Field Archery News UK The only multi-society, global field archery publication. August / September 2020 ~ FOR THE LOVE OF FIELD ARCHERY ~
* Contents * Club News & S New Features 30-32 Overton Black Arrows 2020 Tournament 6-13“Lockdown Blues? Nah, not us!” 58-61 by Colin Greenway 82-84 BHAA Lockdown Challenge Limerick Field Archery Club 20-21 “Adventures into the Longbow - Part 2” by Alison Rayson Regu 23 NADA Summer 2020 Update 26-27 “Archery on the Big Screen” 29 Review: “A Big Hello from Hush 34-35 Cartoons by Via Verde 44-48 Del the Cat’s “Bowyer’s Dia Custom Archery” 66 Cartoons by Via Verde 36-37 Review: Bohning Archery 86-87 Cartoons by Via Verde 50-55 “The story of the great Jim 89-90 FAN UK’s Dogs & Crossbow Greig” 65 Product Information: Archery Success - “Archer Skill Level” 68-69 Socially Distanced Roving Practice 72-74 “Coach’s Thoughts” by Ken Brill 78-79 “Aspects of late Byzantine Archery” by Spyros Bakas 2
Shoot Reports Shoot Entry Forms 0 Watership Down Open Field 16-18 Wharfe Valley Archers e! 10 & 11.10.2020 b Woodland shoot 26.07.2020 39-42 UKIFAC 2021 @ Wexford ulars Archers 15 & 16.05.2021 ” 56 Delamere Field Archers ary” 04.10.2020 ws List so far! Photography COVER Jason Quinn, Audris-Hart Field Archers 14 Helen Cohen-Quinn 38 Jason Quinn 63 Jason Quinn 76 HBS Photography 92 Mark Service 94-95 Adam Browning REAR COVER Jason Quinn, Audris-Hart Field Archers 3
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Retro 24s Collection Photographer: HELEN COHEN-QUINN, Audris-Hart Field Archers Location: Elmtree Archers, 10th January 2016
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“Adventures into the Longbow” Part Two by Alison Rayson. So, after setting my first open Longbow PB with the most abysmal score I have ever come in with, I sat down to have a think. Some of the performance could be put down to the mismatched arrows that I had been using. My trawl of my kids’ old arrows had resulted in a collection of arrows of different lengths and weights, but around the right spine. As you know, consistency is the key, but I wasn’t fooling myself that that was the only problem. I also realised that the fingerless fluffy glove I was using meant I couldn’t be sure that my hand gripped the bow in the same place every time, which would effectively change the arrow rest height - akin to moving the nocking point on the string - which results in variations in the height of the arrow striking (or missing) the target. So that went out and a less warm leather glove came in, as well as a hand warmer in the pocket. But as every archer knows in the end it comes down to form. I am pretty good at analysing what is going wrong, or should I say not quite right, and at that moment I figured that my draw and ‘anchor’ were way off. And this is my problem, do I shoot longbow as I would recurve? There are some subtle differences in my mind. I am not necessarily a subscriber to the ‘Longbow is completely different to anything else’ camp… for a start, we are all shooting in the same competitions - i.e. nothing over 60 metres-ish, therefore the draw weight of the bow is not like a warbow. We don’t need to shoot standard cloth yard arrows, shot en-masse therefore drawn to past the ear for as much power but little accuracy. So the normal recurve form can be used. I’ve been told there is a thought that with longbows the arrow should be loosed as soon as possible after reaching anchor and not held whilst aiming This is probably a leftover from the over powered warbow - a physical impossibility with those. I’ve seen a longbow archer not even getting to full draw and am amazed at the good scores they can get with no solid anchor. I have resisted the temptation to lean over and cant the bow to 45 degrees, figuring my instinctive aiming would take some time to adjust to that much of a change; but equally the arrow needs to rest on my hand, so the bow may not be perpendicular. Luckily I rarely ‘pinch’ the arrow when I draw nowadays so it doesn’t fall off. At the back of my mind is that my recurve will be returned to 20
me around Easter and then I have to decide which way to jump. For now though I want to improve as much as I can with the Longbow - to do Alan Beatty’s work justice since it is likely to be one of his last bows. My personality doesn’t sit well with religiously going through a shot sequence mentally with every shot, I have been fortunate to be have pretty good hand/eye coordination and muscle memory so I can usually manage pretty well without; and frankly, I get distracted by enjoying myself too much. I need to try to get back to the basics and focus on my anchor and release. When I first started shooting the longbow I was incredibly aware of the hand shock, and because of this my follow- through was appalling. Thankfully I have become more used to it and I am trying to figure if I can keep the same grasp as I had on the ‘locator’ grip of the Ghost recurve – not a pistol grip but not quite as basic as the leather wrap of the longbow. This means I grasp the bow with only index and middle fingers- but the hand shock nearly made me drop the longbow initially. I know I shoot better using it, but am struggling to control the bow. There is an old adage - only change one thing at a time, which so far had gone out the window as everything had to change with the longbow. After weeks of trying I was able to get some idea of where I wanted to be with the arrows. I made up a set of 12 arrows the week before the next competition... they were within 2-3 pounds of spine and 20 grains of weight. They meant my shots now rarely missed the boss and finally I could begin to properly dissect what was working and not. Back to my form again. My ‘anchor’ is not consistent enough and my back tension variable. I realised that the more I was trying, the worse I shot. It has never been my intention to be a world beater in the competitions, just to be the best archer I can be whilst still having a life, so I decided that I would relax and just enjoy myself for a bit. If I caught myself doing something really bad I would try and change it, but not stress over it; after we do this sport for fun and getting wound up over your lack of form is not fun. I occasionally berate myself over a shot, but only when I do something really silly. Most importantly, the grin is still plastered over my face. The next competition loomed, and the poor weather meant I still had not taken the longbow to the range to try and figure some distances with the new arrows. Nonetheless, I went to the Ye Old Delphe open shoot. Their course had a few more short shots to add variety, but again nothing too far. I enjoyed myself and was genuinely gobsmacked to come in with a decent score, and a win! 21
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~ Overton Black Arrows ~ 2020 Watership Down Open Field Tournament Photos by Hannah Baker. On the 11th and 12th July, Overton Black Arrows hosted their annual field archery competition in the Warren and Peter Hastings woods. This year was to be a celebration of 50 years shooting at the warren, with a hog roast, live music and a fun clout shoot… all that will have to move to next year! We had been working with AGB for the last few weeks to agree a format by which we could pilot the first field competition post-lockdown. The major change was staggered starts, meaning we could bring people onto the site in a managed way, get shooting groups together, and keep them together (and away from others) for the whole day. No catering, but extra hygiene station with wipes and gel were on hand, along with a whole bunch of signs telling people where or where not they could be! 30
The course was laid out as 12 unmarked and 12 marked targets, in three loops of eight – one loop in the woods, with some tricky long shots through trees, and two loops out on the slopes of The Warren. No difficult 60m downhill shot this year, instead an ‘easy’ 47m uphill shot instead. The “Peter Turner challenge” shot was a 55m uphill target in the woods. The weather was slightly windy on Saturday, but sunny, and very hot on the Sunday. In all, sixty-eight archers competed over the two days, and Hampshire archers broke 9 county records for the WA combined round. We have had some amazing comments from archers who were VERY happy to be out and shooting – in turn, the club is very grateful to those archers that attended and pleased that the event was such a great success. 31
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Retro 24s Collection Photographer: JASON QUINN, Audris-Hart Field Archers Location: Dunkery Field Bowmen, Day 4 of 2016 South West Challenge, 4th August 2016
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“The Bowyer’s Diary” by Derek Hutchison, AKA ‘Del the Cat’! “Stick with it” (Re-re-re-repair)... The 115# @ 32” Boo Yew primitive which needed two goes to repair the riser a month or so ago, suddenly lifted a splinter about ¼” wide on the bamboo back about 6” from one tip (insert your own suitable expletives here!). I spotted it at our first socially distanced rove while it was being shown off to one of the new boys. I fancied I’d be able to graft in a matching sliver of ‘boo, or if that didn’t work, plane off the entire back and glue on a new one. Now this may seem like a lot of work and slightly bonkers, but it’s actually a good bow and somewhat unusual at that draw weight, the main Yew body of being rather fine. 44
Now, I’d been running low on Cascamite and had sensibly ordered a new 1.5 kg tub before lockdown (from an Ebay vendor I’d previously used) and thought I’d open this up for this job… and that, boys and girls, is where the problems started! I made my finely crafted sliver of bamboo to fit into the chiselled out slot where the splinter had been cut out. The sliver was cunningly made to end at one of the nodes in the ‘boo. I mixed up the Cascamite which is normally a pale beige colour… this was just off white. Warning bells were sounding deep in the dark distant recesses of my cranium, but foolishly, and to my peril I ignored them. The bow was tested on the tiller to 28”, but when tested by my mate JT in the field at a full 32” there was a “TIC” as the patch lifted, oh well, back to the workshop. I carefully planed off the bamboo back in short order and cleaned the face of the Yew on the belt sander. A fresh bamboo back was prepared and glued on… hmmm this white Cascamite doesn’t seem to wet the wood quite right, it seems to sit on the surface with a sort of orange peel look to it. Never mind, press on, I’ve started so I’ll finish. Over the next day I unclamped the glued up bow , rasped and sanded the edged of the boo to get it all nicely blended in and tried it on the tiller, with my camera set up to video it. At about 80# I heard “TIC” … maybe it’s just the string settling in the nock? I was deluding myself… I pulled it a bit harder “POP”. 45
On inspection the glue line had failed at the grip, the back had stayed attached everywhere else, so the bow hadn’t actually broken. I was gobsmacked, I’d never had problems with Cascamite before, but the penny was finally dropping. I looked at the remnants of the mixed up glue in the pot (Cascamite is a fine white powder which is mixed with water). The glue was a solid layer about 4mm thick and it pulled out of the pot with the mixing stick like an ice lolly. I snapped it in half and it didn’t look right at all, it had separated into two layers one, shiny and one chalk like. I was not in the best of moods that afternoon, but I’ve learned not to act in haste, so after a cooling off period I pushed a stiff decorators palette knife between the Yew and the boo and waggled it about, slowly lifting off the boo, it need a little encouragement with a light hammer, but once started it popped off like undoing a zip. Rubbing my finger over the exposed surface of the glue line revealed it to be powdery white. 46
I attacked the glue problem on 3 fronts. First I contacted Polyvine the manufacturers of Cascamite, (I couldn’t contact the E-bay vendor) with a full and careful description of what had happened even included the batch number and a link to the video! Secondly, I ordered a small tub of Cascamite from Axminster as I knew they were reputable and would refund if the product was faulty). Thirdly I ordered some Titebond III which has a good reputation amongst bowyers and is good for wood/bamboo. I got a phone call from Polyvine, what a joy, someone who actually knew their subject and didn’t assume I was an idiot. He was brilliant, explaining that they were a family run company who had bought the rights to the product in the 1950s from the American company who invented it in the 1930s (I may have my dates a bit out). It comprises of three components blended together, each of which is a fine white powder, the activator component can degrade with heat if it is stored at elevated temperatures (probably somewhere in the distribution chain… imagine high up on a shelf under the roof of a warehouse on a v hot summer day?) He said they had the same problem about 30 years ago and he’d send me out a fresh tub. While I was waiting for that, the small tub of Cascamite arrived from Axminster, I mixed it up… it looked white. Were my eyes deceiving me? I recovered the 1.5 kg tub from the dustbin and mixed up a quantity of that. I called my wife as a second pair of eyes (her colour vision is also better than mine) and she agreed they looked the same. Damn. I resolved to clean up the bamboo backing and glue it with the Titebond, but having sanded off the yew once, and having to do it again I was concerned about loss of draw weight. Hmmm, I know, I’ll heat treat the belly before gluing on the boo back! The clean up, heat treating and glue up proceeded with no problems. The Titebond did the job, but is a tad thinner than the Cascamite (I marginally prefer the Cascamite). 47
JT is now shooting 3/8” shafts rather than the ½” , he tried some flight arrows and they went about 300 yards. After all that, the replacement 1.5 kg tub arrived and I mixed a test batch… light beige. I took it into show my wife who immediately said, yes that’s different even without the other stuff to compare against. In the interests of thoroughness and to inform the suppliers and other bowyers I mixed an identical sized batch of the “bad stuff”, took pictures, posted them online and e-mailed them to Axminster with a full explanation, saying that I didn’t want the cost and inconvenience of returning the bad product. Axminster were great, agreeing to a refund without my returning the goods. I’ve since used the good Cascamite on a 35# boo / yew ELB. The big lessons of the tale are to buy Cascamite direct from Polyvine, or use Titebond III. The advantage of Cascamite is it is cheaper, has a longer working time and is slightly thicker. Neither glue needs a hot box. 148
The story of the great Jim Greig, who brought Field Archery to Scotland in 1969… Jim was part of a committee from 7 countries who formed the IFAA. This article is about Beecraigs Country Park which was written in 1983... Jim built a field archery course there and became an archery instructor for Beecraigs. Archery has been his passion for 50 years. 50
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