Virtually Finished

What a glorious weekend, lovely sunny late Summer feel, I went the the Brickenden village fete yesterday and took 3 bows. A few people tried the target bow and were universally impressed with the smoothness and speed, in fact one of the guys from the club asked if I could make him something similar with a little more poundage and maybe a back that wasn't Bamboo, to keep it more traditional. I've pencilled it in and will keep an eye out for suitable wood.
I've got the arrow plate done yesterday (Mother of Pearl) and was up bright and early today to get the leather grip done, it's had a couple of wipes of Danish Oil, mind the first one gets pretty much removed as the final tool marks are taken out.
I popped down to the council tip with a load of garden rubbish and went round the back of a carpet warehouse on the way back to get a cardboard tube for shipping the bow. A few more coats of Danish Oil  (2 per day) and it will be ready to ship out on Wednesday with any luck.
It's tricky to photograph bows. One thing to remember is to kneel down, to get a shot level with the grip. If you take a shot from standing it foreshortens the bow and the perspective makes the lower limb look much shorter.


This bow rather begs the question. Do you think it's an English Longbow. I think it's odd that by old 70# self Yew bow (before I refurbished it) wouldn't meet the longbow regulations of some societies because it didn't have horn nocks, yet this deflexed reflex bamboo backed bow does! Maybe that's why I'm not a great fan of rules and regulations.
Anyway with this bow I marked every 3" along the limbs and measured width and thickness an it complies with the 5/8 thickness/width ratio.

I must admit, it looks a lot more like a longbow now with it's lovely slim tips. Showing them with a pencil for scale seems to be common practise on the Primitive Archer forum. It's a good way of showing how slim the tips can be.
As a check I measured the width of my 60# Bamboo backed Yew longbow every inch over the last 8" and used that as a reference. The horn nocks were drilled using the smallest of my 3 boring tools, they are filed so small you can see the wood showing through at one point on the bottom nock. I've tried to go small but traditional in shape.

Rose Cordage:- I did a breaking strain test on the cordage I made a week or so back. It's difficult to test as the cordage wasn't very even. It was a 3ply cordage about 2.2mm thick. With it as a loop (e,g the pull being on two strands) it took 50#
On a single strand it was about 20# which is fair enough. Three lengths of fine 3 ply cordage would probably twist up to make a serviceable bow string for a 20# bow especially if nocks and loops were reinforced. A 20# bow would be all that was needed as a survival bow. I'll test my nettle cordage some time and maybe try some bramble cordage, which reminds me I should pick some blackberries for Blackberry and Apple pie, especially as we have some cream left in the fridge... Ha, I've made you all hungry now!