he explained. “They get here at 9 and have to leave by 2:30, so I have enough work on the bows that the kids get authorship… they can say that they took it from a rough bending stave to a completed bow, and of course they talk about them as the bows they made, which is the whole point.” Under the guidance of St. Charles and helpers, the students go through the steps to finish their bows, including making sure they are “tillered” or balanced so that the bows’ limbs bend equally, and using a cabinet scraper hand tool to gradually shave off the wood causing the asymmetrical curve. “The cabinet scraper really makes the fine work of the bow possible in the hands of a fairly new workman,” St. Charles, said, adding that he uses the same tool to finish his own bows. Size and draw weight, but not quality, are the big differences between a piece made by St. Charles and one made by his students. “Rather than a child’s bow, it’s actually a small adult bow, a light draw-weight adult bow, with the idea that they take care of that bow, and that their own kids will be able to use it,” St. Charles said. “It’s kind of an heirloom piece.” Since they’re real weapons, the next thing the students get to do is put them to real use, target shooting for the rest of the day. St. Charles has a range on his property for target practice, in a setup that’s similar to modern archery events — target shooting in woodland environments. This part is as much, if not more fun for St. Charles as it is for the students. He grew up in the archery business, selling bows and supplies in his family’s shop for years before he, like his father, became a fulltime bow maker, and he’s long been involved with local archery clubs. Photos and club memorabilia dating back to the ‘50s
Minor assault? Reported Carnation abduction attempt overblown, officials say No one was harmed and no charges are expected as a result of a sidewalk confrontation in Carnation Thursday afternoon, Jan. 9. The incident, reported by the 10-year-old boy who was involved, put Carnation Elementary School and local law enforcement on alert for the rest of the day. Carnation Elementary School notified parents by e-mail of the incident Thursday afternoon, and put all after-school programs on lockdown, allowing only parents to pick students up at the end of the day. The King County Sheriff’s Office notified the school after receiving the report, but learned through investigation that it wasn’t actually an attempted abduction. “It didn’t happen that way,” said Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindi West by telephone Friday. “They basically got into an argument. Unfortunately, it kind of got blown out of proportion.” West said the boy reported the incident, which started when he walked in front of a man, talking on a phone, on the sidewalk. The man got angry and yelled at the boy, and may have grabbed his arm, but did not hurt him. Initially, the boy reported the man did grab him, West said, but his mother later wasn’t certain that he had. Officers didn’t locate the man, and West said that charges were unlikely. “We don’t even know for sure if the guy grabbed his arm,” she said. “It sounds like, at the very most, a minor assault.”
COPS FROM 1 Carol Ladwig/Staff photos
Jay St. Charles describes the difficulties of working with yew wood, like the log on his worktable. Yew is slow-growing, slow-drying, and tends to grow bushy, creating knots in the wood that can become weak spots in one of his hand-made bows. Below, a collection of grips stacked on a table illustrates the variety of bows St. Charles has made. reflect the years he’s spent developing shooting skills, and he is eager to share them with others. With the adults he teaches at his own shop or at Redmond’s Enso Center (www.ensocenter. org), St. Charles talks about consistency and concentration, how to hit the same spot several times in a row. With his younger students, though, lessons are more dynamic. “The kids just don’t know it’s supposed to be hard to do,” he says, with a laugh. “The weight of the world’s not on them yet!” When the youngsters do struggle, though, St. Charles often has a solution, like the counter-intutive idea of aiming at a ball swinging on a rope. “The day your concentration isn’t there, you need a target that you really want to hit,” he tells them, “and the most interesting target is a moving target.” Which brings us back to the first part of his job. St. Charles makes bows of various woods, some of which are getting harder to find.
Yew is a particular favorite, good for longbows, he says, because the wood has both a stretchy outer layer good for the back of a bow, and a dense inner layer that stands up well against the compression in the “belly” or front of the bow. To get the same qualities without yew, St. Charles uses a laminate of bamboo for the back, and ipe, a tropical hardwood, for the belly. Although yew is a native to the area and grows plentifully, the slow-growing evergreen tends to grow on national lands, requiring permission to harvest. Getting permission, though, doesn’t always mean finding the wood that will fill St. Charles’ bill. “What I need is a span of straight, clear wood,” he explained. “I’m trying to identify that there’s a bow in there… the point is to try to get as much out of the wood that I have, to kind of honor the wood and honor the work that I’ve put in already, to get the best bow I can.” Although he claims “All the bows I build are supposed to
leave, they’re supposed to be sold!” he’s become attached to a lot of his creations, which are lined up in his shop, some works in progress, some replicas of historical weapons. Between the club memorabilia and his bow collection, the shop can seem kind of crowded, especially when filled with up to 30 12-year-olds, but St. Charles wouldn’t consider changing that. “They all come here, this is where I’ve got everything,” he says, adding with a grin, “Plus, they get a little dose of history here.”
City officials, surprised by the decision, sought partnerships with other neighboring police forces, including King County. They also had several discussions about what the city wanted in its new police force, and community-oriented policing was a high priority. “Be visible. Go in and ask people how they’re doing,” explained Carter. “They want good interplay with the schools and business communities.” King County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Allen, the city’s new police officer since Jan. 2, has been doing a great job of that so far, according to comments on a Carnation Facebook group. “I live in a tiny little neighborhood out here and have seen patrols about as often as I saw the DPD (Duvall Police Department). I’m sure there will be some difference, but so far, so good!” wrote one commenter. Another wrote, “I’ve seen more in town since they said there would be no law enforcement.” City staff and officials credit both the Duvall and county departments with making the transition smooth. Duvall’s interim police chief, Lt. Commander Carey Hert, “has been exceptional,” Carter said. “He and his department were truly helpful. They deserve to be commended for just making it all work… and I can’t say enough good about how the sheriff’s department made this happen. “ Mayor Jim Berger, in the Jan. 7 City Council meeting, said, “I think the King County Sheriff’s Office deserves a little praise, too.” Carnation’s contract with King County will give the city slightly less coverage, but a dedicated officer, at a cost just under $500,000. Allen will have an office in City Hall, and Carter said the office will be available for other Sheriff’s officers in the area to use too, for filing reports and other paperwork. “The surrounding officers in the area can come here to do some of their reports and paperwork,” he said, “so they can maybe do a couple of patrols on their way in and out of town, too.”
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