Ever wondered how to build longbow arrows?

skunkwerx

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.

LionAquaLooper

Fascinating. I read all of Bernard Cornwell's grail quest books set during the Hundred Years war and how the long bow pretty much decimated the French armies at every battle. Agincourt for example. Dunno if you've read them as well. I learned some of the stuff about long bows you mentioned from those books. Apparently they're constructed from two different types of wood - a harder one on the outside and a softer one on the inside. Archers back then apparently only strung their bows during battle. Other times they'd just carry them like long walking sticks. Makes sense. 

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. 

skunkwerx

Righto so here are the shafts: 

These are Port Orford Cedar, 30" long. I'll be using the full length of them, no need to cut down. They are 5/16 in size. 
Most popular woods for arrows are Cedar, Spruce or Pine. 

These are 35/40 in terms of spine, which is how stiff or flexible an arrow is. Higher the poundage/power of the bow the stiffer the arrow spine.
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. 

Too stiff an arrow will bounce off the handle and deflect left, and too weak an arrow will shoot right (for a right handed archer). 

A slo-mo video here! 
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. 

Wood arrows have a massive variance in terms of weight. In this group the lightest weighed 256 grains (16.5 grams approx), whilst the heaviest 320 grains (20.5 grams approx). 

For me, not so bad. The lighter arrows will shoot slightly high, and the heavier ones slightly low. 

Now being wood, the spine also varies.. some will be stiffer than others. 

The best way to build a dozen arrows is to buy a box of 100 shafts, then group them by weight tolerance and spine, to match a set as close as possible. 

 

Next thing to do is straighten them. 

I do this by hand, and its a 'get it close enough' approach for me. 

Really hard to photo but you can see the unfinished shaft is slightly bent just beyond where I'm holding it. 

One of these 14 was bending back far too easily so I'm throwing that one in the bin, as I do not trust it. 

Straightening done.. to a standard, it is time to taper the ends. 

The arrow point will be glued on to the (bottom) end, and the nock will be glued on to the (top) end. 

For the nock I will use hot melt glue. 

For the point I will use araldite. But before I do this I will prep the inside of the arrow point with methylated spirits and wire wool. 

In the next part I'll do the gluing etc!

Tannin

Brilliant posting @skunkwerx! Enjoying this very much. I knew the history, of course (me being a history man through and through) but didn't know about the muscular/skeletal thing (though it came as no surprise - hell, I used to have Popeye forearms back when I was a rockclimber, same basic idea), and I most certainly didn't know about the arrow flexibility thing - that video is a real eye-opener! 

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!

skunkwerx

LionAquaLooper said:

Fascinating. I read all of Bernard Cornwell's grail quest books set during the Hundred Years war and how the long bow pretty much decimated the French armies at every battle. Agincourt for example. Dunno if you've read them as well. I learned some of the stuff about long bows you mentioned from those books. Apparently they're constructed from two different types of wood - a harder one on the outside and a softer one on the inside. Archers back then apparently only strung their bows during battle. Other times they'd just carry them like long walking sticks. Makes sense. 

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. 

They sound great, I'll check them out! Thanks mate. 

Yup, even today most bows (except compound bows), but especially traditional types made from wood are mostly unstrung when not in use. 

There is debate about it all, but bows made wholly from wood will take on a 'set' over time mostly within the limbs of the bow.  That is they start to bend and stay bent in the direction of the tension, and thus lose power. 

Modern bows, including modern longbows made with laminates are more resistant. I'm one of the ones that always unstring because I dont want to take the risk, but how much of it is handed down from the old times and just continues to be the norm I do not know! 

It definitely makes transportation a lot less cumbersome.

 I once had to take this bow to archery on a busy-ish bus when my car was out of action for a day, and even in its carry case it was hilariously cumbersome at its 6ft 6 length when I was aboard haha. 

But whilst on there I pondered about something I read, that around 3,500 years ago the first evidence of a bow was discovered in the UK, and then I wondered about the archers who used it in the Hundred Year War some 600+ years ago.. did they ever think weaponry would evolve beyond the bow and arrow, what would they make of a bloke 600 years in the future still practicing the ancient discipline, what would they make of double decker buses? Haha. 

westford

Most (OK, all) of what I know about longbows comes from those Bernard Cornwell books. Good old Thomas of Hookton. They'd probably come up with some strategy of using double deckers as a mobile defensive wall. 

Tannin

^ Nope. Cut the top off (as people do for tourist busses) and put the archers up there. Mobile artillery!

TeleMaster

Cool post man. I always like seeing your archery journey whenever you post about it. I'd like to try it sometime. 

BillDL

This is a fascinating insight into the archery world @skunkwerx. I too had absolutely no idea of how the shaft of the arrow flexes like that, and the slow motion video shows it quite dramatically.  I also naively assumed that arrowheads would still be vaguely arrow head shaped but without the "barb", rather than just a pointy brass bullet.  When you think of all the surnames that came from archery and bow and arrow making (Archer, Bowyer, Stringer, Bowman, Fletcher, and probably more), and consider the skills that were involved with the making of the bows and arrows using basic hand tools, it was certainly a very skilled profession.

Are the flights/ fletchings still made from feathers?  I always wondered about that scene with Kevin Costner as Robin Hood where he licks one side of the flight to make the arrow spin, or something like that, so it can slice through the hangman's rope and save the boy dangling from it.  Any factual basis for that do you think?

When I was in the 2nd last year of junior school (11 years old) and we all stood up to give the class a talk about our hobbies and interests, a girl in the class gave a great talk about archery and how she and her Father had made their own long bows by laminating various different woods and how they made their own arrows from bamboo or beech.  I wish I could remember more about what woods she said they had used for the bows, but I'm sure they included bamboo and I remember her mentioning the bending of the wood with steam.

LionAquaLooper

As an archery aficionado the Bernard Cornwell books are right up your alley mate.  The whole series is about a fictional English bowman and his band of archers as they rampage through France, but the backdrop is the Hundred Years war.  Cornwell did a lot of historical research.

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.

rolls1392

Really interesting post. Thank you

Nitefly

This is fascinating stuff, @skunkwerx - I'm looking forward to further chapters.

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!

ElectricXII

Really interesting post @skunkwerx . If you haven't already, check out Tod's Workshop on YouTube where he makes and tests all sorts of archery weapons, etc.

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. 

skunkwerx

Tannin said:

Brilliant posting @skunkwerx! Enjoying this very much. I knew the history, of course (me being a history man through and through) but didn't know about the muscular/skeletal thing (though it came as no surprise - hell, I used to have Popeye forearms back when I was a rockclimber, same basic idea), and I most certainly didn't know about the arrow flexibility thing - that video is a real eye-opener! 

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!

Awesome story! That was great to hear about. Have you got a thread/pics of the guitar? Bet that is a goodun!

TeleMaster said:

Cool post man. I always like seeing your archery journey whenever you post about it. I'd like to try it sometime. 

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.

BillDL said:

This is a fascinating insight into the archery world @skunkwerx. I too had absolutely no idea of how the shaft of the arrow flexes like that, and the slow motion video shows it quite dramatically.  I also naively assumed that arrowheads would still be vaguely arrow head shaped but without the "barb", rather than just a pointy brass bullet.  When you think of all the surnames that came from archery and bow and arrow making (Archer, Bowyer, Stringer, Bowman, Fletcher, and probably more), and consider the skills that were involved with the making of the bows and arrows using basic hand tools, it was certainly a very skilled profession.

Are the flights/ fletchings still made from feathers?  I always wondered about that scene with Kevin Costner as Robin Hood where he licks one side of the flight to make the arrow spin, or something like that, so it can slice through the hangman's rope and save the boy dangling from it.  Any factual basis for that do you think?

When I was in the 2nd last year of junior school (11 years old) and we all stood up to give the class a talk about our hobbies and interests, a girl in the class gave a great talk about archery and how she and her Father had made their own long bows by laminating various different woods and how they made their own arrows from bamboo or beech.  I wish I could remember more about what woods she said they had used for the bows, but I'm sure they included bamboo and I remember her mentioning the bending of the wood with steam.

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. 

Bowhunting in the UK is illegal, not that I'd do it anyway, but you could still buy the broadheads and make an arrow up, but for target archery a bullet/field/modkin point has a lot more advantage, not to mention it is easier to pull out of a straw or foam target without causing a lot of damage! (Modkin is a modern, shorter and smoother bodkin inspired design).

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. 

That scene is interesting though. 

I can't think of a reason he would lick the feather other than what you mentioned about making the arrow spin, and the scene does show the arrow rotating quite rapidly too. 

Thing is, natural feathers will impart spin on to the arrow regardless! 

The direction of the rotation would depend on whether you use the birds left wing or right wing feathers. 

Neither wing has an advantage over the other. 

You can stick the feathers on with an offset or a helical to increase the amount of spin put on the arrow. This increases stability at a cost of arrow speed. 

I'll do some thinking about it, but I reckon licking one feather would make very little difference especially at that range.
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. 

skunkwerx

LionAquaLooper said:

As an archery aficionado the Bernard Cornwell books are right up your alley mate.  The whole series is about a fictional English bowman and his band of archers as they rampage through France, but the backdrop is the Hundred Years war.  Cornwell did a lot of historical research.

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.

Yep! Thats what I was always told too, and you know what, I recently saw a video that called it a myth so I did some further looking (googled it) lol.

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. 

My only real thought is that Longbows, especially of the poundage used in those times for war, are drawn with three fingers. But you could draw a bow with two, or as the Asiatic horse archers do, draw using their thumbs. 

So cutting off just two fingers, It would be a drawback (pun intended) but wouldnt put an archer out of action indefinitely. Longbows are ambidextrous so long as the archer still has a thumb and a stump he could learn to shoot left handed. 

skunkwerx

Nitefly said:

This is fascinating stuff, @skunkwerx - I'm looking forward to further chapters.

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!

Ah not necessarily wrong! 

Historically Western right handed archers did indeed shoot with the arrow to the left of the bow, and vice versa for left handed. 

They then use whats called a mediterranean draw, so three fingers on the string (one above and two below the arrow). The fingers dont actually touch the arrow when drawing back, only the string. 

Thats just how it was done I guess from the longbow days and has stuck.

Asiatic historical archers, Mongols/Persians/Scythians/Hungarians were incredible horseback archers and typically they would draw the bow with their thumb, and the arrow would be on the right side of the bow (for a right handed archer). 

The benefits of that are that its quicker to nock an arrow that side and less clumsy too as you dont need to cross the bow with the arrow to nock it, and the thumb draw technique leaves the index finger curled and able to provide pressure to the arrow pushing it against the right side of the bow holding it steady in position, which is a huge bonus as the horse below them would be galloping and unsteady as hell. 

Some people these days shoot thumb draw and opposite side of the bow when using traditional style bows, or 'horse bows' as either a preference or because it was what was done traditionally for the Asiatic style
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). 

Modern style bows, ie recurve olympic style, or the American flatbow yeah they'd always be shot from the left hand side for a right handed archer regardless, as they are not ambidextrous in design. 

Such a beauty about Longbows and Horse bows, if you're consistent and it works, there is no real right or wrong to it!

skunkwerx

ElectricXII said:

Really interesting post @skunkwerx . If you haven't already, check out Tod's Workshop on YouTube where he makes and tests all sorts of archery weapons, etc.

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 for the recommendation! 

Haha true! You know what I did think that as I wrote it but thought I'd get away with it ;p heh

Tannin

skunkwerx said:

Tannin said:

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!

Awesome story! That was great to hear about. Have you got a thread/pics of the guitar? Bet that is a goodun!

Cheers mate. Not yet. There is a ridiculously long and mostly off-topic build thread here - https://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/243431/what-is-a-british-guitar-upcoming-ngd - but I haven't got it yet. 

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.

TJT1979

Really interesting post, thanks for taking the time. 

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....

Tannin

Osage Orange makes an outstanding back and sides timber for acoustic guitars, @TJT1979. US-based builders use it with great success, although it is not so easy to find trees big enough for two-piece backs. Apparently it was planted to make hedges over large parts of the USA in the years before the invention of barbed wire. I imagine that it was planted in Argentina for the same reason. It's a little heavier and harder than Indian Rosewood, so I agree that it might be a bit too much for a neck. 

koneguitarist

We used to build our own arrows back in 70s, until we changed to EastonX7 if my memory serves me right. I used to belong to Pentre Bowmen then shooting bare bow in field archery. Never had the patience for Target archery. 

Bought all our stuff, shafts, piles, nocks and fletching jigs etc from Crick Manor. 

Used to be great fun.