How to build a longbow?

[Paul H (admin)]

Dilys and myself have taken up archery and there are 3 classes of bow, the traditional wooden long bow is still popular alongside the high-tech "recurve" and "compound" bows made of exotic materials like CNC aluminium and carbon fibre.

So I fancy having a go at making a longbow. Traditionally Lemonwood, Ash, Yew, Maple, Hickory was used for the "stave" (the wood blank before it is carved to shape).

Searching around the wonderful t'internet I found these plans from Popular Mechanics 1941:
http://www.vintageprojects.com/archery/bow-plans.pdf

The process is not dissimilar to producing a tapered mast...I wonder if anybody has built a wooden bow in the past?


cheers
Paul

[Timmo]

Never made a bow, though I used to fletch and tip all my own arrows for a few years, still got the jigs in the workshop somewhere. I shot field archery which runs a high risk of losing arrows (well it does when I'm doing it!) so wooden shafts tended to make economic sense. Also felt 'authentic', though my adult bows are all glass fibre or wood glass composites so using a wooden longbow would have been more so. Haven't had the bows out for a long time. Must get find them and have a play!

The article you point to describes the process exactly as I've seen one made at a museum workshop, though the traditional longbow would be round rather than flat to make best use of the shape of the original branch. I vaguely remember hearing that a bow would have been yew with the back of the bow (toward the archer) being heartwood and the front the sapwood. Think that's the way round. One resists compression, the other extension so together they create the maximum desire on the part of the bow to return to it's original shape. The guy there said that they made the bows with green wood and then let them dry because the wood dried more quickly and evenly once shaped. Even then I think it was a couple of years they left them before using them.

Will be a very interesting project.

Tim.

On 21 Nov 2011, at 14:11, adminHBBR [via UK HBBR Forum] wrote:

> Dilys and myself have taken up archery and there are 3 classes of bow, the traditional wooden long bow is still popular alongside the high-tech "recurve" and "compound" bows made of exotic materials like CNC aluminium and carbon fibre.
>
> So I fancy having a go at making a longbow. Traditionally Lemonwood, Ash, Yew, Maple, Hickory was used for the "stave" (the wood blank before it is carved to shape).
>
> The process is not dissimilar to producing a tapered mast...I wonder if anybody has built a wooden bow in the past?
>

[LASER41420]

Hi,
some good info here:
http://wickedhowtos.com/index.php/2007/08/26/how-to-build-a-long-bow/
Steve

[dschin]

a detailled serie of "how to build a high performance longbow":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjiPXuuKFa4&feature=related

[Paul H (admin)]

Thanks for all the feedback and that video is amazingly down to earth and just right for folks like us.

In the video that chap used a 1in x 3in x 6ft stave of Red Oak. Robbins Timber sell 25x75 Red Oak at £4.72 a metre - so 6ft is £8.50!

I'm wondering in the back of my mind if I could cut the profile on the CNC at work - just enough to get the rounded shape correct along the length leaving about 3/8in at full width to secure to the bed of the CNC, then plane the sides and finish manually.

-Paul

[Timmo]

Laminating certainly solves the problem of sourcing a naturally laminated piece of yew (heartwood and sapwood.)

Tim.

[dschin]

take a look to "The Bent Stick Bow Building Book" by Paul Comstock
there are so many hints for buildung bows from staves and boards (eg hickory)

a very good site: http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php
or google for "primitiv archery"

br hannes

[Alan]

I built a longbow once just to rescue a model aeroplane from a tree. I found on the internet somewhere details of a jig used to tension the bow with the aim of finding it's hard and soft areas. The bow is tensioned on the jig, with a test string and you look for the hard (flat) areas and then plane a bit off until the curve is smooth. then repeat with the bow tensioned to the next notch in the jig and look for the hard (flat) areas again and so on until the bow can be fully drawn and the curve looks completely smooth. I think the bow was on top of the jig and the string pushed down to the notch with your foot.

[Whameller]

I built a flat longbow out of ash for one of my sons a few years ago - no instructions, just trial & error & following my common.  Looking at the pdf you posted, what I did (as far as I can recall) was pretty similar.  The first effort was too powerful ( he was then about 12) for him to string or draw, so I just planed away until I could just string it and he could draw it.  It still turned out amazingly powerful.

No 2 son now has a modern composite compound bow; I would say that my longbow still has about 75-80% of the composite's power.

[Paul H (admin)]

Whameller wrote

I built a flat longbow out of ash for one of my sons a few years ago - no instructions, just trial & error & following my common.  Looking at the pdf you posted, what I did (as far as I can recall) was pretty similar.  The first effort was too powerful ( he was then about 12) for him to string or draw, so I just planed away until I could just string it and he could draw it.  It still turned out amazingly powerful.

No 2 son now has a modern composite compound bow; I would say that my longbow still has about 75-80% of the composite's power.

Yes longbows have considerable power. My modern recurve bow is 28lb draw at the moment (daughter just moved up to 26lb) but friends at the local club have 48lb longbows which can hit a target at 90yds! In ancient times war bows could be 100lb draw, which is incredible.

-Paul