Build a traditional longbow

[wingate_52]

I am interested in building a traditional longbow, having shot one in a club competition last weekend. Choice of woods, techniques, books and guides, or just advice wanted. I have seasoned ash, bubinga, oak and maple. Choice of pva, cascamit or epoxy resins?

[celticjedi]

This is something I'd like to try myself and having done some research, the things I'd recommend are:

1)you can buy a kit from Bickertaffe Bows which includes a pre-laminated bow stave and all the other bits and pieces, this looks to be the best way to go especially if you dont have a hot box to laminate the wood, which I dont.

2)The Traditional Bowyers Bible Vol's 1-3, very good books, easy to read and full of usefull stuff. I've got Vol 1 but will be purchasing the others very soon. You can get these from Amazon.

Let me know how it goes.

[woody]

Try just ash (self bow) to start with, I made one last week, took a couple of days, looks like a dogs back leg as you have to follow the grain and the stave was well knotted. Does about 170 yds at the moment but I suspect it is underbraced so it might do 180. Can send piccies if interested.

Cheers

Ian

[wingate_52]

That would be great. What tools, techniques, reference materials did you use? Did you make your own bowstring and arrows too?

[dtalbot]

Or you could go on a course, I did the one at www.greenwoodtrust.org.uk a couple of years ago and had a great time making an ash longbow. There is usually a course running late Oct so probably in a week or twos time.

[Matt Easton]

I'm going on this course in July in Burgundy (convenient for me, as my girlfriend is from there, so we have friends and family near by):
http://www.tradlongbows.co.uk/courses.htm

Pete is really amenable and he's agreed to help me try to make a medieval full-compass warbow, but in three white wood laminate, hopefully at about 80# draw. I'm REALLY looking forward to it.

Matt

[LineCutter]

Originally Posted by woody

Try just ash (self bow) to start with.

I'd go with that. I've made all of the kids longbows from ash (there are pics of the last one right at the beginning of my journal). ISTR waffling on this subject elsewhere on AIUK too.

Either get on a course & help to make your own bow under supervision, or grab the tools, some instructions & a good piece of ash & learn hands on. Your first efforts will teach you a lot (but may well break fairly quickly).
I can email the "recipe" for a longbow if you want.

[ThePinkOne]

Hilary Greenland's book "The Traditional Archers Handbook A practical guide" is also excellent.

I suggest you start out with a self-bow in something like ash- the wood can be gotten quite easily and cheaply and ash works well- it's not the sod of some of the more exotic stuff and doesn't blunt tools like Hickory does.

A well-made ash self-bow can be very sweet to shoot, and you don't have to worry about stuff like tapering the lams or getting the glue JUST right on your first go. I had some layouts for long-bows from a bowyer friend, if you want the plans if you pm me I'll dig out the pdf I made of the drawings of how to lay the bow out.

Regards,

ThePinkOne (formerly DarkHorse..)

[Toxopholist]

Hi. There's a drawing of a longbow I made recently on our club website at http://www.scfa.org.uk/longbow.pdf . This shows the dimensions for roughing out your blank. Shaping and tillering then need to be done slowly using something like a block plane and flat bottomed spoke shave.

I've tried these dimensions using Ash and Pau Amarillo (like lemonwood). Both shoot well. Both bows are 40lb draw at 27", but I had to remove considerably more wood from the Pau Amarillo blank.

Please share your progress with us.

Regards, Dave

[Jumile]

Originally Posted by Matt Easton

I'm going on this course in July in Burgundy...

What a fantastic idea. I love to go to France, I want to get into longbow, and I love the idea of making my own. This is all three in one!

Now to see if I can talk the longbow-loving girlfriend into it for this or next summer...