No? Excellent, I will show you anyway.
Bit of a pointless thread but I thought I'd leave this here and update as I progress through making a set of wooden arrows, in case anyone is bored and finds it interesting as I'll drop some nuggets of information throughout if you're into history
I'll write some background first..
I've been shooting modern 'olympic style' recurve bows for nigh on 22 years. The arrows used with modern bows are aluminium, or as I use, carbon wrapped aluminium. Everything is within tight tolerances and very consistent.
Arrows for Longbows are traditionally made from wood.
Our archery club president recently passed away, and he was a traditional guy. He mainly shot 'English' longbows, (actually invented by the Welsh), and upon his passing passed on to the club the majority of his gear with the wish that it stays within the club and is used.
I'd never shot a traditional bow before but always wanted to, and I thought I'd try my best to do him proud.
Enter the longbow and Terry's old arrows:
A beautiful creation made by Gary Evans, a Welsh bowyer.
The longbow is probably most famous for its effective use by the English and Welsh at Agincourt, Crecys and Poitiers.
At the battle of Agincourt in 1415, reports were that the British army consisted of 6000 men, primarily archers, whereas the French army had (reports vary) anywhere between 12,000 to 30,000 men. The latter sustaining much heavier losses compared to the British.
Many things, tactics, terrain, conditions etc contributed to the British victory but the skill of the archers was a significant factor.
Those days, the longbow had to be powerful. The average draw weight (which is how 'heavy' the bow string is to pull back) would be anywhere from 100lbs to 160lbs.
Bows found on the Mary Rose some hundred years after these battles weighed in at around 150lbs.
Archers were known to have deformed skeletons and muscle imbalances from having to train and shoot with bows so heavy.
The Longbow I have here is a mere 46lbs in comparison! It is an upper mid range weight for modern target shooting. My modern recurve bow is 37lbs.
I have a huge muscle strength imbalance between left and right shoulder and back muscles, just from regular shooting!
Bows used in the olympics are around 45-50lb for men. You really don't need more.
Ok so history and background done..
I fancied building a set of my own wooden arrows!
I'll post again in a bit with the first stages of whats involved.
Comments
Reading those books made me imagine what it would be like to shoot an arrow from a long bow. Like you said it requires immense strength so I imagine I'd really struggle. But I'd love to try it nonetheless.
Most popular woods for arrows are Cedar, Spruce or Pine.
Arrows need to flex, which is most important on a longbow, as the arrow needs to in effect curve around the bow handle as it is released.
https://youtu.be/Cc0v4AqKMt4?si=H7VkOgG7XTU9pTqb
The first thing to do is I weigh each one and group them together. 14 shafts here, so two groups of 7.
My little contribution. As an Australian, most of my guitars are made from Australian native timbers, many of them species I know well from my many years of travelling the continent doing wildlife photography.
When I visited the UK for the first time last year, I took the opportunity to slip down to Devon where (among other things) I spent some time on the lovely River Lyn and visited the lads at Brook, where I ordered a Lyn guitar.
Given my love of history, naturally I wanted the timbers of my one and only British guitar to be as British as possible. That meant that two absolute must-have timbers were oak (Roman bridges, Tudor mansions, Nelson's wooden walls) and yew (the archers of Agincort, Crécy, Poitiers, and so many other significant battles).
In the end, we couldn't come up with a suitable native British top wood and settled for European Spruce (which is at least geographically close from the perspective of someone living 17,000 kilometres away), but the fretboard, headstock veneer, and bridge are bog oak, while both the neck and the back are composites of walnut and yew.
All power to your arm!
Others may already know this but one of the trivial things I learned from those books is the origin of the English "two fingered salute". Story goes that whenever the French captured English archers one of the things they do is to cut their index and middle fingers so they can never use a bow again. So during battles or sieges, the English archers would give them the two fingered salute to basically say "screw you we've still got our index and middle fingers"
Urban legend? Don't know. But it makes sense and I found it funny nonetheless.
I just noticed that a right-handed archer fits the arrow to the left side of the bow - I always thought it would be to the right. But, watching the video clip above, it's obvious why I was wrong!
I'm being pedantic, but in your original post you refer to the Medieval English armies as "British" perhaps because they included Welsh bowmen, however this wasn't a term used at the time of course, and in fact the Scots were on the other side for the entirety of the Middle Ages.
Cheers bud! Yeah always welcome to give it a go, the outdoor season is almost upon us as well.. looking forward to getting back outdoor shooting.
Ah points & feathers! Broadhead arrow points look the coolest and its generally what people think of when picturing an arrow. Theyre still in use today although they look a hell of a lot different and are only used for hunting.
I think historically in war the broadhead would cause massive damage on impact and then further damage and god knows how much pain when trying to remove from a victim, but as plate and chain mail armour entered the battlegrounds, the bodkin point was used as it could pierce armour whereas the broadhead could not (generally).
Heh I searched for the Robin Hood scene and watched it, I should really watch that film in its entirety!
Yup turkey feathers are still used for traditional arrows, and they can be used on aluminium or carbon modern arrows too. I just use modern rubbery type fletchings on my carbon arrows but I'll be using Turkey feathers for these wooden ones.
I guess it would alter 'something' aerodynamically but whether it would be perceivable or measurable...
The shot itself with the lick, looked cool, added that extra bit of tenseness, but such an improbable shot haha! Real life scenario I don't think anyone would waste time trying to do it if they could get to the gallows any other way.
I'm not sure there is any proof or record out there to be able to call it fact, but I did read something funny..
As someone else mentioned with bows being made from yew, a phrase of 'pluck yew' would accompany the two finger salute haha.
Ah not necessarily wrong!
of bow, but equally you could shoot an Asiatic or horse bow with a 'western' approach and be just as accurate (unless you're on horseback lol).
But as it happens, just last night (Oz time) I got an email from Simon saying it is nearly finished and did I want a wing bridge or a belly bridge? Simon attached two pictures with templates sitting on the top so I could see the difference. I went for the belly bridge, as seen below.
So yes! Almost ready!
We can't see any of the yew from this angle, just the European Spruce top, walnut sides, and bog oak fretboard. I specified a 12 1/2 fret neck-body join which worries Simon as he thinks people seeing the join not on an even fret will think he's made a mistake!
I'll post my own pictures when it gets here, perhaps around early June at a guess.
I live in Argentina where locally we have a lot of Osage Orange trees. Apparently in early US history it was highly praised and very valuable for bowmaking. Stiffness with no warping I guess. Sounds good for a Tele neck actually, but probably too dense....