Perhaps the crowning achievement (and, many times the sole goal) of any young archer is the ability to create their own bows and arrows from nothing but a knife, some tools, and a piece of formless wood. I remember well the days that I made my first longbow (a pine one I carved up at the Langenfirth Ranger Guild, long since lost) and fletched my first arrow (a maple bishop-head arrow that is sitting in my vault to this very day). Although you will very likely enlist the aid of more skilled archers to create your everyday hunting weapons, nothing can surpass the pride one feels when they create a bow or arrow of their own and either use it in an emergency, or pass it to another young archer in need. The key here is not to carve and fletch because you seek to learn any tangible skills from it, nor in hopes of selling your creations for coin... you're better off with a mortar, pestle, and herbs or a bundle of skins for those mundane needs... instead, you should carve and fletch for the pure joy of creating useful tools from nothing.In an ideal world, you'd successfully carve a bow or arrow every time. Unfortunately, there are those bad days when you get a bad piece of wood or just plain mess up. In my experience, it appears that any injuries to your hands or eyes can affect your carving ability, so if you're messing up a lot... get healed! In addition, your overall state of mind and learning rate in mechanical lore also seem to play a role. If your mind is tired from too much skill practice overall, you'll have less success. Also, if you've been squishing roots or something too much and you're learning lots of mechanical lore, your success rate will drop. Due to the number of steps involved in completing either a bow or an arrow, an error anywhere in the process will detract from the quality of the final product. With bows, it's really no big deal since you can just start over with a fresh limb -- any errors will completely wipe out the balance/power rating of the bow. With arrows, errors will throw off the flight qualities somewhat, but because there is a minor investment in supplies, you may choose to continue with a flaw or two anyhow.Once you've reached 10 lessons in any bow skill, you gain the ability to apply your knowledge in fletching arrows. After 10 lessons of short bow or 20 lessons in longbow, you possess enough knowledge to carve your own bows, respectively.
Tools/Supplies
Before you start, a few basic tools are necessary:
- a carving knife
Either buy one for a little bit of coin at any number of general stores or liberate one from a crazed madman near Dirge, a wildland goblin near Riverhaven, or from the inside of a critter box. Later, you will find that you can splurge your excess wealth on fancier carving implements (I use an outdoors knife from El'Bains, others have fancier blades from Knife Clan and various traveling merchants... all work the same as far as I can tell).- a wood shaper
You must buy one of these from the bowyer in Langenfirth, Leth Deriel, or Shard.- some flight glue, some feather flights, and some arrowheads
If you plan on making arrows, you will need these three items (in addition to the first two basic tools) available from any of the bowyer shops. Glue lasts for a LONG time, but one set of flights and an arrowhead are required for each arrow you fletch.Procedure
With all your new tools, the process is quite simple. To make a bow, just:To fletch an arrow, you follow a more involved routine:
- Find a limb of your choice, pine is easiest to start with: [forage <wood> limb]
- With knife or shaper in your right hand, limb in your left: [shape longbow from my limb]
To make a short bow use a stick and: [shape short bow from my limb]- Now, with shaper, shave out the upper and lower limb: [shape longbow]
For short bows this step requires a knife; all susequent steps are: [shape bow]- Now, with the shaper, shave the upper limb: [shape longbow]
- Next, shave the lower limb: [shape longbow]
- Get out your knife and carve out the hand riser: [shape longbow]
- Switch back to your shaper and finish the upper limb: [shape longbow]
- Finish off the lower limb: [shape longbow]
- Pull out your knife again and carve out the tips of the bow: [shape longbow]
- Finally, carve out the arrow shelf: [shape longbow]
- Find a stick of your choice, pine is easiest to start with: [forage <wood> stick]
- With knife or shaper in your right hand, stick in your left: [shape shaft from my stick]
- Again: [shape shaft from my stick]
- With shaper, round your shaft: [shape shaft]
- With knife, create the nock: [notch my shaft with knife]
- Again with knife, create the slit for the head: [notch my shaft with knife]
- Once more with knife, cut the slits for the flights: [fletch my shaft]
- With flights, attach them to the shaft: [fletch my shaft]
- With flight glue, secure the flights: [fletch my shaft]
- With flight shears, trim the flights: [fletch my shaft]
- With arrowhead of choice: [affix my arrowhead]
I always start over when I mess up a bow since there is no investment (other than time) and an unbalanced/zero-power bow is all but useless. With arrows, I exclusively use woods I know I can successfully fletch with. A good indication of this is any wood you can consistently make longbows/short bows from. The actual investment in fletching supplies is minor (a few coppers, unless you're using some of Renshear's exotic supplies), so I usually throw away any flawed arrows as well, but some folks find that their time is more valuable. The way I see it, fletching is not a quick distraction... it takes time to do it properly. Patience is a virtue.
That's it! Enjoy your new homemade toys and use them with pride. Once you've mastered the process of fletching, you may eventually become interested in all the variety of woods and other supplies you can use. More on the finer points of fletching follow in the next section.