Making English Longbows from Common Woods

[Music] welcome back everyone to the organic archery YouTube channel in today's video I'm going to be covering what has to be one of the most frequently asked questions on the internet forums uh by new boers and that is Will insert your wood of choice make an English Longbow and from there you're usually going to find answers that have been regurgitated for a very long time because they were written in some book uh years ago and it'll go something like you shouldn't make an English longw out of that wood because it's too strong in tension and it's too weak in compression and if you do uh it will take excessive string follow and perform poorly and it'll have massive hand shock or it'll just fret across its entire belly and eventually break and I have always had my susp ions about this so I've been on a mission to figure out if it's true so what exactly is an English Longbow well they happen to have very specific dimensions and it's known as the 5/8 Rule and your bow must conform to the 5/8 rule to be considered a true English long bow however this bow style was also commonly called called a Debo and that refers to its cross-section so if I was to saw the limbs in half and look at it from the side the crosssection would resemble a capital D debos like this one were not only used by the famed medieval war archers but it was also used by South American tribes people and it's been in use for many thousands of years and still is on the African Savannah and lastly they were also being used by the Native American Hunter and warriors along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States who are well documented to have unusually tall and Incredibly powerful long bows and there are several examples in the encyclopedia of Native American bows arrows and quivers of rounded or oval cross sections and of course this is not Universal uh you will find many examples of rectangular cross-sections as well but for the sake of this video Let's just refer to these as debos and not English long bows because this design was and still is in widespread use I've been feeling very drawn to this design over the last 12 to 18 months uh it's the iconic Longbow shape Ye Old stick and string from the stories of Robin Hood will and Maurice Thompson and Saxton Pope and I just had to find out for myself if the rumors were true so during that time I've built probably a dozen of these from Hackberry uh half a dozen or so from Ash one from mberry one from Hickory and at least a dozen from oage but obviously oage and you are your premium bow Woods they're going to be able to handle either a flat bow or a long bow just fine that's not the purpose of this video we're here to find out how everyday backyard Hardwoods handle the English style Debo design let's see how they do so the first wood I want to talk about is Ash this was one of the mean Woods that were used historically as a second string wood by the English for their War bows not all Ash is created equal we have several species growing in this area and white ash is by far the best for bows um black blue and green Ash will not make as good a bows as white ash and in my experiments with black ash it's far too brittle and I don't use it Ash is not incredibly dense uh so it can handle longer length um I've had no issues running Ash bows of moderate poundage between 60 and 70 lb draw up to 74 in in overall length with no noticeable increase in hand shock uh no loss of performance or other negative shooting characteristics I have experienced some difficulty pushing the draw weights really high with Ash uh if I get above 65 to 70 lb for me it starts to take excessive string follow but that could also be my fault because I didn't heat treat it and I certainly could have made the bows longer this one finished out at 65 lb at 28 in which would make it about 71 lb at 30 in here's a quick look at white ash before any stain or Dye has been applied uh if you were going to keep it traditional you would leave this as is but if you were going to hunt with it you would probably want to darken it up as you'll see in the upcoming shots Ash is no [Applause] slouch it is critical that a very long bow be tillered with any elliptical shape if these bows are bending too much in the handle they will have terrible performance and excessive hand shock and I have my suspicions that some of the rumors came from very long bows that were tillered incorrectly and you can see at 65 to 70 lb this white ash started to take string follow moving right into Hackberry which is one of my all-time favorite bow woods and you may recognize some of these clips from the uty the Iceman replica video Hackberry is very similar to Elm in a lot of ways which was another one of the traditional mean Woods for war BOS uh most ly witch Elm Hackberry is a medium density hardwood that grows like a weed around here and it tends to take over properties so many farmers around here consider it to be a trash tree and they're often clear cutting it so it's very easy to get access to and it is a pleasure to work with hand tools it yields readily to the draw knife and the rasp and it's light in physical m ass so it makes an unusually fast shooting bow with no hand shock this one finished out at 70 lb at 26 in which would put it right around 76 lb at 28 in and 82 lb at 30 in and it was a little bit wider at uh 1 and 1/2 in um I don't have any shots of the resting profile for this one because it's an older build but after an overnight rest the bow recovered to perfectly flat when carefully made Hackberry makes very fast bows Mulberry is another common medium density hardwood and this is a little bit of a softer wood in my experiments with it it dings easily and this bow was originally a couple inches longer but I had to Pike it because the string was splitting the knock uh which is unusual so I wrapped the knock and went with double slip knots so there are no string grooves but you might consider overlays or horn knocks for mberry notice once again the center section is just barely bending the bow ended up shooting very nicely and it took almost no string follow and I look forward to working with malberry Moore here's a little bonus of course oage and you are premium bow Woods that can handle many different profile shapes finally we're moving into the Forbidden Longbow wood Hickory is the one that is foretold to have compression issues and uh yeah it's just rumored to make terrible long bows so naturally I had to find out for myself self I do want to make a note about these extremely dense Woods like Osage and Hickory um I have found that if you try to stretch the length out too far they do become very shocky uh the upper limit for me for oage is around 72 in although that can be hit or miss I really prefer 70 in and under uh for oage and that length it can still handle some very serious draw lengths um for Hickory I tried to make this one 74 in and it just didn't feel quite right so cutting it down to 72 in fixed all of its problems which leads me to believe Hickory is a touch too dense to stretch out farther than about 6 ft long but of course that doesn't mean it's true for everyone so so I encourage you to do what you want and find your own upper limits for the length of these extremely dense [Music] Hardwoods this one finished out at 70 lb at 28 in which would be roughly 76 at 30 and we're about to see just how poorly it shoots [Applause] [Applause] here's the side profile right after shooting this bow does not have an aggressive heat treatment or a fire hardening and we have been getting a ton of rain lately it's a pretty heavy bow and it's only 1 and a/4 in wide so I'm feeling feeling pretty confident about Hickory there you have it guys uh it's so important when you're first learning to build bows that you don't just find a Boer you like or one with a large internet following and listen to every word they say as if it was gospel uh there are people out there finding that some of these rules carved in stone uh by the early Boyers and in the early archery texts might not not be quite as true as we once thought they were if you want an English style Longbow identify a hardwood or a semi- hard wood that grows readily available in your area and give it a try if it's not the optimal design for that wood it might take compression fractures uh but that's also normal um when you're first learning to build bows so don't blame it on the wood it doesn't matter whether it's a flat bow or a long bow if it's tillered poorly U which you're likely to do as a a beginner it's going to take compression fractures to let you know the wood is overstressed but if it does take compression fractures so what uh shoot it Until It Breaks throw it away and start a new one the ease of construction of this style of bow is one of the major Pros it doesn't matter which design you go with just have fun with it and uh remember never become too attached to a stick until it has proven itself faithful for at least a few hundred arrows uh I see it on the online on the forums especially all the time people will just fall in love as soon as it starts looking like a bow and you do not want to do that uh it will save you a lot of Heartache in the early years if you make your bow prove itself uh before you become attached but before I sign off I owe you guys a bow giveaway uh obviously I didn't make anything in this video so there's not going to be a giveaway for the comment section today I still really appreciate you guys' subscriptions and and comments but I do need to give away this 65 lb Neolithic Ash Longbow from my last bow build so if you guys are new here I give away everything I make on the Channel all you have to do to enter for a chance to win is uh subscribe to the channel and comment on any bow build you'd like to enter uh but yeah I've got my random comment picker already pulled up here one second all right paste the link and fetch the winner Irvin Taylor 658 Irvin's comment says I've been a bow hunter since my early teens always with a compound watching your videos has sparked my interest to take up traditional archery keep up the Fantastic work I love this Neolithic bow and I would love to win it congrats Irvin Taylor you just won my friend so Irvin Taylor 6508 reach out to me uh at the email on my website there's a link in my bio uh in YouTube there's also a link in the descript description of this video which reminds me guys uh let's use the honor System with these giveaways um if I start to get a bunch of spam emails from people trying to claim prizes they didn't really win I'm just going to have to stop doing them um also I see the couple of you that are spamming the comments to increases your uh increase your chances of winning uh you'll be doing stuff like I comment love comment this comment Neolithic comment bow uh don't do that if you win from spamming the comments I'm just going to skip over you and pick another winner and uh same applies to the trolls if you guys are leaving nasty comments probably just going to skip you so don't be a turd uh let's keep it real you guys just stay honest uh with these giveaways and yeah I'll keep it real with you and I'll send them out promptly um I'm just trying to spread the love and uh give away all this cool stuff so that's it for today guys I look forward to making more videos and I'll see you next time know it's overstressed uh what am I talking about that's not the purpose of this video Gilbert shut up bro [Laughter] h

Channel: Organic Archery

Views: 12,121

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Id: GMR4k_41Uho

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024