Bow Making

  • Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.

Martin Cross

Member
Jan 12, 2006
27
0
35
Rotherham England
Hi im just wondering if anyone can advice on making a Bow, ive read the post on the Bamboo Bow, but i want to make a longbow style one. Any help would be great as i have no idea were to start, many thanx


Martin :)
 

Ahjno

Vice-Adminral
Admin
Aug 9, 2004
6,861
51
Rotterdam (NL)
www.bushcraftuk.com
EDIT: Deleted announcement made previous in this post, and swapped for this:

Text from:
The handbook of the SAS and elite forces. How the professionals fight and win.
Edited by Jon E. Lewis
ISBN: 1-85487-675-9
pages 492-495

Book found in a bookshop in Harwich for only 2 quid, back in 1997.

Disclaimer:
Following text is taken from the above mentioned book, I hope the mentioned details about the book are sufficient to used as a source referal.


Wood for the bow
Hard, well – seasoned, springy woods are best for making a bow. Don’t even think about making one from softwoods such as pine, fir, new elder shoots, larch, spruce, and so on. You’ll only be wasting valuable time and energy.
Look for hardwoods like wych elm, elm, oak, ash, rowan, birch, greenheart, wild rose, hornbeam, dagame, lemonwood, osage orange, juniper, and ironwood. Some of these will make a good bow, and some will make a passable one. None will make a bow equal to the king of bow woods, the yew.

Poisonous yew
Yew grows in most of Asia, the Americas and throughout Europe. It’s very common in southern England, and you’ll see it in churchyards, estates, parks and gardens.
Be careful with the yew. The leaves, berry arils (an extra covering over the fruit) and sap contain a deadly nerve poison, taxine. Celtic warriors dipped their arrows in the yew sap, just to make sure!
So don’t use the leftovers from your bowmaking as skewers or spoons or whatever. You won’t come to any harm from handling yew, though, as long as you wash the sap off your hands.

A quick one
You can make an excellent bow very quickly - seasoning the wood in a day, over a fire – from rowan. (This is sometimes called mountain ash in England).
Ideally you should take the wood from a slim sapling growing in dense wood. This is because trees growing close together have to “shoot for the sun”, and so grow slim and straight with few branches low on the trunk: just what you need foor a bow. You don’t harm the environment by taking a few of these sapplings, since you help the other trees to spread. And if you cover or dirty the stump, you won’t leave any sign of your presence to be spotted from the air.
Rowan bows are ‘sweet’ to use, giving no jar or kick. But they do creak ominously when you’re shooting them in. It takes fine judgement and a steely nerve to find out how far you can draw them – but then a good bow properly drawn is seven-eights broken!

The correct size of a bow
A bow 1.47m (4ft 10 in) long, is quite handy for someone of 1.75m (5ft 9 in). A longbow for someone this height would be 1.85m (6ft) long. When deciding what length to make your bow, consider the following:

1. The longer the bow is, the better it will resist a given pull.

2. If you change your mind and shorten an excisting bow it will shoot further for the same draw but will be harder to pull and is more likely to break.

3. Experiment to find your ideal draw length and try to make your bowto suit, but any bow drawing between 60 and 90 cms (2 to 3 ft) will sufficient for most ‘survival archery’. A bow should not bend in the middle – the central foot or so should be rigid. To determine the position of the handgrip, find the centre of the bow, then mark 75mm (3 in) below and 25mm (1 in) above. This section will be the handle. The arrow is shot from the bow centre while you grip beneath it.
The upper part of the bow should be cut slightly more than the lower in order to compensate for the handle. Trim your bow to its finished size, then cut the nocks at either end.

Tools
Once you’ve selected your bow stave, you’ll need some tools to carve the actual bow from it. Professional bowmakers first use a hammer and steel wedges to split logs into workable dimensions. Then a small hand-axe trims the stave to the rough shape and size of the bow. A spokeshave brings it down to the exact size, with final minute shavings removed with shards of glass.
[Snip]
Stanley knife blades are of some great use aswell. Either for bowmaking or arrow (heads).

Season the wood
[Snip]
In conventional the entire log is seasoned, sometimes for years (edit: author advices to season wood for a longbow for at least 3 years), and then thinned down to a bow. Survivors have to reverse the process, and cut out the rough bow and then dry it. This is a lot faster, though it may cause some warping. Trim the stave to the approximate size of the bow, leaving a good quarter inch surplus in both thickness and breadth.

Drying out
At this point, decide how quickly you need your bow. Some woods you can use straight off, but all of them improve enormously with drying out. In a very hot climate a day or two makes a huge difference, and the bow keeps improving as you use it. In cold or temperate climates you will have to dry it over or near the fire. Yew and rowan make the best quick-dried bows.
Will you have the bow near the fire, you may as well make sure the stave is straight when viewed from the back or belly.
If you heat – or preferably, steam – the staff where it’s bent, you can put it permanently into shape by applying pressure in the right direction. This doen’t set up any stresses in the wood.
You can also re-curve or reflex the bow by the same method. But if the stave you’ve chosen is naturally reflexed, or re-curved at one end or the other, don’t straighten it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Making the string
The English longbowmen of the Middle Ages used bow strings able to take a weight of 140 lbs (60 kg), and these were made from the stalks of the common stinging nettle. Unfortunately this takes a long time to master, so the average survivor must improvise. Silk is ideal for a bow string because its stretches very little, but it is not available in every survival situation. Nylon paracord is a more feasible material. Although it does stretches a little, this can be taken up when bracing the bow and paracord has the bonus of being near rot-proof and very strong.

Bracing a bow
Putting the string on a bow is called bracing, and it is very important to get this right. Place your hand ‘thumbs up’on the back of the bow: the string should touch your thumb when correctly braced. You need not be too slavish to this rule with a survival bow, but the nearer the better. Use a timber hitch to tie the bottom end of the string permanently in place and use a simple loop to attach it at the top. When you need the bow, brace it and slip on the top loop. Always unstring the bow when not in use or it will lose strength and never leave it standing on end.


EDIT 2: Also a chapter about arrow making. If interested I'll post it somewhere tomorrow.

The text is a bit more aimed at survival, rather than bushcraft, but still very usefull.

There is also a bit about bowmaking in the SAS survival handbook, by John "Lofty" Wiseman - with some more detailed pics of a carved bow, including the specially shaped nocks.

And, finally - there is a bowmaking course here: http://www.bushcraftuk.com/community/showthread.php?t=10216&highlight=bowmaking

And more about bowmaking on BCUK (search results):
http://www.bushcraftuk.com/community/search.php?searchid=270096
 

stovie

Need to contact Admin...
Oct 12, 2005
1,658
20
59
Balcombes Copse
Take a look at this bowmaking tutorial .

bowarrow.gif


Just come in after a night at the copse (quiet oncall ;) ) and spent this morning roving through the woods with Jr.

DSCF2570copy.jpg
 

shadow57

Need to contact Admin...
Aug 28, 2005
156
5
71
Glossop, Derbyshire
The correct size of a bow

A bow 1.47m (4ft 10 in) long, is quite handy for someone of 1.75m (5ft 9 in). A longbow for someone this height would be 1.85m (6ft) long. When deciding what length to make your bow, consider the following:

1. The longer the bow is, the better it will resist a given pull.


Hello ....great article :) :) :) :) :) .....but slight error

......surely a shorter bow resists a given pull...levers etc ;)

or maybe I'm wrong.. John :) :) :)
 
Jan 1, 2006
1
0
60
bedfordshire
hi martin theres a book by thomas hardy called the longbow its got all the instructions for making bows to the same pattern as the ones found on the mary rose ,I made one one it took about 2 years though
 

C_Claycomb

Moderator staff
Mod
Oct 6, 2003
7,355
2,366
Bedfordshire
I am a huge fan of the Bowyer's Bibles, they are the best written books on a subject that I have come accross. Very thorough. Some see this as a problem, they think there is too much information for someone who only wants to make one bow, and stop. I have always wanted to know more, so it never occured to me that there might be too much information.

At various times authers of the TBB have posted on The Leatherwall, Jim Hamm, Tim Baker and Paul Comstock. Dean Torges has also posted there at times.

If you intend to draw a bow 28 inches, a short bow stores less energy for a given ammount of effort to bring to full draw. The only way around that is to make the bow of more elastic material and give it a higher energy storing shape, put recurve tips on for instance. It is easier though to make a bow of 66-72", it will still be handy, will shoot faster than a short bow, and be more accurate.
 

Swampy Matt

Need to contact Admin...
Sep 19, 2004
93
1
Midlands
Take a look over at paleoplanet - http://b16.ezboard.com/bpaleoplanet69529

Probably the best bowmaking site on the Web. Tim Baker and Jim Hamm both post regularly on the site.

The first advice your likely to get from anyone over there though is:
Buy The Traditional Bowyers Bible I, II, III or Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans (by Jim Hamm)
Because there is more to making archery equipment than can be put into a Web tutorial.
 

Swampy Matt

Need to contact Admin...
Sep 19, 2004
93
1
Midlands
C_Claycomb said:
Some see this as a problem, they think there is too much information for someone who only wants to make one bow, and stop.

People only think they want to make one bow and stop. :D

Quite quickly after making the first bow, a second is required to 'improve on the first'. Then a third to improve on number 2. Then a fourth, in a different style, to see if it shoots better or has more power. then a 5th, 6th 7th.... :p

And before you know it your standing knee deep in hickory, osage, yew and oak shavings and you haven't seen the missus or kids for weeks.

Be warned - bowmaking is highly addictive
 

stovie

Need to contact Admin...
Oct 12, 2005
1,658
20
59
Balcombes Copse
Swampy Matt said:
People only think they want to make one bow and stop. :D

Be warned - bowmaking is highly addictive

So my wife keeps telling me; and i've yet to start on my self bow :twak:
 

Ahjno

Vice-Adminral
Admin
Aug 9, 2004
6,861
51
Rotterdam (NL)
www.bushcraftuk.com
shadow57 said:
Hello ....great article :) :) :) :) :) .....but slight error

......surely a shorter bow resists a given pull...levers etc ;)

or maybe I'm wrong.. John :) :) :)

Don't know ... :rolleyes:
The text you refer to comes from a book (I simply copied it) - never made a bow myself ... yet ... (tried an arrow once), so can't comment on that.

Maybe someone else can?
 

Swampy Matt

Need to contact Admin...
Sep 19, 2004
93
1
Midlands
stovie said:
So my wife keeps telling me; and i've yet to start on my self bow :twak:

And once the self bow is made, there are arrows to be made, a quiver or two, maybe a bowcase, bracer, small leather pouch for beeswax and a spare bowstring, the bowstring itself will need to be made, flint points if your going primitive or a variety of hand forged medieval styles..... :eek:

This is why I'm shooting premade arrows from a fibreglass bow at the moment. :rolleyes:

Oh - for those would be bowyers with kids:
When you start Tillering the bow, make sure the kids are nowhere near. This is not for safety reasons - its just that young ears can be badly corrupted by the language emitted when the tillering fails :cussing: :D
 

Ogri the trog

Mod
Mod
Apr 29, 2005
7,182
71
60
Mid Wales UK
shadow57 said:
......surely a shorter bow resists a given pull...levers etc ;)

or maybe I'm wrong.. John :) :) :)

Thats right to a degree, but also consider that for a longer draw length, it would be closer to breaking point. There is a famous saying about bows - "A bow drawn is seven eights broken". ;)

Medic - that book is a great read, once you've taken on board the history, its hard not to get enthusiastic.

Martin - have a go, any breakages that happen along the learning curve will be experience for the future.

ATB

Ogri the trog
 

Damascus

Native
Dec 3, 2005
1,662
194
65
Norwich
Once you start there is no turning back you have been warned, not just from me but several others.

If you want to make your own self bow try Hickory a very easy to work wood that will produce a nice bow. Get yourself a good book, try Quicks Archery they have a web site and start from there. :yelrotflm

Finally Good luck but this route may be part of your divorce proceedings you have again been warned!!!!!!!!!! :27:
 

BCUK Shop

We have a a number of knives, T-Shirts and other items for sale.

SHOP HERE