A beginner's longbow

[JohnK]

That sounds a little heavy, but thank you

There is an assumption that what I've heard about Bickerstaffe bows is merely "hearsay". It isn't, but I don't intend to go into it here because I don't want to start a thread about Bickerstaffe bows. Then again, strictly speaking anything I read here is simply "readsay", so...

[jb.68]

Originally Posted by JohnK

jb.68 - because of recommendations made by/experiences of other archers/people in the trade of my acquaintance.

Hi John K, Thank’s for the reply, sorry for the late response but I haven’t been on for a while.
I cannot speak for the experiences or recommendations of others. All I can say is that I personally have had 4 bows from Pip and never had a problem with any of them. When I sold two of them on, (due to moving up in weight) I didn’t have to go out of my way to sell them, the Bickerstaffe reputation sold them.

I have not personally come across anyone who has been unhappy with a Bickerstaffe bow. Of course that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any. By Pip’s own words, his failure rate is less than 5% but when you consider that he has made well in excess of 1500 bows, this is still a larger number of bows than some bowyers have made or ever will make. Some of these bows that make up the 5%, never even made it out of the workshop.

The point I am making is that for every bowyer, you will find someone who is not happy with the product they have bought from them or someone has a horror story of a bow bought from them. Now I don’t know what problems the people you have spoken to have had with the bows, but I find it hard to believe that if there was a genuine problem with the bows, that Pip would not have replaced them.

I still stand by my recommendation of Pip or Chris as good, sound bowyers who will supply you with what you want, which is a good quality bow and not rip you off in the process.

All the best
jb