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I have always been enamored by the longbow, whether it is the English style with a “roman arch” D-shaped cross section, or its American cousin with a shallower arch or trapezoid construction. Long, narrow, and lithe in the hand it exudes grace and charm. This is not to disparage the traditional flat bow, millennia of service to mankind has proved the effectiveness of its design. Still, like beer and dogs we all have our favorites. In need of another bow and having read Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, I decided to build a bow similar to the type used by Saxton Pope, Art Young, and the Thompson brothers before them. One must keep in mind that at the turn of the last century, the longbows imported from the British Isles set the standard for archery. Back then, if a person was going to spend time and money making a bow, a time-tested, well-documented design was in order. That design would have been the English longbow. To this venerable design I was going to include some features of my own. This became quite an adventure. Historically, a longbow measures six feet, although Pope did recommended making it a few inches shorter for a hunting bow. Most early writers insist that yew is the ultimate bow wood, followed by lemonwood, with hickory a distant third. While this may seem strange to us today, if you work with yew you will find it soft and easy to carve. With lemonwood you need not worry about growth rings, and hickory is cheap, tough, and forgiving of poor tillering. Osage and a few other woods were also considered acceptable choices, except back then, they could be hard to find and difficult to work compared to yew. Again, people went with what was available and documented. Time changes all things. The Limbs – I wanted to build a bow with very narrow D-shaped limbs and a lot of reflex. This meant the limbs had to be long to reduce string follow. I also wanted a bow with the arrow passing at mid-bow. Therefore, the handle area would have to extend equally above as well as below the arrow pass to keep the stave symmetrical. I cut each limb 38 inches long and spliced them at the handle. The reflex before tillering was seven inches. The Handle – The handle of a longbow is its widest point, and, in these early style bows, the handle is simply a thicker, stiffer portion of the stave. Figure 2 shows three handles. At the top is an early yew flat bow with the then popular suitcase-type handle and fadeouts. The bottom is a vintage lemonwood longbow, which lacks the distinct handle and fadeouts. A cloth wrapping with leather padding on the back provides a grip. A similar wrap and pad are shown at the top of the photo. The center bow is my bow; the grip is built up layers of leather. From the publications I have seen, it appears that the deep handle with fadeouts was not in common use until the late 1930s. Also missing from these early publications is an arrow rest. The arrow shot off of the index finger as shown in figure 3 appears to be the norm until the late 1940s or 1950s.
The Tillering – Long and very narrow D-shaped limbs are difficult to tiller because the string line must always fall exactly down the center of the bow or the skinny limbs will bend sharply to the side. This problem is exaggerated by any reflex which tends to snap the bow backwards past center. Recurve builders also encounter this problem. Judging how much reflex is going to be lost when the bow has reached its final tiller can only be determined by trial and error. Figure 4 shows the bow both unstrung and strung. Unstrung, after tillering and shooting a couple of hundred arrows, the bow retained about 3 inches of reflex. Strung is shown braced to a 6 inches fistmele.
The Nocks – Horn nocks are very common on yew bows owing to the softness of the wood. They also appear on other woods because people like the way they look. Horn, antler, exotic hard woods, and even aluminum often serve not only as string nocks but also as decorative nock faceplates. In figure 5 we see the classic horn nock, my nock faceplate and a self-nock common to the harder woods. Also shown is a close-up of the red colored “arrow wood” veneer I selected for the faceplates. The String – Prior to the introduction of synthetic bow strings, numerous materials were used. Sinew, strips of hide, hemp, nettles, cotton, and silk, etc., all had their day in the sun. Over the long haul, linen proved the most popular. Many years ago I purchased some waxed red linen which measured .023 inch and broke at 20 lbs. per strand. The black and white linen I purchased recently also broke at 20 lbs. but measured .031 inch per stand. My bow measured 50 lbs. and I usually use 14 strands, a safety factor of about 6. Because of the larger diameter, I had to settle for a safety factor of 4. As you can see in figure 6, five strands each of the black and white linen have a much larger diameter than 14 strands of brown B 50 synthetic material. Also shown is another common practice: the used of a timber hitch in place of a bottom string loop.
Finishing touches – The bow is shown in figure 7 at full draw. It measures 76 inches nock to nock. The thicker handle area is 8 inches long and bends very little. The limbs are less than an inch wide at the handle with a straight taper to the half inch tips. With three inches of reflex remaining from the original seven, the narrow limbs are highly stressed, so I backed them with a fine silk-like mesh. This gave me an opportunity to doodle on the artwork shown in figure 8 with matching arrows. There is nothing fancy about the bow finish. Progressively finer sanding, finishing with a 320 grit wet sanding, followed by several coats of polyurethane provided a fine satin finish. The bow weighs 50 lbs. and its length makes for very pleasant shooting. The Arrows - A bow is a bow is a bow. Any arc of wood that can cast a 500 grain arrow at 150 ft/sec. or so can be expected to kill a deer, yet it is the arrow that does the deed. An entire article could be written about building arrows in a time before precut feathers, plastic nocks, field points, fletching jigs, or a reliable source of shafts. Even the adhesives and finishes so common today had not been invented yet. Unfortunately, for now, I will have to settle for a brief description of arrow construction in the early 1900s. As shown in figure 9, shafting, typically Birch and of unknown spine, was purchased and sorted for straightness and grain. These were cut to draw length and measure 3/8 inch in diameter; the last nine inches of the nock end was tapered to 5/16 inch and a self-nock added.
The fletching procedure is rather interesting. Feathers cut 4 inches long tapering 3/8 inch to 5/8 inch for target and 5 inches tapering from ½ inch to ¾ inch for hunting, have an extra inch of quill on each end to be lashed to the shaft. Without modern squeeze tube adhesives, glue was mixed and painted on the end of the shafts. The fletching was set into the glue and the quill extensions lashed to the shaft with thread, which was also wound through the fletching to hold the feathers until the glue dried. Once dried, the thread wound through the feathers could be removed and the quill extensions wound with colorful “ribonzine” or floss. This same material was used to reinforce the self-nock, and then a bright colored cresting finished the shaft. Ready for the hunt or targets – Figure 10 was taken during a rest break while I was testing the recently made arrows. It is comforting to know that bows of this nature have slain the largest and most dangerous game animals. It was the tool of choice in 1925 for Art Young as he stalked the Kodiak bears in Alaska, and one would have had a hard time convincing Saxton Pope of a better design with which to slay moose, mountain lion, black bear, and even the lowly bunny. Yet in little more than two decades, Paul Klopsteg and others would rediscover the ancient secrets of the flat bow and recurve. These would soon be married to the burgeoning plastic industry by Fred Bear and other patriarchs of traditional archery. But, even then the legendary Howard Hill chose to work his archery magic with the longbow.
In the end, regardless of the style of self-bow you chose, it is reassuring to know that whenever a tree is felled and a bow is made the spirit of Pope and Young lives on.
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