woodbloke":1fsn6pqn said:
Not meaning to side track for a mo' Fergal :wink: :lol:
I know I have settled in here when people feel so free to insult my name :wink:
woodbloke":1fsn6pqn said:
...but I thought that yew was the preferred material for the traditional longbow (at least in the past) with laminates of degame(sp) and lemon wood now finding favour? - Rob
Yew was indeed the preferred wood for making lowbows, however yew grows a little too fast here, so the traditional English yew longbow was typically made with Spanish yew (There was a tax on imports of Madera wine of yew bow staves). Yews grown in churchyards had nothing to do with bow making.
Ash bows were typically made for munition war bows and were described as one of the 'meaner' woods. There were even periods where bowyers were required to make a certain number of bows of meaner woods for every yew bow they made. Presumably because archers only wanted to buy good bows of yew, and the bowyers only wanted to make yew bows, so they were legislated to make other bows to ensure that there were enough to go around.
Most of the bows on the reenactment circuit these days are ash or lemonwood as it is considerably cheaper to make than yew due to the scarcity of good yew (most of it is Canadian these days). A 90lb draw weight lemonwood or ash bow will set you back about £120, and the equivalent yew bow will be £400-500+. I have seen a yew bow on sale for £1,000, but that was mostly because the maker didn't want anyone to buy it
I have a lemonwood self bow (all from a single piece, not laminated), and a lemon wood bow backed with hickory. My wife has an ash self bow. Other bows in the group include lemonwood, purpleheart and hickory laminates and a couple of yew bows. In fact I am going to introduce our groups bow maker to Yandles in the spring as they sell all of the required bow woods
I have a 6ft plank of 3" thick ash I need to rip down into 1.5" squares to have a go now that I have a half decent spoke shave. The plans for making an ash bow are well defined and quite simple to follow, the trick is to find a piece of wood that will not explode when you start to tiller it
