Articles: Bushcraft & Wilderness
Making a Bow & Arrow using an 8000 year old design
Bowmaking in the Lake District
I've often wanted to make my own bow. Often tried when I was a lad too, but loose string, bamboo and tape didn't inspire me then, but wood, feather and sinew do today. There's something so primordial in shaping a young tree into a formidable weapon that when someone dropped out of the Woodsmoke Bowyer's Course, I just had to go for it. Especially when I learned that 4 Kalahari bushmen were going to be there too. These people have been living the same way for at least 40 000 years. No wars, no mortgages, no problem! I was to learn though that their lives are changing rapidly, as are all indigenous peoples who haven't been rounded up yet.
But first things first.
After a simple meal and erection of my tarp the night before, we selected our 6-month seasoned sections of ash for the bow. The design is based on a find of 8000 year-old bows preserved in a Danish bog, which were made of elm. As we all know, this wood for bowmaking is hard to come by nowadays, so ash it was.
The weather was wet. Really wet. Mindbogglingly wet, in fact. I had my trusty Sealskinz socks on with lightweight leather boots, and was experimenting with the virtues of cotton (a much maligned material in the outdoor world) as a hardshell, Ventile being the jacket material, and Oxford weave the trousers. Both got damp, but a merino baselayer protected me well from feeling cold, plus the intense activity of using just an axe and a knife as my tools. You can't beat this for combining exercise with creativity, plus it's low-carbon to boot! Ironically, the knife blade and axe head were high carbon. Not so good for keeping pristine, especially in a damp climate, but if treated well & used properly they keep their edges and are much easier to sharpen than their stainless siblings. They seem to have more 'life' than stainless, especially when carving.
The technique, in a nutshell, was simply hacking away at the wood, starting with the sides and the grip. We used stretched string covered in charcoal to mark template lines by twanging them once taut & aligned correctly.
When the bow looked roughly the right shape from the front/back, we hacked enough wood off the sides until the limbs became thin & the limbs started to bend more. We then calmed down and started shaving thin slivers off. 90% of bowmaking is in the tillering, so I concentrated on that for most of the rest of the course.
We also added notches & made bowstrings by twisting synthetic sinew. We would have used actual sinew but it would have taken a whole herd of animals to provide it all!
Arrows were made from pine, feathers & a birch tar glue, with a brass tip. No ancient technology here, although I have made flint arrowheads for future arrowmaking. It takes lots of time & effort to season arrowshafts from greenwood too, and as we were there to learn, pine dowel it was. We didn't use local hardware dowelling though, as it doesn't have the strength of tailor-made shafts, and there's much less danger of an arrow snapping as you fire it, so it's safer too.
I didn't quite complete my bow, so it's a little 'Fred Flintstone' at the moment but I'm finishing it in my own time, along with more arrows. It was amazing seeing the wood's grain come out of the other guys' sanded & finished bows, concentrically radiating curves from the handle, as if the wood were meant to take this shape. Beautiful.
The final (sunny!) evening started with a feast of wild game from venison burgers to pigeon kebabs. The animals were shot by a course attendee - not by bow (it’s illegal in the UK) and then a slideshow followed, about the Kalahari bushmen being evicted from their land by ingressing pastoralists & farmers. Whole communities have been killed, and if it wasn't for reservations created specifically for the bushmen, they could have gone the way of many other hunter-gatherer societies.
And when you consider that the average inhabitant of one of these communites knew over 500 plant species (and their uses) as well as many, many other things & skills both useful and ecologically balanced, then you can see what precious wisdom our culture and those trying to follow it might be eradicating forever.
Check out the group http://www.survivalinternational.org/ if you fancy helping keep people like these from disappearing. Thank you.
And thanks to the Woodsmoke team, the Bushmen, and Werner, our amazing tutor.
Fred
p.s. The term 'bushman' describes both sexes. I believe that as long as the people involved are happy with common reference terms, it's ok by me too.
p.p.s. Don't forget the slideshow under this text!
