Woodcraft School Bowmaking Course

[Spacemonkey]

Last August a took part in a bowmaking course at Woodcraft School down near Midhurst, Hants. I made an English longbow, as did most, but a flatbow was being made by 4 others from beech.

Anyway, the course was great fun and very informative with great instructors. You spend all 4 days camping on site in the trees and work the wood all day. It's a very informal group but there is so much information being imparted over the time. I would not hesitate to recommend the school for it's bowmaking course, and I should omagine they would be top notch for the other bushcraft courses they offer. Their head instructor, John, who runs the bowmaking course, used to be Ray Mears chief instructor before setting up Woodcraft School.

Here's the bowmaking course page:

http://www.woodcraft-school.co.uk/bow-making.htm

If you scroll down the page you'll find a Quicktime video link of the course. If you watch the bow being tillered, you can see me clutching a metal mug whilst leaning against a tree, and the vid finishes with me in my shorts firing Johns 80lb bow (although he thinks it has dropped in piundage since he made it to about 65, but my draw is 2 inches more than his. Luckily it held...) straight into the heart of the deer target.

A great weekend!!

 

[stovie]

Good to hear about the standard of the course, as I am taking a friend on their "essence" of bushcraft weekend at end of August.

As for a draw weight of 80lbs...my fingers go weak at the thought

 

[Adrian M]

I did their essence of bushcraft course last year. An absoluly brilliant course loads of info , great instructors, excellent location.
I am hoping to do the bowmaking course this year but I also want to do their axe workshop aswell.

Top bushcraft school, highly recomended. :You_Rock_


Adrian M

 

[C_Claycomb]

What kind of tools did you use on your bows? Were you working lumber staves or chunks of tree, its kind of hard to tell from the video link? How much time did people take to get the bow done vs all the other bits of archery kit?

 

[Spacemonkey]

Initial shaping was by drawknifing and spoke shavers, then cabinet scrapers. The bows took most of the time (2-3 days) and strings and arrows took a lot shorter time. I don't think anyone actually fully completed their bow on the weekend, but we all knew how to finish them off, as it was mainly things like oiling the wood and small finishing touches. I had to finish tillering mine, so I made a tiller when I got home and set to it. The long bows are made from timber staves that John had laminated just before, so ready to mark out and shape. The flat bows where made from split bits of elm from a tree (strange that.. ) but i didn't pay much attention to them. Ohter schools save time by doing the initial shaping with an axe. This will save a lot of time (most people took most of the first day to get the basic shape with a draw knife ansd spoke shaver) but I would have thought would involve more skill.