How long to make such a bow?

[poplar600]

How long does it take a bowyer to produce a yew warbow? From raw stave to finished shooting product.
 I'd have imagined it'd be quick as they are a much simpler when comparing to Eastern composite bows
Would bowyers have been required to make them quickly?

[Del the cat]

This is an oft asked question and there is no easy answer.
Do you mean elapsed time or actual working time?
I always say 50 hours to make a bow, but then I've also made one in an hour.
It also depends on the stave.
If I had a nice clean stave roughed out to approximate dimensions I could do it in a day. I would want to because I like to take my time. Rushing is the sure fire way to make mistakes. Especially with a heavy weight bow you need to catch the mistakes before they happen.
The other problem is, it takes an awful lot of force to even get to brace height, and floor tillering is virtually impossible. If you can flex it by hand on the floor, it's probably already under weight.
In terms of elapsed time there are a few on my blog that can be followed. Last heavy Elm bow I made took 2weeks...including heat treating.
But that is counting from a nicely roughed out stave.
Here you go:-
This is from the roughed out stave 24th August
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/elm-warbow-ii.html
To virtually finished 30th August:-
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/elm-warbow-virtually-there.html
First shots, 6th September:-
http://bowyersdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/110-elm-warbow-first-shots.html
The real answer is ... it takes as long as necessary .

I expect a bowyer at the time of the Mary Rose would make several in a day, but maybe he's have a lad roughing 'em out and some one else fitting nocks.
Del

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

I expect a bowyer at the time of the Mary Rose would make several in a day, but maybe he's have a lad roughing 'em out and some one else fitting nocks.
Del

Agreed, many think that before Henry Ford that a single craftsman in a thatched hut sat around painstakingly handcrafting one item at a time but even in medieval times they were not unfamiliar with many mass manufacturing techniques. I don't know specifically about war bows but knowing generally about medieval and renaissance manufacturing, most likely a bowyer of enough renown to receive a military contract from the crown would likely have many dozens of apprentices and journeymen working in a decidedly assembly line fashion. The head bowyer would likely have selected staves from various sources, and overseen quality control likely paying special attention to his boys doing the tillering but not much hands on for the mass manufactured stuff. Like you said, he likely had several lads roughing out staves, a lad or so shaping horn nocks, a few lads making strings, the more advanced would have done the tillering under close supervision from the master, and someone doing finish assembly etc. Again, bowyers may have done it differently, I don't have specific knowledge of medieval mass military bow manufacturing, but based on general medieval mass manufacture that is likely how it would be at a large scale shop.

[WillS]

One of the more common theories regarding the medieval "conveyor belt" approach is as follows:

Staves would be selected (not sure by whom) and worked down using a series of facets to the standardised shape and tapers.  These would be virtually pre-tillered, as if you take for example the MR dimensions and apply them exactly to a stave, the bow is ready for bracing almost immediately, and needs just a few tweaks to perfect.  With a bit of bravery you can take a well got-up yew stave and turn it into a shooting warbow within an hour.  The more experience, the quicker the process.

The bowyer himself would then refine the tiller using a flote or similar tool (as can be seen in the tool marks of the MR bows) and the tillering would be complete. 

The horner would have access to the very tips of the cattle horns, which (if taken from the animal at the right time) would already have the perfect hollow naturally inside them, and would require very little drilling.  They would also require very little shaping if the absolute tips are used.  The hollow horn tips would most likely be sent to the bowyer in box-loads.  The bow tips would be piked to fit the hollow (giving that lovely natural rounded shape seen on all the MR bows, as compared to the straight-edged taper seen more often today) and glued into place.

The stringfellow would be responsible for making the strings, and these would be stored separately if we're using the Tower Of London's records as a guide on this.

I think it's a very modern idea to have a "perfect" tiller, as everybody stares at photos of bow tillers using arcs, circles, flipping tools and so on but when you're making bows in the countless thousands, this is just impractical.  A roughly tapered and tweaked bow stave will come round to about 30" or so with very, very little work and when you're not expecting them to last for many hundreds of shots a stiff limb here or there wouldn't be worth worrying about, where-as today we'll spend hours and hours refining a tiller to make sure it's "perfect" because each bow is special to us.  Remember that the medieval bow was a tool, and the MR bows aren't sanded or finished in any way, with no grips and often not even a bowyer's mark.

[Lucasade]

Of course if life gets in the way it can add a year or so to the manufacture time 

[WillS]

Y..y...you mean... you mean bow making ISN'T your life?!!

[Lucasade]

 

[cadet]

I wonder if the archers themselves knew much about bowyering, and whether there was a level of their own work went into them somewhere, in selection, fine tillering, stringing etc?

[WillS]

The MR bows show signs of reshaping at the tips after the horn was fitted.  Supposedly this was to further bring the tips round and fill out the tiller shape, but there's no way of knowing if it was done by archers or bowyers. 

My personal opinion is that it was done by the bowyer - I believe the horn would have been fitted very early on, if not before any tillering was done at all, and the tiller sorted out afterwards. 

I think theres a danger of romanticism where the archers are concerned - people often talk about bow they would repair their own arrows, tiller their own bows and so on - but I think in reality aside from basic maintenance of equipment an archer would have very little to do with the construction of a bow or arrow.  Turn up, shoot, go home.

[poplar600]

Where there bands of pro archers acting as mercenaries in Europe?

[alexw]

In the Hundred Years' War, the French used Genoese crossbowmen. One explanation for this is that French society was so unremittingly feudal (and had already experienced several uprisings during the reigns of Philip the Fair and Charles IV) that further social unrest was feared if a homegrown caste of professional archers had access to weaponry.