Anchor Bowmen Archery Club News

We are planning to run additional courses in support of the DCAA sport England grant project. These are open to all DCAA affiliated archers at a cost of £20. The bows made will form part of the counties longbow library, but the skills gained are yours to keep.

The county will also have longbow making tool kits available for use after the course if anyone wants to go onto make additional bows. If you want to make a personal bow then we can probably supply a laminated stave for £120 as long as the demand is not too high.

courses are planned for :
Saturdays 7th/14th July – course now full
Saturdays 18th/25th August – 2 places currently remaining

and we are planning 1 further course later in the year if the demand is there – date to be arranged when we have enough interest.

e-mail andrew.spondon58@talktalk.net of you are interested in a place on a course.

Well the good news was that everyone came back for the 2nd day of the course!

The morning began with everyone filing string grooves into their shaped horn nocks and making a Flemish twist string of the right length.

They then all had the fun of trying to brace a bow that was still reluctant to bend much beyond bracing height.

The rest of the morning was spent completing the tillering process and getting the bows to about the right draw length and draw weight.

Over lunch we oiled the handle sections ready for a bit of light needlework to add a leather handle at the start of the afternoon session.


The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to the final tweaking of the limbs to achieve the perfect bow bend, plenty of sanding for beautifully smooth profiles, fitting the arrow pass and polishing the horn nocks.

Finally we ended the day with the final inspections, measurements and marking the bows before we completed each bows birth certificate.

So by the end of the course we had 6 brand new bows, 6 newly qualified bow makers and the anticipation of trying them out for the first time (after a few more coats of oil that is).

Yesterday we held the first day of our first longbow making course at Anchor.

6 willing volunteers braved the workshop with the intention of making a bow each in just 2 days.

After a couple of hours of instruction, rasping, sanding, scraping and filing the bows were ready to teach how to bend.

a careful eye for the developing curve of the limbs and precision pencil marking leads to even more scraping and sanding…

at each stage we exercised the bows to test the bend and ‘teach’ them where we want them to go, exposing any stiff or weak spots in the limbs and racking up plenty of steps for those with step counters.

The only problem all day was persuading the team to put down the tools long enough to get some lunch! No one seemed to want to stop.

But eventually by early afternoon we were all fed and the bows were developing a nice even bend.

By the end of the day the nocks were glued in place and the process of shaping started, (much to the disgust of those with any sense of smell). We even had a few smiles on the end of day group photo.

Bow making part 2 …. coming next week