Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
I’ve been working on a wooden longbow most of the afternoon. Here are ten easy steps for making your own :)
1. Cut down a tree
2.Split that tree into lengthwise sections called staves. The dog will help
3. Build a woodshed
4. Let those staves dry for a few years in the shed
5. Remove all the shit that isn’t a bow. The dog will help again by lying on your foot
6. Make sure the handle stays centered in the growth rings
7. Steam bend and weight the wood so that both limbs start with the same bend
8. Slowly remove wood from the belly of the bow on both sides until they bend evenly
9. Add tip overlays, handle wraps, and all the fancy crap
10. Go out in the yard and practice till hunting season starts
I may need to drive to town for some human contact.
😮
Any particular wood? What was it here? I always meant to try making a bow out of my parents’ overgrown yew shrubbery, but that didn’t work out.
Pictured in the compilation above are shagbark hickory, hop-hornbeam, and common buckthorn. While English yew is rightfully considered one of the best bow woods, almost any straight grained hardwood can make a very nice bow. You can even use maple boards from the hardware store to start.
“Shagbark Hickory,” “Hop-Hornbeam,” and “Common Buckthorn,” all sound like the names middle earth kids give their high school garage bands.
😂😂😂… and now my brain just created Ent Metal as a genre. It’s pretty damn Larghissimo, but very strong.
what a fuckin’ nerd.
Okay now I want to figure out what ent metal would sound like.
I’m thinking thunder and whale song. Somehow.
The amount of notes this has gotten is absurd. That doesn’t happen to my posts, but since you crazy kids seem interested here’s (one of a gajillion ways) to make the accompanying primitive arrows.
We want lighter wood than we used to make the bows. This is white cedar- nice and light and sproingy.
Mill that up into rectangular pieces as long as your arrows need to be.
Then you use this homemade tool called a shooting board to rest them in while you hand plane them from rectangular to round.
You saved your wings from the spring turkey hunt, right? Good, we’re gonna need those primary feathers.
Make yourself a pattern out brass or copper sheet, clamp the feather to it, and burn it with a torch. This will shape the feathers into fletchings.
Now we need to make pine pitch glue by melting together pine pitch (you can pick it off pine trees where they’ve been injured) and hardwood charcoal. Think of it as ancient people’s super glue.
Get your paleontologist buddy to give you some rock from actual Paleolithic quarry sites ‘cuz that’s pretty rad.
Learn flint knapping… he said casually after years of hair-pulling-out struggles with it.
Attach your stone points to your arrow shafts using the ancient super glue stuff and leg sinew from the deer you got last year. Do the same for the fletchings.
And you’re finally ready to start practicing! Don’t worry, the dog will help again by standing directly in front of the target because she’s beautiful and loving, but not very good at critical thinking sometimes.
mansies, this post keeps getting more awesome. :)
also, proposal: should Caradhras have a different name in summertime? i’m feelin’ a more Bag End or Hobbiton vibe when the place isn’t covered in show.
You can’t go changing place names seasonally, @danipup What would the maps look like? Every place has 4 names?😂😂
I am a big fan of your “Humans are Space Orcs” Series, I read them every chance I can get. I would love to see this one for one of your stories. A deathworlder, a human, has been living with a Havenworlder as his bodyguard for quite some time. He is a scientist and was working with ways to extend a Human’s lifespan and she has always been willing to volunteer for his work. Even when she was warned it might hurt. His people live the equivalent of almost 600 Human years. She was the fourth, or was it fifth, to guard him while he worked. His experiments were always careful, always gentle. And those that volunteered, for no one was ever forced, were always well compensated and made as comfortable as possible. Well, I can see his experiment actually succeeding this time, with her, and over the years, the two fell in love. Problem is, they are very different species and it’s not always… well looked upon. But love doesn’t care. – BrighidRavenwolf
Love is strange. It’s so strange that even Humans have noticed and, of course, written about extensively. They have such short lifetimes, compared to mine… a hundred years, and most of that spent in the decay of old age. Whereas my people can live six times that long without much in the way of suffering. It is not even remotely fair.
When I met the Perette bloodline, I let them know I expected their family to loan me their service as bodyguards. I like consistency, and swapping one familiar face for another once every fifty years or so is far less stressful to me than trying to hire new talent in the same interval. The Perettes have been my guards and companions for decades. I have been trying to help them since the beginning of our arrangement.
Humans are also fascinated by immortality. They have thousands of stories about people who, despite all logic and reason, simply fail to die. There’s even a song or two on the topic. Some of them have devoted entire planets to extending lifespans and the associated health. Myself? I just want to keep them around, in good health, for longer than their usual time.
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