Stringing A Longbow

Hello! So, here's the post I promised. How to string a longbow.

Here's the wooden non-stringed longbow I started with. It was in the garage, until one of the kids found it and took it out to play around with. So I decided, since I've been wanting a longbow for a while, I would string it. So I looked up ways to string a longbow, and chose one. Unfortunately, I didn't have any bowstring. So . . .

I found some paracord.

 (There were actually seven of these strings, but this picture was taken after the bow was made.)

I pulled the guts out, and Sarah bundled all the strings up into cute little bows.

 I measured the bow . . .

Cut a string three times the length of the bow, and folded the string over three times.

Then I tied the ends into loops . . .

And hooked the loops over the ends, and pulled tight.

Then I had to wrap the string. I took one of the other strings from the innards of the paracord casing, and started wrapping it. I went on and on, until I ran out, which was unfortunate. After a bunch of trial and error, I melted another string to the end of the first one, and continued wrapping. It left a bump there, and I couldn't get rid of it. But later I just used it as the nock, and it worked out.

The finished bow! It was far too loose, so I had to bend the wood, and wrap the string around the ends as tight as I could.

I wrapped a little camo duct tape around for the grip, because the old grip was falling off. Doesn't it look awesome? But the wood cracked a little. It looks completely cracked in the picture, but it isn't actually that bad.

As you can see by the picture, the bow is not very good quality. It bends too far at the top and not far enough at the bottom. I'm planning on stringing another bow we have in place of this, because this was my first attempt.

I used one of the arrows I use for my compound bow for this. The arrow I accidentally lost in the woods when I shot an apple (it went straight through!!!) and the tip rusted.

This is me drawing the bow. Yes, my form is terrible. This picture was last minute, and I was just trying to get it down. Please no comments on that.

Well, that's all I have. Next week, I plan to do a post on starting a fire using flint and steel (if that works) so stay tuned!

Comment if you have any suggestions for something I can learn.

Please follow me by email if you liked the post. Thanks for reading! Ta ta for now!

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri

The Bow Saw

So, my first learn-something-new post. As you can see by the name of this post, I learned how to use a bow saw this week.

(I know I look sort of like my face is made of hair, but I was looking to the left. I promise.)

Okay, so this week I also learned something else: how to string a bow. Buuuut, then we had some storms. We had trees down everywhere. And since it was more recent, I figured I could wait until next week to talk about the bow.

Maybe some of you heard about the tornadoes around southwest Wisconsin this week. We've had a storm every night since Wednesday.

While the tornadoes missed us, we got high winds, lots of thunder and lightning, and lots of rain.

I woke up with my mother telling my a tornado hit my brother's college, 20 minutes away, and that some of the students lost everything they had in their dorms.

We went outside to survey the damage. It was pretty bad, but it could have been a lot worse. There were trees down all over the woods, and even more branches snapped. One tree was completely uprooted. Two trees were on the driveway, and this tree fell down right in front of the expedition:

The leaves were touching it. We had already cleared the branches touching the car before I remembered the camera.

And this is when I learned how to use a bow saw. I know what you're thinking. What is she talking about? Anyone can use a bow saw! Well, that's true. Anyone can use a bow saw. But how many people have? Good for you if you have! Also, when you're cutting logs like this:

It gets a lot more difficult. Now after a bunch of cutting:

And a few breaks for strawberries from the garden:

We got the tree in front of the expedition down to . . .

That. Short enough to drive past, which was good enough for us. And we used the chainsaw to finish it. Then there was the yard:

I wish you could see it better, but there were leaves, branches, and twigs all over the yard. This is only a small portion of it. Thankfully, I had my older sister and brother, Sarah and Ben, to help clean it all up. Since the little kids stopped working when it started to get boring:

(Noah)

Well, that's what I learned! I'll post again next week about how I learned to string a longbow!

Ta ta for now!

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri

The Reason For This Blog

Hello, everybody!

This is me, and in this post I'm going to let you know the reason for this blog.

One of my favorite hobbies is researching, learning new things, and doing new things. I decided I want to learn as much as I can in this life. So each week, I'm going to learn how to do something new. Anything new.

So to keep myself dedicated, I made this blog. Every Saturday, I'll post what I learned over the week.

I look forward to sharing my adventures and knowledge with anyone who wants to hear about them.

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.

Proverbs 4:5

Abri