Middle Earth Ranger Forum

A couple years back I purchased a hickory kind-sorta-English longbow to see what the fuss was about. It was plain hickory, and frankly about 10-15 pounds too heavy for me, since I wanted some inkling of what the super-heavy ones were like for the yeomen who'd trained with the real things once upon a time.

It started life bone white, with wickedly pointed horn tips and a goofy padded handle, like this one by the same maker:
Partly because of that weight, I haven't been shooting it much - but now that my quiver's almost done I wanted a more period-correct bow to play with until my commissioned one is ready.
I pulled off pretty much everything that wasn't bow or tip, cut and filed down the tip points, sanded off the varnish, gave it a light stain, and oiled it.

It's still a beast for me, but for walking-more-than-shooting I think I'll be okay until my proper one is done.

The arrows by the way are from razorstonearchery on eBay, and I am VERY VERY VERY happy with them! Ash shafts, horn insert, wound fletching - all for a reasonable price. Brian was even willing to flip the fletchings for me to look all Middle-earthy, AND left the horn a bit proud on the cockfeather side for indexing. I can't recommend him enough.

Nicely done! What's the full draw weight? Commissioned bow yes.....

Ha! I promise I wasn't trying to nag you with this thread.

It's nominally 60 lbs, but even (trying to do) those heaving contortions the longbow guys do, I just don't have the strength to pull it quite to full draw.
I'm comfortable with 45, a little strained at 50 but can manage it well enough - past that I just can't manage really.