Primitive bow making.

I got into bow making as I had some yew limbs left over from a windsor chair restoration job and had often wondered about making an English longbow.  With a bit of spare time on my hands I did ten minutes googling [not enough!] then shaped the timber which broke during the tillering process.

I bought Hilary Greenland's handbook on traditional archery and made three bows from a very straight plank of American ash which I was able to buy from the joinery next door to my workshop.  I was fairly fascinated by the concept of exposing one layer of growth ring to become the bow's back...it's uncut wood fibres preventing it from breaking under strain.

Ash "self-bows"  [one piece of unlaminated wood].  The lower one has a glued on handle.  Both have leather grips and the upper one has an inlaid bone "arrow pass" to protect the bow from passing arrows.

The tillering process reveals weak areas or "hinges".  Wood is removed either side of a hinge to even out the curve.  A spring scale is used to measure the pressure required to draw the string to a certain distance.  I have a 28" draw which is about average for men.  I can comfortably pull about 40lbs.

My third bow ended up 29lbs at 28 inches.  It was from plans in Hilary Greenland's book which described the bow remnants from an archaelogical dig in Holmegaard, Denmark.  Dated to about 9,000 years ago it was originally made with stone tools from a small diameter elm tree.

The bow is nocked at its tip to hold the "Flemish twist" bowstring.  Strings would originally have been made with twisted animal sinew or fibres twisted from plants  such as flax, nettles or even wild iris leaves.

At this stage I was lent a copy of The Traditional Bowyer's Bible [there are now 3 volumes].  It's an amazing collection of information from people who were just discovering that archery didn't have to be about fibreglass laminated, compound, hi-tech gadgetry with shock absorbers and telescopic sights.  They set about making and testing bows as they would have been made by our ancestors with nothing but basic stone tools and discovered that the end product could be just as powerful and effective as modern bows.  Primitive bows are a joy to make because the process is so basic but very tricky to master.  Every one is as different as the tree which provided its timber and produces a bow which is full of character and sinuous beauty.

Primitive bows can be made from planks/boards of sawn timber as were my first 3 bows but in the past before sawn timber was available, a tree of only a few inches diameter would have been split down with wedges then worked into shape with stone tools.  The final shaping and tillering would have been left until the timber was completely dry. Often the bow's belly would be heat treated over the camp fire to increase its resistance to compression, resulting in a more powerful bow which would be more likely to stay straight when un-strung after use.

Bow from a 3 inch diameter oak tree [with glued on handle].

The same oak bow on the tillering stick.

My growing collection of bow wood.  I go for dog walks with a folding pruning saw and have permission from the woodsman of a nearby estate to harvest at will. It's always fun to try a new timber...usually denser timbers are best.  I have in the pile blackthorn, hawthorn, cherry laurel, portuguese laurel, oak, elm, cherry, ash sycamore..............

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This was a bit of blackthorn in the early stages of shaping.

Then I heard of people laminating bamboo onto hardwoods and was seduced by the concept and by the clean lines of the resulting bows...........

This is Ipe [Pau D'arco] with bamboo backing and an Ipe nock.

Details on the next installment!

First post

I've just been watching a video by Robin Wood about turning bowls on a pole lathe.  It led me to his blog and I thought I'd have a go myself, [at blogging that is].

I've been a woodworker for most of my life apart from 13 years  in London where I earned enough to buy a house...and at which point I moved out to Devon and set up as a furniture restorer [www.walshrestoration.co.uk].  Prior to that I'd lived in Ireland for 12 years making and repairing stringed, fretted musical instruments.

These days furniture restoration is suffering from the recession, it's getting harder to find work and I've been playing around making various things with a view to possibly being able to make them from a home based workshop and sell them via a website.

Brown trout on the lid, Skate on the rest of it.  Ebony stringing with a french polished finish.

Skate skin and ebony with pencil cedar lining.

Same box as above

Green shagreen and ebony stringing

First I made a few trinket boxes covered in fish skin which I cured myself using alum.  I used skate from a local fisherman as it was a type of ray and I was interested in producing a type of shagreen [stingray skin].  I also did a box with brown trout skin on the lid which looked great .Eventually I bought a dried stingray skin and dyed it green as was the fashion in the 1920's.

Next, I discovered the joys of making bows from green timber and did a beginners course in archery..........