Saturday 7 June 2014

Willow not-very-longbow

This bow was created as an experiment to see how good a material willow is for creating a bow. As you can see, it is not very large, compared to a full sized longbow, but has so far proven to be more powerful than first expected as I have lost several arrows from accidentally overshooting, which is why I am forced to use a bent garden bamboo cane as an arrow choice in this picture! Willow is renowned for it's flexibility, but I was not sure if it would be strong enough to work, so out came the hatchet and knife and I set about finding out.
In its full glory: You can see there is an uneven bend due to one side being slightly thicker than the other; however this does not greatly affect the performance of the bow
So far this bow has worked very well, despite the lack of fine detail (such as evening out the limbs and sanding) and the wood seems to be very strong, refusing to break even when I stretched it way further than I should have during floor tillering. It is easy to draw, meaning that I don't get tired when using it, while still proving able to send an arrow a fair distance. Overall, I'd say that willow is a good choice of material for a quick bow that works well and is not too difficult to make. I'd say this took just over half an hour to carve.