Jaro's new article

[WillS]

Jaro's just submitted a superb article on making his 160# ash warbow.  Well worth a read.  One of the few guys who can make them this heavy, and he does all his tillering in under an hour! Jealous!  Takes me that long to get the thing to brace height...

http://74.209.214.7/~englishw/Making_a_whitewood_longbow.html

[Badger]

  Good read, not often do you find ash with an .85 sg. Finished product was nice.

[WillS]

I liked "any archer will do..."

Yeah.  Mark Stretton will do!

[Del the cat]

Lovely tiller.
Del

[adb]

Brilliant build along! He makes it look easy.

[toomanyknots]

Cool little article. Jaro has been one of my favorite war-bowyers since he used to post on paleoplanet. He does make a good point about gluing on pieces on horn verses already made nocks on a big heavy warbow. I shape my nocks on my belt sander, and it is a pain when doing that with a big heavy 84" long bow. I like the grinding jig too. May be a simple method for reducing the belly. I use my rasp at the moment to reduce the belly, I take off a bit flat at first on each side of the belly, (to where it looks like half of a stop sign), and then I will round the corners. One thing that works with premade nocks (as was suggested to me on here and paleoplanet when I asked about it) is hot melt glue, just the cheap stuff from craft stores. It holds the horn on the stick nicely, and when you need to pop the nock off you can wrap it in leather and pop it off with some pliers.

[WillS]

He was telling me the other day just how vitally important it is to keep ash dry while working it, to the point where he washes his hands constantly to remove sweat as even that can upset the wood.  He also chews on small pieces to taste how bitter they are, as the more bitter the more sap, and he knows how the raw stave should sound when you slap it with your palm to ensure it's seasoned enough to work.  It's like "Bowmaking Plus"!  He's one of those guys I just want to watch working 'cos you know it's just scratching the surface of his knowledge, that article. 

I have to agree Daniel, since my miserable encounters with the nocks for my recent attempt I'm always gonna make them off the bow from now on and only glue them in place when I'm 100% satisfied with them.  The holt-melt tip is cool, I've got some of that somewhere.

[bubbles]

Is there an advantage to having the bow as he has it on the tillering tree? Most of the time I see the handle on the top and the rope pulling on the bow string. After initial tillering, Jaro flips it so the rope pulls on the handle of the bow. Thoughts?

[AH]

Is there an advantage to having the bow as he has it on the tillering tree? Most of the time I see the handle on the top and the rope pulling on the bow string. After initial tillering, Jaro flips it so the rope pulls on the handle of the bow. Thoughts?

Maybe it's upside-down so that if they blow up, the pieces hit the ground and not all over the place?

[adb]

I asked Pip Bickerstaffe and Steve Stretton the same thing, and their response was the same... 'cuz that's how they started.' Simple as that.

[Del the cat]

I asked Pip Bickerstaffe and Steve Stratton the same thing, and their response was the same... 'cuz that's how they started.' Simple as that.

And they know because....?
Del

[AndiE]

Hi

Does anyone know where to contact Jaro best?
If anyone has his email or something else please send me a pm.
THX!

Kind regards
                    Andi

[gianluca100]

Nice article, well written and with good pictures.

In the beginnig there is the statement that such a whitewoodbow will be tested against a fine yew bow, but I did not see any testing described.
What do you think, is the yew bow better perfomance wise?

ciao,
gian-luca

[WillS]

At the moment there's a real increase of interest in white wood bows.  Guys like Jaro believe strongly that a well made ash bow will outperform almost any yew bow of the same weight apart perhaps from the absolute best Italian yew.  I don't think it will be long before there is some serious testing, it just needs all the guys making the white wood bows to get together with people like Joe and Mark who can actually shoot them to find out.

I have to admit, before I started talking to Jaro I wasn't so interested in ash bows, but his theories on how common they would have been during the medieval period and the serious talent it requires to make them at these weights is a lot more exciting than yew bows.  I know that Joe has had some good success with holly and hazel at weights around 160# and possibly plum as well.  I'll do some digging and see if I can find some performance results.

[WillS]

Here are some flight results set by the EWBS last year - no ash, but hazel at 140# clearly just as good as the yew bows.

http://74.209.214.7/~englishw/TMAF%202013%20Flight%20Shoot%20Results.html