The subject of hunting came up recently amongst the Hill Longbowmen, and it caused me to do some thinking. Old Phartt's Archery is basically a "fantasy business", like the phantasy football/baseball leagues that some folks like to play with. However, I really am building bows and do plan to keep on doing so. It won't be long till I'm faced with the problem of what to do with them. I don't want to get into the position of taking orders, but I'm sure eventually some will end up being sold or traded, just to keep me in glass, wood and glue.
Meantime, I'm trying to enjoy what I'm doing as if it really was a business, i.e. being serious about my building and treating my imaginary business to a name and a slogan, and, upcoming, a logo. One feature of real bowyer businesses is always the pictures of game taken with their bows... Ooops, I'm not up to hunting and getting my own pictures. So, what to do?
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 .0015 per 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.
With that background... Here's Arrowl Flynn:
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 not 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 wear soft wear point for the arrow.
"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. Anyone who ever ends up with an Old Phartt's bow gets all my own work.
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 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 that's actually a heavy pull for me. I got a ton of pix of nice shots. This is just one of them...
Topic: Latest Bow - Meet Arrowl Flynn (Read 198 times)
