G'day one and all.
Its been over 10 years since I posted on this forum, I was drawn away by my work which took me to odd places around the world where it was difficult to practice archery and other interests took over. Anyway my interest in archery especially medieval and ancient European archery has recently been revived and on looking around at various videos available on the net I saw one from Richard Head in which he spoke about Boyer's Flotes and I was compelled to write on it here.
I thought I would post on this one of the last places I posted all that time ago about what I believe was the more likely makeup of the Bowyer's flote. Richard Head in his video initially shows his own "flote" which is a flat rasp similar to those used in fileing the putty like material used in car body repairs, referred to in Australia by the wonderful all encompassing name of "Bog". Richard Head mounts the blade of his flote on a long wooden former that has a handle at its end in a similar manner to a surform plane. However he goes on to say that the Worshipful Company of Boyer's has had a flote, or is it floats, made that is/are more like the one I championed 10 years ago. That is a wooden holder with inclined separate steel blades. I have not been able to locate a picture of the Worshipful Company's flote so I cannot be certain it is as I think, but from what Richard Head says it definitely is not an all metal rasp blade fixed to a handle. If anyone can post a picture of the flote/flotes in question I would be very interested.
I will also say after the argument over the form of the medieval flote in this thread I made my own flote similar to the one Acker both spoke of and posted photos of and found it a useful tool in removing wood from a bow's belly.
Craig.
