arrowl-flynn

The subject of hunting came up recently amongst the Howard Hill Longbowmen, and it caused me to do some thinking. While I enjoy building light bows, a part of archery is hunting and that requires at least a little more weight than I can comfortably shoot. I had the idea of making a bow that would come out between 45 and 50 pounds, as close to 50 as I can, and then sending it off to members of the Longbowmen to see if they can take a pig or a deer with it and provide me with photos. Nothing new here... the old "circulating bow" concept. The Longbowmen were/are enthusiastic, and this project moved to the top of my list.

The bow is a Hill style yew with a lamboo core. It is named "Arrow'l Flynn" in honor of the star of "The Adventures of Robin Hood". Arrowl started out as a yew plank, two pieces of bamboo flooring and a chunk of walnut. All resawing, lam grinding, shaping, etc. was done starting from scratch.

Arrowl's composition is three lams under clear glass: .043 clear glass; .130 yew tapered .0015per inch; .130 lamboo tapered .0015 per inch; .060 yew parallel; .043 clear glass. Riser is walnut. The final stats came out 66" and 48@28. He chronographed at 163 fps with a 9.8 grain per pound arrow. This is right on the money for his weight in a Hill style bow.

Unstrung, essentially straight, though there is maybe 1/2" of string follow. My bows come off of a straight form, but they all seem to acquire a very small amount of string follow. I figure it must be caused by a variation in the heating or cooling of the layup in the oven.	Strung... there is about 3/4" of negative tiller in the lower limb.
Right side of riser. Arrowl has no shelf. He is deliberately built to be ambidextrous, shot off the hand either right or left. This will insure that he can be used and enjoyed by all of the Longbowmen, regardless of their dexterity orientation.	Left side of riser. This shot shows better than the previous one how I set things up. While there is no shelf, there is a thin leather wedge under the wrap. This provides an arrow placement reference and the swell of the wedge provides a "feel" reference for correct hand placement. The dot above the edge is a 3/8" punched out piece of leather inset into the riser to provide a soft wear point for the arrow, similar to what a side plate leather does on most bows, but without widening the riser.
"Reptile skin" laced leather wrap. I have no idea what it really is. It was a scrap from Tandy's bin. I just liked the look of it.
I could wish my printing/writing were better, but it isn't. It's been suggested I have someone else do this, but I make the bow... I mark it.
Upper tip.	Lower tip. I wasn't happy with the lower tip at first. I found it too stubby. After initial tillering, I decided it was enough stiffer to reshape it a bit and not affect the tiller enough to worry about.
Here's Arrowl's tiller at 28". Left is bottom limb, maybe 1/2" stiffer. Grid is 2" squares.
Ah... but does Arowl shoot? I feared it would be hard for me to tell, because even with my short draw (he's 40 1/2# at 25 for me) he's more bow than I should be drawing. I shot him too much initially in the yard, before he was really finished, to get a feel for the riser shaping and tillering, and ended up with a sore shoulder for two days. He was a hair over 50# at that point. However, today I took him up on the mountain stump shooting, a more intermittent shooting than targets in the back yard. I had also warmed up with with about an hour and a half of shooting my regular, lighter bow. Warmed up, I found him very smooth. He has a very straight power graph, only beginning to show an increase in the rate of weight acculation per inch between 29 and 30 inches draw, and then only 1/2#. I had a perfect arrow match with 1816 aluminums with 100 gr. tips. I think with a 28" draw he'll want 1916's or 40 - 45 spine woodies. (Remember... no shelf or cutout. You're shooting around the whole riser like on an English longbow.) I was shooting at old stumps, using either holes in the stumps or the cutouts for logging springboards as aiming points. Shots were from 18 to 35 yards, mostly favoring the longer. We never missed a stump and rarely failed to come darn close to the actual aiming spot. This is just a few shots. I think you'll agree that he shoots pretty darn good for first time out with a new bow.

Of course, the key question for Arrowl is not how he shoots for me, but how he shoots for folks with a full 28" draw... the folks he was built to hunt with. My friend Michael Wood is a big guy with a full draw. He's right handed. Here are two pix of Michael with Arrowl:

For anyone who is interested, I documented the building of Arrowl for the Longbowmen with a really exaustive buildalong, from raw plank to finished bow. This was a big undertaking and involves pages and pages of pictures and narrative.. This was for the benefit of the group members who will be using the bow, but also to provide a record of just how one of my bows is built. Here is a link to these pages:

In addition to the actual buildalong, I have posted a "children's story" version of the creation of Arrowl, suitable for being read to your young archers to be:

There you have it... the story of Arrowl, Old Phartt's Archery bow #11. I hope you've enjoyed the presentation.