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The English Long BowThe English Longbow is steeped in tradition and lore. Much of what we know of the artillery bowsused by England has been gathered from the wrecks of the Mary Rose. According to somecurrent bowyers, the bows (made of yew from Spain and Italy) would have had draw weightsanywhere from 80-140#, with draw lengths ranging from 27-31. Some of the bowyers today

have reproduced some artillery bows and found that a 160# yew bow drawn to 31 will cast an1150 grain arrow over 200 yards! Most of the English Longbows made today are of therecreational type made in the Victorian age, mostly pulling 50-60# in draw weight with drawlengths from 26-30. In the days where longbows were used in war, bowyers kept their process asecret, therefore, it is hard to reproduce the bows in the exact manner they were built. Most ofwhat we know about old longbows has come through trial and error. Luckily today, most bowyersare very open about how they build bows and articles abound on the Internet. After readingabout English longbows, I thought I would give it a try. I had a good Red Oak board I purchasedin the area and was interested in building a recreational longbow for fun.

LayoutI received a copy of The Heritage of the Longbow, written by Pip Bickerstaffe. Pip is a bowyer

in England who makes bows for a living. I chose the dimensions he gave, and made a couple ofmodifications. I had a 1&1/8 wide, 1 thick, 61 board cut out of the 6 wide, 1 thick, 7 longboard I purchased. I then layed out a convex width taper to wide at the tips and a straighttaper to thick at the tips.

There are a few requirements for a recreational English Longbow: Rounded belly in cross-section. Must be no less than 56 long for draws under 26. The limb thickness to width ratio must be above 5:8.

When building English Longbows with whitewoods, such as Oaks, Ash, Elms, Maple, Hickory,etc., its better to build them longer to handle the strain the narrow width places on the wood. Arounded belly for a bow provides a structured method of tillering a bow.

ProcessThe first step is to place the bow in a tillering tree with a tillering string attached to the bow usingleather cups on the tips. This allows the bowyer to check the bend of the limbs prior to bracingthe bow up with a normal sized string. The first picture illustrates the tillering tree. In the secondpicture the bow is drawn to 29 with the long tillering string. It reads about 55# at this point, thebow should be 55# at this length if a 55# @ 28 is desired. If a bow is braced (strung up) when itis too strong for the design, the bow will take a large set.

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The bend of the limbs looks pretty good and the weight is appropriate for stringing so it wasbraced to 6 (third picture). When the bow was braced, I found that the outer half of the limbsbent too much. So I removed a little wood with the hoof rasp and drew it to 14 (fourth picture). Itstill bent a little too much in the outer half, so I removed a little more wood with a rasp and cabinetscraper. I drew it out to 18 and the inner half seemed to be bending more, although not quiteenough (fifth picture). More was removed from the inner limbs with the cabinet scraper and thenthe bow was drawn to 22 (sixth picture). It was still a little too stiff, so the cabinet scraper comeout again.

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A cabinet scraper is a good tool for tillering, because it prevents you from removing too muchwood at once. Its also produces a smoother finish than the rasp, so that only minimal sanding isneeded. It forces you to move slowly when tillering. The bow was exercised 50 times then drawnto 24 (seventh picture), still a bit stiff in the middle. After taking the scraper out again, thenexercising at 24, I drew it back to 27 (eighth picture). Still a bit stiff, but moving in the right

direction. Scrape and exercise the limbs some more and draw to 28 (ninth picture). The tiller isright where I want it, bending some in the middle and a little more on the outer half. I then drew itback by hand about 1 dozen times (tenth picture).

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I took the bow out to Sandhills Archery Club and shot it about 20 times, it seemed accurate andhad decent speed. I then shot about 6 shots through the chronograph and it shot 525-550 grainbirch arrows at 146-150 fps. After unstringing the bow took about 1&3/4 set, not too bad.

I decided to add horn nocks to the bow, however, I dont have any horn, so I used antler. Thefirst step was to drill out conical holes in the bottom of the antler. I used a spade bit andground it to a triangular shape, then put in small teeth on the sides. Next I made conical pointson the bow tips to fit the antler (eleventh picture). The bow tips and the antler were cleaned withacetone, then glued together with a fast set epoxy. I then shaped the nocks to hold the string andused as much creativity as I could muster to shape the nocks (twelfth picture). I found that thebow jumped up in draw weight to 52# at 28 draw. It was because I shortened the nock-to-nocklength to 71 from 72 and picked up about 5# draw weight.

After shooting about 100 more shots I finished the bow with 4 coats of Minwax Satin FinishPolyeurathane. I then sewed on a handle made from leather I made from a whitetail buck that Ihad harvested.

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The final weight at 28 draw was 50# and the speed with 525 grain birch arrows is 150 fps. Quitea number of archers at the Sandhills Archery Club have now shot this bow and all seemed tohave enjoyed the experience. If anyone is interested in giving this bow a shot, send me an email

atjelinekjason@hotmail.com. My next English Long Bow project I am hoping to attempt is a warbow with a draw weight at around 100# at 29-30 of draw.