Getting into basic Hill style longbow design

     We talk about the basic design elements of Hill style longbows.  But Hill himself changed a few things over the years as to what he wanted in a longbow.  So what is what?

     Hill's initial preferred, proven longbow design had no fiberglass.  He used a concave / convex lamination process to get the best out of the bamboo material he was using.  He wanted those all-important power fibers to be in the bamboo, giving it strength and power.  He was absolutely correct. Period.  For the design of that kind of longbow, this type of lamination process was superb.  However...

    Hill and some of his bowyers realized as far back as the mid 1950's that the quality of the bamboo that Hill had obtained to build his famous Granpa, Granma, White Eagle, and Sweetheart bows was starting to be compromised.  Quality was slipping, as we would say.  When Hill went to Japan to source out some bamboo for his company and the multitudes of longbows that were being built under his name, he was already trying to find sources for bamboo that would be able to be mass-produced into longbows and still retain the qualities he preferred.  Large, mature bamboo with large radius culms.  He procured a source that is still supplying Howard Hill Archery to this day...a Japanese bamboo.  Also on that trip, he sourced out a supply of pre-glued bamboo staves from a Japanese supplier.  These staves were sent to the U.S. to be worked down by his bowyers (mostly John and Dan Schulz) and built into finished longbows.  Purported to be great bamboo,  it turned out not so.  John told me that of the hundreds of staves he and his brother built into longbows, most of them failed in the limbs due to the glue used by the original supplier.  This was something that Hill or Shawnee Archery couldn't control and couldn't replace under warranty without a great loss, so the effort was abandoned.  This still left Hill with a desire to build great bows with speed and power and fiberglass became the big medicine to remedy the burgeoning bamboo quality issues.

    John discussed with me the need to sort out the bamboo that was delivered from Japan, grading to proper stiffness and culm size and degree of power fibers that could be obtained while milling the culms into flat limb laminations that worked better with fiberglass.  John told me that the early bows they built under Hill's name for Shawnee archery had such stiff bamboo in them, that the ability to build bows with very small tips, no tip inserts and no twisting/folding handles or twisting limbs was a great benefit to the overall shooting qualities and durability of the bows.  Schulz told me that tip inserts were a direct result of the small tips and narrow limbs starting to wander out of alignment when the bamboo started getting softer and softer.  This was in the 1960's when this was becoming manifest.  Fast forward to today...think we're getting any better bamboo now?  What with all the uses worldwide and how fast bamboo is harvested and shipped for a myriad of uses that makes bowmaking needs take a backseat.  We now get the leftovers as it were.  It's a noticeably softer bamboo obtained today than what Hill designed his original Hill style bow with.  (Even Dave Miller is now putting a fiberglass core strip in his "all bamboo" bows to keep the bamboo from folding)   Others have done the same in their "all bamboo" style bows.  It's a result of the times.   However,  since we have fiberglass, we can look to the modified Hill style longbows that Hill approved of for manufacture by his bowyers starting back in the 1950's... Phillips, Burdette, Schulz bros., Stotler bros and Darling.  Hill recognized the need for fiberglass to add the durability, speed and power that originally he could rely on only with the bamboo and he approved bow manufacturing processes that utilized fiberglass with the bamboo.  Schulz told me that if you get a bow with too much power fibers, you can end up with a bow too heavy-limbed.  This can be taken two ways, and Schulz had a way of being somewhat cryptic if he desired.  Too heavy of limb...equals heavy draw weight bows...or physically heavy limbed bows.  If you're building bows in the 1970's and 1980's, the majority of  longbows made were over 65# and 80# plus was very normal.  Easy to do that with a bamboo limb consisting of lots of power fibers and fiberglass with no ill effects.  Nowadays, the trend is for bows sub-50#.  That's hard to do without getting a sluggish limbed bow if you use all power fibers.  Schulz said we now have to do a mix of the power fiber content, and rely on glass more than before to keep the limb lightweight and yet stiff and powerful.  Again, this is a result or consequence of our times and what is desired by longbow shooters.  

    I read a 1986 interview of John Watson, builder of the Mountain Man Longbow in the 1980's and 90's.  He learned to build longbows in the Hill style by Don Burdette and Dale Phillips, both Hill bowyers in Hill's day.  John said he believed that the bamboo available to him (in the 80's) was not as good as that which the Hill bowyers used in the 1950's and 60's. How would he know, unless he'd been shown or taught that by the bowyers who'd experienced it? So those guys knew we were facing a decline in good bowmaking bamboo even decades ago. That said, there is some good bamboo being grown in carefully controlled environments, that of Jaap Koppendrayer comes to mind, but it is a limited supply for sure.  Schulz showed me a bow he'd built of cane given to him from a source in Georgia, USA but he didn't know the variety and it made a great bow.  Those kinds of sources aren't available for building lots of bows on a commercial basis so we're left with what we've got. 

    Schulz was building all bamboo or bamboo-backed bows by 1990 due to developing a fiberglass allergy.  He experimented with different types of bamboo, even Tonkin cane in his efforts to get a good bamboo limbed bow.  His efforts were still kind of hit and miss.  Reports around the country can be said of his bows being exceptional or being so-so and I take that mostly to be because of the bamboo he was able to obtain during those times and no fiberglass in his bows to even the odds.

    During all the decades in which the Hill style longbow has been made, from all bamboo construction to bamboo and glass,  keeping the essence of the design has been paramount for a few bow makers.  This design is evident in the graceful curve of the limbs that are the result of proper Hill limb tiller,  limbs that bend down into a short handle, limbs that are deep cored and narrow to unleash resilient energy even if they are string follow.  These design elements can still be obtained in a bow with fiberglass lending strength, speed and durability to the design and these elements are topics of more discussions.  For now,

Shoot Straight.