Writing Archery Don'ts

Have you read the following scenes in a book? Or maybe seen them in a movie?

A company of archers stands ready on the battlements of a castle as a horde of (vikings, orcs, Frenchmen) charges towards them. The captain of archers shouts, "Nock! Draw! Hold it! Hold it!" as the enemy approaches ever closer. Finally, at the critical moment the command is given... "Fire!"

Or maybe an archer/sniper is hiding behind a tree, bow at full draw, waiting for a lone horseman to approach.

Or an archer has a bow at full draw, holding an enchantress prisoner.

To all three, I declare... BALONEY!

Hold it, hold it, hold it!

Bows all have a draw weight. This is the pounds of force necessary to hold the bow at full draw. Any bow fit for war is going to have a draw weight of at least sixty pounds. English warbows of the Hundred Years War and later would have draw weights of eighty pounds or more. How long can you pull and hold eighty pounds? Not very long!

Every second you hold it you hand creeps forward to lesson the strain and your arm starts to shake. The two make for weak, inaccurate shots. 

What would happen in reality? On command, the archers would draw and loose the arrows in one smooth motion. No hold it, hold it, hold it.

And... you don't FIRE a bow. You SHOOT it, or LOOSE an arrow.

Unstring that thing!

Archers in books and movies are almost never described as unstringing their bows. Uh-oh!

Keeping a wooden bow strung for long periods of time is extremely harmful for the bow. The wood cells become compressed and the bow loses its strength. A self-bow (a bow made from a single piece of wood) should not be kept strung for more than a few hours at a time. A composite bow, such as a Turkish or Mongolian bow, can remain strung much longer (maybe a week or more). Composite bows are made by laminating horn, wood, and sinew, and can recover their strength after "resting" and/or being heated.

Modern wheely-compound bows are a different matter. But who would want to shoot one of those?

Wow! That was an amazing shot. Again.

An archer in a wildly popular young adult novel is praised for her ability to always shoot squirrels in the eye, and by doing so not ruining the meat or the pelt.

Right in the eye? Really? A squirrel?

*edit* As a commenter pointed out, small game are also hunted with blunt arrows, killing the animal with concussive force.

Archery scenes would be so much better if writers took the time to actually loose a few arrows. Not only will they discover that impossible shots are, well... impossible. They will discover that repeated impossible shots are ridiculous.

*edit* It was also pointed out that trick shot specialists are capable of pretty amazing archery. True, but I still maintain that much of the combat archery you see in books and movies defies belief and breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.

Taking the time to carry a real bow teaches other things as well. You start to realize how encumbering a bow and a quiver are. It isn't like what you see in the movies!


Two arrows at the same time? Bah, how about three?

Two bad guys at the same time? No problem! I'll just nock two arrows.

While this might make for a good performance at the county fair (shooting at balloons ten feet away), it is not going to do much good in the real world. Arrow velocity and accuracy at any range are going to suffer terribly.

Oh, and pulling off the fletching to make an arrow curve around an obstacle? Sorry, it doesn't work.

A whack upside the head. 

Uh oh, the enemy is too close to shoot. I think I'll bonk him in the head with my trusty bow.

Sure, a heavy longbow is quite a staff. It is going to hurt. It might hurt you as well. Strung bows are under a great deal of stress. Whacking someone with it will just put it under more stress, and might result in an explosion.

Yes, bows explode. I just had one blow up on me a few days ago. Luckily I wasn't hurt. (No I wasn't whacking anyone with it.)

An unstrung bow would make a better weapon, but don't put any cuts or nicks in it. Those nicks could cause a bow explosion when the bow is next strung.

Armor works. (Except for Storm Troopers)

Armor that is contemporary to the bow in question will usually protect the wearer from harm. It's kind of the point of wearing armor.

Seriously, armor works. You had to shoot A LOT of arrows at a knight to take him down. The closer the range, the better the chance the arrow has. The arrow is at its maximum velocity, and you are probably shooting heavier arrows. Long range flight arrows have a much harder time penetrating armor.

There is always the arrow with "eyes". The one that finds the gap in the plates, or the slit in the visor, but too many lucky arrows makes for poos suspension or disbelief. 

If you want your archery to be more effective, get your opponent out of their armor!

Spoiling your fun.

Excellent. Now when you are reading a novel (or watching a movie) with archery in it you too can sigh with disappointment when one (or all) of the above occur.

Sort of like when police officers watch crime shows, or doctors watch hospital shows, or lawyers watch court shows.

But if you are a writer you now have a few more arrows in your quiver!

Bow Number Two

Thought I'd show you my second bow. It is another American longbow/flatbow. Overall length is 6' and the draw weight is 45 pounds at 28 inches.

Once again, I "backed" the bow with brown craft paper soaked with wood glue. I painted the paper black and did another swirling design on it. (I need to work on some new designs.)

Here's the bow at full draw. I enjoy shooting it more than my first bow, although I am far from a good shot. At this point I am willing to admit that I am definitely addicted to making bows (number three is well along).

Now that the school year has started it is time to focus on my real job. And now that I will have a normal (non-summer) schedule there will be more writing going on. I suppose bow making and archery will have to move a couple of steps down the ladder.

Finishing my first longbow

Here are some more pics of my first longbow build. In my last post I had roughed out the shape of the bow. Now came the all important tillering process. I started by putting the bow on a tillering "tree" and hanging twenty pounds of weights from it.

This was enough weight to start bending the bow. The goal is to have a very even bend across the length of the bow. You don't want any flat spots or sharp bends. You can see that the left arm was slightly more bent than right.

I continued shaving off more wood and adding more weight. Until I got to this point:

Oops! Look how much the left arm is bending. I took off too much wood. And this was with thirty-five pounds instead of the forty I was hoping for. In order to even out the arms I had to take more wood off, resulting in a bow that only drew thirty pounds. 

Here is the bow after tillering and sanding. Now it was ready for the final finishing process. I did take it out for a few shots at this point in time and was very pleased.

And here is the final bow (In the hands of my lovely assistant, Amelia)! It still need a proper string and arrows, but I am very happy with how it came out.

A detail of the handle. I pained the back (the part facing away from the archer) black and then added a swirling yellow design to it. The back was covered in glue-soaked paper to prevent splinters and cracks from developing when the bow was drawn. The paint job was to improve the brown-paper look. The handle is wrapped in glue-soaked hemp twine. You'll see a notch right above the handle. This is called the arrow rest. Not all bows have them, but American longbows usually have them, so I put on on. 

The final product "braced" with some nylon cord. Now to get some arrows and put it into action!

Stats:

69" (nock to nock) Red Oak "American" longbow backed with paper.

30# draw weight at 28" draw

Making this bow was loads of fun and I will definitely be making another ASAP!

 

Making a Longbow

I did a lot of research on archery while writing Eternal Knight. Combine this with a life-long interest in military history and my historical wargaming hobby and it was only a matter of time before I set out to make my own bow.

In Eternal Knight, Hadde's bow, Hawkeye, is a composite recurve bow. Composite means that the bow is made of three materials: animal sinew on the back (the part away from the archer), wood as a core material, and horn on the belly (the part closest to the archer). Recurved means that the bow actually bends away from the archer when unstrung. Composite recurve bows can be both very powerful and very difficult to string. They are also short and excellent for horse-archers.

For my first bowmaking experience I chose NOT to make Hadde's bow. Composite recurve bows are not for beginning bowyers. I am going to make a simple longbow out of red oak. The Eastern Landomeri in Eternal Knight use longbows, so that will be my bow's book connection. For my bowmaking guide I am using a variety of sources from the internet, but primarily Poor Folk Bows. I am following his "Red oak board bow build along".

Roughing out:

I have a six foot red oak bowstaff that has been roughed out with a wood rasp. The wood came from Home Depot and started out as a 1 x 2 x 6. It always surprises me how thin the wood on a bow is. I always expect them to be fatter. The protruding part is called the riser. It will become the handle. Why is the bow staff so straight? It won't gain it's bow-like shape until I start the tillering process. All of the work you see above was done in about two hours.

 Backing the bow:

Backing a bow is when you laminate a substance to the back (the part away from the archer) of the bow. Backing can be used to strengthen a bow by adding another layer, especially if that layer is a material that resists stretching. Sinew is an extremely good backing. Bamboo, hickory, ash, and maple make good backings as well. A second purpose in backing the bow is that it prevents splinters from rising as the bow is bent. Splinters lead to fractures, and fractures lead to broken bows. If your goal is preventing splinters you can use a variety of materials including silk, linen, drywall tape, and paper. I selected paper. Why? Because the Whole Foods bag says PLEASE RECYCLE THIS BAG and I always do as I am told. I used three layers of paper and copious amounts of wood glue. I let each layer set up for ten minutes before adding the next layer, making certain that the paper was completely soaked through. After adding the final layer, I coated the entire surface with glue.

Tomorrow (or whenever I get to it) I will use my handy rasp to round off the edges of my bow's back and eliminate the excess paper. After that comes the tillering process. Tillering teaches the bow to bend and adjusts the bow to the proper draw weight. I am aiming for a forty pound draw. Forty pounds is plenty for target shooting and can be drawn by most adults.

So far this has been a lot of fun. I'll be back soon with more.