Hi,
Yes, Pip was a gracious host. You can tell he really enjoys his work. A ridiculously knowledgable chap. Some little jems of wisdom: "There are no gap filling glues... get your joints tight." "A little bit of string follow is a good thing." "Use fastflight string on all your bows... string stretch is not good." "Tiller your bows by pulling the stave, not the string, that way, you can feel what the bow is doing." Most bowyers in the UK tiller their bows upside down, as compared to us. I'm still undecided on that one.
I'm sure there were a few more, but I can't remember, off the top of my head.
The thing about a Bickerstaffe bow is, if you want one, and live in North America, you almost have to come and pick it up yourself. The postage to ship my bow back to Canada would have been almost as much as the bow itself. It's the length. As a result, Pip doesn't like shipping to NA. There also just is not the same archery culture here, as exists in the UK.
You know what, I did see the "rat" next to the tiller tree. It looked as if it had been there a while, but I neglected to enquire as to it's origin. If you notice the bow on the tiller, it's a hickory backed osage war bow, destined to be >100# when finished. The weight on the scale at 6 o'clock was 100#. I got to give it a few tugs... it was a beast.
The bow I ordered was nothing fancy. 74" NTN, 55# @ 28", hickory backed lemonwood, horn nocks and arrow pass, wrapped grip. A "standard" Bickerstaffe longbow. Still cost $500. The thing was, we started our holiday in the UK for 10 days, but we were gone from home for a month, so I had to tote a 74" hard plastic tube all over Europe for 3 weeks! Sometimes, a real pain in the arse, and many strange looks. "Hey mate, what yah got? A bazooka? Ha, ha!!" Not the kind of comments you need in an airport. I also thought it would never get home in one piece. I was sure the baggage gorillas would wreck it, or lose it, or steal it. Long story short, no one even wanted to look at it, even crossing all the borders we did, even when we arrived home. Fine by me. When it came down the last baggage shoot at home in one piece, I took a long deep sigh of relief.
A definate high-light on the life reel.
