Archery and vegetables

Trails and tribulations of an Englishman in Norway

[simonmiltonjones]

There is absolutely nothing better than a big cuddle, in the whole world, ever. Arabella fell asleep on my shoulder only to wake briefly to ask, "can we cuddle layer also?" I am complete.

[simonmiltonjones]

The smell of the forest. It's perfect.

[simonmiltonjones]

Well, w have now pulled up some of our veggies, carrots, courgettes, peas and all off our potatoes. In fact, we lifted 25kg of good potatoes! And fresh on the high of our green fingered success, we took a walk in the forest behind the house to look for mushrooms, tis the season for such scrumptious tasties. After only a sort time, me, the three kids and the baby in the back-pack came upon some oyster mushrooms, lovely. Realistically, it's a little early for them but a few managed to pop their way out of the trees for us. On our way home, we were presented wirh the largest, most spectacular flush of mushrooms, sitting on the edge of the forest, around the base of a tree. Dutifully, we harvested a whole carrier bag of these golden lovelies and made our way to the kitchen to clean them up. The kids, of course were excited at the prospect of being able to cook and eat them but unfortunately, after having completed the requisite "is this mushroom poisoness " check, I promptly fed them to bin. No mushrooms for us. As for my latestlongbow. . . There isn't one. As with it's predecessors, it broke. Another compound fracture followed by a lot of swearing. I scanned now completely out of staves and other than importing some from the good ol' USofA, I am at a loss :-(  if anyone out there is internetland would like to send me a stave or two, I live at Romfo, Gjøra 6613, Norway. I will receive them gratefully :-D

[simonmiltonjones]

Bow - no bow

No bow. Just firewood. Puhhhh. Back to the cellar to start again.

[simonmiltonjones]

Dead veggies and no toys :-(

I've been away in the UK for a few weeks and low and behold, what do you know? Most of my veggies have died. Damn unhappy about it. Mother nature didn't provide much rain but did manage to muster a rather dubious amount of very hot sun. So, my poor babies have been over thirsty. Week, my potatoes and marigolds are the only things that appeared to enjoy the new climate and so I find myself lacking tomatoes, peas, many, many squash, parsnips, carrots, oh, and to top it all off, ALL of the lettuce has bolted. Puhh.

Right, veggies in the bin and into bow making. To cut a long story short, there is no bow. I have a white birch stave that I am currently looking at and although it has a slight twist and some knots. I am hoping it will provide some hours of fun. Once again I am looking for circa 45llb but you never know, I could be liking at more firewood.

[simonmiltonjones]

Here I am 36,000 feet above the ground, packed into a a Boeing 373 with an awful lot of strangers. I'm closer to the stranger siting next to me than I've been with my wife (not really but you get the picture) AND THEN! The thundering baboon with Dre headphones and a tightly shaved head finds it within himself to reduce my personal space even further by laying his seat back. Now, I have a clever little app on my ipad which helps me measure distance and the distance woefully reduced, now measures a claustrophobic 19cm. Granted, my head was not flat against the back of my seat when I measured, but nonetheless 19cm is very much inside my comfort zone. So, as every well-travelled Brit will tell you, actions speak louder than words and I decided to make myself heard. At first it came as a gentle press against the back of the baboon's seat, but he didn't hear. So I spoke a little louder with a series of accented twitches followed by another long hard press. Unfortunately, my baboon (who I was beginning to like by now as he was providing some much needed entertainment) appeared to be a little hard of hearing. Oh dear, the poor fellow, I fear the mutterings within his oversized headphones my have left him lacking some social etiquette! NO FEAR! I I was quite happy to oblige and offer assistance where it was very clearly needed. After a rather extended series of rat-a-tat-tat's, some exaggerated twitches and (perhaps) unnecessary kicks to the baboon's feet, he finally heard :-D he was not so deaf after all. My new friend turned round and muttered something incoherent to which I replied with a smile and, "I am terribly sorry, it's unfortunate you have to sit in front of me as I get such restless legs in tight spaces, I do hope I'm not too much of a bother? (Smile again)". Hmmm, I don't know what language my friend spoke but clearly he understood me because he promptly raised his seat-back to the proper position. Ahhhh, social etiquette restored and a point of interest for other Brits traveling abroad - if at first you are not understood, sometimes speaking louder helps. ;-)

[simonmiltonjones]

It was the easiest way to keep her happy whilst tidying up.

[simonmiltonjones]

Difficult to see be we had a great grouping from 20meters. Daddy (41yrs) and Daughter (7yrs). Daughter managed to out-shoot Daddy by putting one arrow in the back of another. Still, a proud Man I am :-)

[simonmiltonjones]

Here's hoping there is something to save from this ugly piece of wood!

[simonmiltonjones]

This is the new bow project!

[simonmiltonjones]

YES! ! ! Finally! 

I have been in the UK for the last week but am home now and able to test my new bow. And here it is: this is me shooting at 20meters. The bow weighed in at 34# at 28 inches. It's fast! The arrows are not spined to the bow and so have the tendency to flap around somewhat before hitting the target but who cares!? It's a working bow!

My wife graciously filmed this but not without complaint, I tell you, "you must wear something different if I'm going to film you", she said, "you look like a freaking hobo!". Hmmm, well I can't deny that but Woman, know your place!  (I can get away with it, she doesn't read this blog). So, as you can see, I didn't get changed. No one cares how I look, all anyone wants to see is whether the bow works!

So here's what I did, I cut the oak board down to shape with a draw knife and roughly tillered it, backed it with linnen using tight bond 3 and then worked out all the tooling marks and made it look pretty. After that, I placed it on top of the fire place (we have a wood oven to keep the house warm) where I forgot about it and ended up burning the belly.  Not just a little, a lot. Bollocks. So, never being one to accept defeat, I burnt the rest of the belly also, in an attempt the temper it, make it hard and it worked. Ahhh, my lack of memory became my saving grace, the bow shot faster and pulled a little heavier.

Now for the bad news. . . Last night a was particularly unhappy after having snapped another bow during the final, final, final, FINAL tillering, so I decided to put some arrows into a target in the cellar. All was well util a small compression fracture reared its ugly head, hmmmmmm. No matter, the bow is backed and I've already put a few hundred arrow through it. BANG! Yeps, the bow is no more and I am sporting an injury where the top limb met my head.

Huffffff. Do I call this bow a success or not? It worked for a while but it still ended up being firewood. I don't know, any thoughts will be appreciated, probably.

I still have one more stave, it is a long piece of bjørk (white birch) which is hard, tightly grained and dry. It's ugly but I can fashion a bow out of it. So, onwards and upwards as they say, all is not lost, best foot forward and all that.

Does anyone fancy some mushrooms? I'm thinking of growing some oyster mushrooms just for fun. Maybe give me a break before I start the next bow.

[simonmiltonjones]

I took this couple of days ago while strolling my 6month old daughter, Princess Arabella. It was about 4pm and the snow was so heavy that it obscured the mountains behind. It's a picture of Romfo church (local to us). It's a  wooden church (they nearly all are in Norway) and almost completely round. In my opinion, a beautiful building with great atmosphere.

There is something so cosy about being oustide when the snow is fresh - maybe it's the British in me, but I still get excited when the snow falls here, even though it usually stays for about 5 months. This is my fifth winter in Norway and STILL I get that excited feeling, hmmm, closer to 4 yrs old rather than the presumably responsible and respectful 41yr old that I ought to be.

[simonmiltonjones]

Ok, I’m in real danger of making a bow that works…

This is a piece of oak board, it’s only 67 inches long but it looks like it might go the distance. I have carefully and lovingly scraped the board down to a bow shape and tillered it so that it pulls equally on both sides. I only tillered it to an 18 inch pull as I didn’t want to cause any undue stress.

it was With great excitement and nervous anticipation that I ran into the house declaring that I urgently required a length of linen and funnily enough, my dutiful wife provided. I sized the bow and then backed it, there were a few places where the backing didn’t stick so well and additional glue was required. Nevertheless, the bow was backed and it seemed to work absolutely fine.

You will just about be able to see in photo no.1 that my test string point was very far back in the bow and so I decided to provided some support in the way of some decidedly hardy leather. Three layers were glued to the back of the bow and then sanded to the desired shape.

oooo, the excitement!

Ahhhhhh, I know, it’s just another bow and it will end up as firewood. Hmmm, maybe so but I feel an ungentlemanly attachment to this bow. So, without further ado and certainly without the assistance from the small distraction in photo no.4 I shall finish filing the knocks and go string the bugger.

If this bow works, it shall be christened, “Ugly stick no.2”. Here’s hoping for a favorable tillering!

[simonmiltonjones]

Well, the snow stopped and the temperature dropped. It's less than 24hours since I took the picture with the snow, the difference shows you how much the weather can come in here. Today, I plan to take a look at the last remaining bow stave I have. It's a white birch (Bjørk), which usually would not be a very good wood but here in Norway, birch grows as a hard wood with a tight grain. The last birch bow I attempted, died from a compression fracture on its upper limb. Poor thing. Another bow added to the firewood collection. This time, I will take pictures and add the progress to this blog. Hopefully, someone out there can tell me where I am going wrong because at the moment and given my history at bow making, this new bow will also end up as firewood!

[simonmiltonjones]

Ok, so my Norwegian is not so good, no where near as good as it should be and for sometime I have wondered how to deal with this issue. At home we speak just English, so the kids learn both languages naturally and so I only get to speak Norsk with clients and my wife's family. Yesterday, I asked my wife's grandmother if she had any gardening/vegetable magazines that I can take a look through, in the vague hope that I will pick up more norwegian. OOOhhhhh, she said, and then came to me with 4 years of magazines. Shit! Of course, growing veggies interest me and I think it's great for the kids to see where their food comes from but now I have all this foreign material to work through. Hufffff. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful and what I have read so far has given me some good ideas (which I will talk about later) but it is a little daunting at the same time. So, here we go, ready to pile into the veggie scene of middle- Norway (there isn't one) and make my mark upon the hobby growers of the area, and then. . . The snow came. I took this picture from my lounge window at 14.20 this afternoon and so I guess that winter has arrived. Soon the ground will be so hard that you will need a pneumatic drill to dig it up and the freeze will go to ore than a meter deep. So there is no hope of turning over any ground or preparing anything before spring. Ho hum. Such is life. There are plans I can make and raised beds to build, so all is not lost.

[archeryadventures]

Hi Guys, In this video i show you how to identify Left and Right Wing Feathers. Hope you find it useful…

Take care guys and thanks for the support

"shoot straight"

[simonmiltonjones]

Ahhhhhh, prey tell, good man, the reason it's so important to know the difference - I assume you should only have either left or right kilter fletchings on one arrow. Does I matter which way the arrow spins? Does it make any difference for left/right handed folk?

[simonmiltonjones]

Today I was in Kristiansund visiting friends, hurricane Hilde had already begun to hit the coast by the time I was ready to come home. Thankfully, the 2 hour drive was somewhat uneventful - the same can't be said for this bus which was caught in a land slide. The passengers were saved but the bus is deemed lost :-/ A hurricane is not something I would expect to be visited by here in mid-Norway but recently the weather has been rather odd. A week ago I was taking pictures of the kids playing in the snow and at 8am this morning it was +12degrees and threatening to blow roofs of houses. Pic by Roger Vik for NRK.