Chapter 67: Chapter 67: Bowcrafts (2)
"Recurved bow? I thought a bow was just a bow. I didn’t know there are many types of it." Ashe said.
"There’s a reason why a longbow is preferable. It’s easier and cheaper to make. So naturally people want to make it instead of the recurved bow.
The recurved bow is also lighter and smaller, suitable for us witch hunters to carry on a long journey than the cumbersome longbow."
"But how do we curve this plank, Master? It is still straight as a sword right now." Ashe said.
"A good question, my apprentice. That is what we’re going to do later. But now, we must focus on shaping the bow.
My stave is in good shape. Now I need to carve it into a bow.
First we will thin it down further. It must still be wide but has a thin profile so that when we pull the string, the bow will bend in the right direction."
Siderius continued to work on the stave. Now he shaved it down even further. The long piece of wood slowly took shape and Ashe could see the bow begin to be born with each second passed.
Once Siderius had a good profile on the bow, he switched to carving the tips of the bow. The tips needed to be small enough to insert the nocks onto them.
The nocks were the two notches on each end of the bow to put the strings in. They could be carved directly on the bow body but then it would be susceptible to wear and tear.
Instead, by using animal nocks, usually made from buffalo horn or deer antlers, it would negate this weakness significantly.
Siderius took additional effort on the nocks as it was very important. In the heat of battle, this malfunction could lead to your very death.
He shaves the tips of the bow down then slid the nocks in. The nocks were made from deer antlers, one of the game that Siderius and Ashe had hunted on their trip.
The final part of the bow was the handle. It was the only part of the bow that stayed thick and didn’t shave down to a thin profile. The handle was carved into a curved circular shape similar to a handle of a knife or a sword. It stayed in the middle of the bow, providing a good grip to the archer.
Siderius wasted a day to make the stave into the bow shape and instructed Ashe on what she needed to know and look out for.
The next day, Siderius gave the carpenter’s knife to Ashe.
"I will be doing it myself?" Ashe said.
Siderius nodded. "It’s your weapon."
It was Ashe’s first time working with wood so she did not do very well. But she was patient and listened closely to Siderius’ guidance.
It took Ashe a few days to completely carve out the wood planks from the tree trunks. Her planks were rougher than Siderius but were sufficient to be used.
It was her first try after all and she had all the chances to make better bows in the future.
After that, Siderius started the next steps.
"For a traditional bowyer, making a bow is a time consuming and difficult task.
The first thing they do is to ’cure’ the wood. This curing process can be boiled down to one word, drying.
The main goal is to remove excess moisture inside the wood and let its structure slowly get used to its new form. This ensures the wood becomes more durable, avoids crackings and maintains its ’memory’ state.
The curing process can take a few months, even more than a year to guarantee a strong and flexible piece of wood.
We don’t have time to do that and frankly, we have a much better way to do it."
"We will use Alchemy, right Master?" Ashe’s eyes lit up in excitement.
Siderius nodded.
He poured out salt and sulfur to the ground and drew a combination of alchemical seals.
Salt Isolation as the first smallest seal.
Salt Directing Agent as the second medium seal.
And finally a third biggest seal that was so complex it made Ashe a little bit dizzy.
The third seal was drawn by using a huge mix of salt and sulfur. The amount was much more than Ashe had ever seen Siderius used. She also did not recognize the seal.
"What is this seal, Master?"
"This is Memory Adjustment. By borrowing the crystallization prospect of salt and the soul-affecting prospect of sulfur, we create it.
Its main goal is to lock the wood inside a constant ’memory’ state, allowing it to become a bow."
"Memory? Does wood have memories, Master?"
"Of course it does. Everything has memory, even if it isn’t alive."
Siderius picked up a wooden stick on the ground and bent it in front of Ashe. It automatically snapped back to its original position once Siderius let go.
"The memory of the wood is in its body. Once you bend the wood, it has an urge to return to its constant state. We call this its memory stage.
Flexibility is a thing we look for in wood while creating a bow. Because if it doesn’t have enough flexibility..."
Siderius bent the stick further and before it could snap back, the stick broke in two.
"The bow will break.
However, in contrast, if the bow has too much flexibility. It becomes forgetful and easy to settle into a new memory state."
Siderius picked up another wood stick. This stick belonged to a fresh cut wood and didn’t have time to dry yet. Siderius bent it slightly and when he let go, the stick stayed in its new position.
"A bow easily bent is a useless bow. So we need the bow to be flexible enough to bend but also rigid to maintain its memory.
This can be achieved by the curing process. It makes the bow rigid without sacrificing its flexibility. Then, once a rough shape of a bow is made, we start to shave it down to achieve the desire to draw weight and bending.
The latter is achieved by a different process called tillering, which only takes a few days or weeks.
But we do not need to do anything like that because we have Alchemy. What we need to do is three things.
We separate the water particles by Salt Isolation.
We harden the structural integrity by Salt Directing Agent and another suitable ingredient.
Then we lock the memory of the wood by the final Memory Adjustment.
This shortens the time of making a good bow from more than a year to days."