The 4th and final instalment of my series of videos on how I made my self yew longbow. Here I describe how I added the horn nocks and tillered the bow, before looking back on how the bow has performed over the intervening 7 years, with some thoughts on how I might do things differently were I to make another bow.
Please ignore the constant traffic noise in the background. I live beside a busy road, plagued by heavy lorries, and there is nowhere in my house where I could record the footage and voice over without the mic picking it up.
A huge debt of thanks goes to Ben Perkins of Barbow Archery, for his help and advice, without which this project would never have got off the ground. Ben produces some of the most functional, practical and visually appealing flat bows and warbows on the market today as well as running ‘one on one’ bow making courses. He can be contacted at www.barebowarchery.co.uk.
For books on the subject, I can thoroughly recommend The Heritage of the Longbow by Pip Bickerstaffe. Pip made my first warbow over 20 years ago, helping foster my love of medieval military archery that is as strong today as ever it was.
For other great bow making videos I recommend the following YouTube channels:
Richard Head Longbows
The Longbow Series with Steve Stratton
Mick Grewcock
To purchase a self yew bow I also recommend Ian Sturgess of Boston Bows - www.bostonbows.co.uk
For arrows to go with your bow see Medieval Arrows with Will Sherman at www.medievalarrows.co.uk.
Water Buffalo image by Flowcomm at www.flickr.com/photos/flowcomm via https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/. No changes were made to the image.