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A viewer generously sent me some retted flax, and with with my friend Mark, I made a bowstring out of it.  Did it work?  Watch and see!

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Making my own bowstring

Billy, a viewer of mine, sent me a load of retted flax. With the able help of my friend Mark, I make an authentic flax (linen) bowstring for my longbow. How well did it turn out? Er... well, watch and see! Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige Buy the music - the music played at the end of my videos is now available here: https://lindybeige.bandcamp.com/track/the-mandeville-march Buy tat (merch): https://www.bonfire.com/results/Lindybeige/ More videos here: All Lindybeige: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzzh7AuEBkEmMWChgPPOQqjhkkPq_eP1X Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make. ▼ Follow me... Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindybeige I may have some drivel to contribute to the Twittersphere, plus you get notice of uploads. Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Lindybeige My website: http://www.LloydianAspects.co.uk Channel page: http://www.youtube.com/user/Lindybeige

Comments

Anonymous

Well done guys.

Anonymous

Great video subject. Although I understand the need to fast forward through some of the video to keep the video from being too long, I can't help but feel that I would've loved to hear some of those conversations, like the one about that awesome roleplaying group.

Luc Drouin

My grandmother made clothes, curtains, washcloths and tablecloths out of flax; sturdy they were. She had the tool you described to break the strands, it's a flax brake. Then she would comb the fibers through nails sticking up a board and make them into treads with a spinning wheel, same as with wool. Finally, she made the fabric with a weaving machine. It was a lot of work by our standards, but she didn't have money, as didn't her neighbor friends, and flax was aplenty and free as she grew it in her garden. It was too cold here in Canada to grow coton, so flax and wool were the common fibers for fabric. I don't suppose she ever made bow strings, but she sure would have been up to the challenge.

Adam Schindler

I'm not sure how much time you have for VIEWING Youtube, but Torbjorn Ahman has a neat blacksmithing channel. He did a little project where he grew a square meter of flax and then built traditional/traditional-appearing machinery to process it (I have no ability to evaluate the historical accuracy beyond 'the stuff looked like it was functional and old tech'). Watching your efforts after seeing the machines that he made to automate those processes was fascinating because actions/steps were essentially identical and the logical progression for the tools made more sense to someone who has never used either.

Roeland

Dear lindybeige, is there a way i can give you more money to support your videos?