  Mr. Maurice Thompson has excited all the grown-up boys who loved in their younger days to draw the bow, by his graceful articles on archery for young men and women. Fig. A. I want to tell the boys who are wide awake how they may, without too much labor and with but little expense, make their own bows and arrows and targets, having their fun, like their elders, in this health-giving and graceful recreation. In the first place, after you have made your implements for the sport, you must never shoot at or towards anyone; nor must you ever shoot directly upwards. In the one case you may maim some one for life, and in the other you may put out your own eye as an acquaintance of the writer’s once did in Virginia. To make a bow take a piece of any tough, elastic wood, as cedar, ash, sassafras or hickory, well-seasoned, about your own length. Trim it so as to taper gradually from the centre to the ends, keeping it flat, at first, until you have it as in this sketch—for a boy, say, five feet in height: (Fig. A) This represents a bow five feet long, one and a quarter inches broad in the middle, three-fourths of an inch thick at the centre, and a half-inch scant at the ends in breadth and thickness. Bend the bow across your knee, pulling back both ends, one in each hand, the centre against your knee, and see whether it is easily bent, and whether it springs readily back to its original position. If so your bow is about the right size. Cut near each end the notch for the string as in this figure: (Fig. B.) Fig. B. Bevel the side of the bow which is to be held towards you, so that a section of your bow will look like this figure: (Fig. C.) Fig. C. The back or flat part is held from you in shooting, and the bevelled or rounded part towards you. Scrape the bow with glass and smooth it with sand-paper. To shape your bow lay it on a stout, flat piece of timber, and drive five ten-penny nails in the timber, one at the centre of your bow, and the others as in figure below, so as to bend the ends for about six inches in a direction contrary to the direction in which you draw the bow: (Fig. D.) Fig. D. (A and B are six inches from the ends. Your bow is now finished as far as the wood-work is concerned, and you may proceed to wrap it from end to end with silk or colored twine, increasing its elasticity and improving the appearance. The ends of the wrap must be concealed as in wrapping a fish-hook. Glue with Spaulding’s glue a piece of velvet or even red flannel around the middle to mark your handhold. A hempen string, whipped in the middle with colored silk, to mark the place for your arrow nock to be put, in shooting, will make a very good string. For arrows any light, tough wood, which splits straight, will do. I use white pine, which may be gotten from an ordinary store-box, and for hunting-arrows seasoned hickory. These must be trimmed straight and true, until they are in thickness about the size of ordinary cedar pencils, from twenty-five to twenty-eight inches in length. They must be feathered and weighted either with lead or copper, or by fastening on sharp awl-points or steel arrow-points with wire. I used to make six different kinds; a simple copper-wrap, a blunt leaden head, a sharp leaden head like a minie bullet, an awl-point wrapped with copper wire and soldered, and a broad-head hunting-arrow. To make a copper wrap, wrap with copper wire the last half-inch of the arrow until you get near the end, then lay a needle as large as your wire obliquely along the arrow as in this figure: (Fig. E.) Continue the wrapping until you have weighted the arrow sufficiently; draw out the needle and thrust the end Fig. E. of your wire through the little passage kept by the needle, and draw it tight thus: (Fig. F.) Fig. F (Before wrap was drawn through.) Fig. G. (After wire was drawn through.) A blunt leaden head is made by pouring three or four melted buck-shot into a cylinder of paper, wrapped around the end of the arrow, slightly larger at the open end, and tied on by a piece of thread. The wood of the arrow must be cut thus: (Fig. H.) Fig. H. The paper is put on thus: (Fig. X.) Fig. X. It should look like this after the metal has been poured in and the paper all stripped off. (Fig. I.) Fig. I. It should look like this after being sharpened like a minie bullet: (Fig. J.) Fig. J. An awl-point arrow is made by inserting the point in the end of the arrow, wrapping with copper wire, and getting a tinner to drop some solder at the end to fasten the wire and awl-point firmly together. The awl-point looks like this: (Fig. K.) Fig. K. The awls (like Fig. L.) are filed like this into teeth-like Fig. L. Fig. M. These may be shot into an oak-tree and extracted by a twist of the hand close to the arrow-point. Fig. N. The broad-head hunting-point (Fig. N.) is put on by slitting the arrow and inserting the flat handle of the arrow point, and wrapping it with silk, sinews, or copper wire. These points can be sharpened along the line A B on a whetstone, and will cut like knives. The hunting arrow looks like this: (Fig. O.) Fig. O. To feather an arrow you strip a goose feather from the quill and, after clipping off the part near the quill-end, you mark a line down the arrow from a Fig. P. A boy can hardly make a good quiver unless he were to kill some furred animal and make a cylindrical case such as the Indians have, out of its skin. I am afraid that he usually would have to get a harness-maker to make him a quiver out of leather, somewhat larger at the top than at the bottom. It should hold from eight to twelve arrows. A good target may be made of soft pine, circular or elliptical in shape. In the latter case a line-shot might count, even though it were farther from the THE TARGET. If an arrow struck on a line between number three and four it counts three and a half. Anything like this rarely happens. The target is fixed upon an easel formed of three pieces of wood fastened together by a string at the top, and it ought to lean back at the top slightly, away from the archer. The three arrows count seven, nine, ten—twenty-six in all. In target-shooting you should use awl-pointed, wire-wrapped arrows, as they can be easily drawn out of even a wooden target. |
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