By Sam HarperAnother English Longbow build-along
I guess there's no point in going through the individual
steps of how I did my actual nocks since it wouldn't be
much different than what I already showed you. Here's the
nock's before and after sanding, and the bottom one is the
ugly bottom nock. Isn't it weird how sanding it made it
change colour? Even the pecan backing changed colour!
That hole I drilled in there is for a string keeper.
Since I forgot which end was up, I was worried the tiller
would be messed up when I strung it, but I got lucky. It
has less than a 1/8" positive tiller. If I had been thinking,
I would've done these tips before I finished tillering. I'll
try to remember that next time.
I also used a piece of that horn to glue on a strike plate.
I used a dark brown leather dye I got at a shoe repair store to stain the maple part of the bow, but I don't think that was such a good idea. It looked much better when it was just plain maple.
After staining it, I sprayed about five coats of Deft on it. I went to Walmart and got some metallic braid ribbon type stuff I found between the hobby section and the fabric section and wrapped it around the base of the nocks and secured it with super glue. Here's a before and after shoot.
Isn't it weird how putting the ribbon on there made the nocks blurry?
I also used that ribbon on the handle, which is actually what I got it for. I looked at a whole lot of pictures of English longbow handles on the internet, and most of them had this decorative sort of lace wrapped around it. I didn't know what it was, so I asked the fine folks on the Leatherwall and searched the internet some more and came up with this. Here's a picture
That green leather is just wrapped on there and attached with barge cement. I got that leather for dirt cheap at the Goodwill. It used to be part of a green leather skirt.
Here's some final pictures of it.
Interesting how earlier I thought it needed to bend more toward the fades, and now I think it's bending too much toward the fades and too little out toward the tips. Oh well. That's what I get for being out of practice for so long.
Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure. This was my second English longbow, and I have become quite enamoured with them. I think I'll make another one.