The Longbow Shop Blog — Traditional Archery

The ILAA (International Longbow Archers Association) is for english longbow archers. The ILAA seek to make entry into the sport of longbow archery easier by ensuring the safe organisation of insured traditional longbow shooting. They cover all the aiming and ranging traditions of the english longbow as practised into the 16th Century. We would like to take the opportunity to inform traditional archers and other interested parties of their history. They encourage historic research into the traditional forms of archery in all countries that trained for battle. Members are insured for all the aiming and ranging traditions of the english longbow and for all weights and sections of the...

Robert Hardy visited the Longbow Shop on May 2015 which is a date everyone will remember for a very long time to come and a high point for the UK's largest traditional archery shop based in Birkenhead. The Longbow Shop had the privilege of hosting a day with the legendary actor, author and longbow expert Robert Hardy CBE who enthralled over 100 guests, sharing his amazing experiences and knowledge about longbows and the famous battles they were used in while keeping the enthusiastic crowd of people (archers and non-archers alike) spellbound and hanging on every word. Mr Hardy gave insights...

Horn reinforced self nock arrows are pretty easy to make yourself. With a couple of simple items great looking horn self nock arrows can be easily made: 3 Hack Saw blades Sanding paper Wire wool Pencil nock strips With a steady hand it's really easy to do yourself. Reinforcing an arrow stops the shaft from splitting on release of the string. This is really important especially if shooting very heavy bows. Here's a little infographic I put together a few years ago to show how easy it is to make these reinforced arrows. Hope you like it! You can buy the required arrow strips for...

Since winning Theo Paphitis #SBS Twitter award we've been even busier than usual and the PR machine has certainly been rolling. So far we've been involved with supplying TV for The White Queen, Dr Who (Robots of Sherwood) and new series The Royals made in the US featuring our own Liz Hurley and we were even approached by a production company to supply a bow for an Ed Sheeran music vid! We've had peak airtime on BBC Radio 2 drive time slot plus local radio interviews. On top of our normal retail business we've also managed to launch our new...

When Jason asked me if I fancied coming up with some hints and tips with a coaching element, I thought “this could be interesting! Would you coach traditional archery any differently from recurve or compound archery? What are the differences? What are the similarities?” In the end I thought I would start with the basics. I have spent a lot of time over the last few years watching competent longbow and traditional archers shooting both target and field. I have also spent quite a lot of time talking to them. One thing I have noticed is that there can be...