Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here. Big grin on my face because I came to
Will Sherman's to pick up this massive bundle of warbow arrows. These are going to be used in an
up and coming production that I am so excited about but it's a little bit secret right now,
but soon you will know all about it, but seeing as we're here let's just talk arrows. So the
first thing I've got to say Will this place is magnificent and clearly old. Pretty cool
isn't it? Yeah, so how old tell me? 1820s is our first record of it being built,
we've got materials here from the medieval period, so that beam up there for example is from the
1400s I believe, and the stone is from the priory down the road, 16th century. Yeah so it's so the
actual building is recycled. Recycled materials as it was always done and it's been a farrier's
forge forever and now it's an arrow smiths. You're forging away, so what you on at the moment? I'm
making some needle bodkins for an order, so if you're happy for me to just make those ones. Yeah,
no I think that's way to do it actually, it's I love watching crafts people work, it's always
great. So how I mean how long have you been at it now? Professionally making arrowheads all day,
for about five years yeah and as a hobby before that yeah, so I built a forge in my garden,
(as you do), and it ended up turning into a full-time career. So yeah that's good,
I mean a needle bodkin and a short bodkin like on these arrows that I've just collected, you know I
can see that they're fundamentally the same sort of thing to make. Yeah. Sort of the barbed arrow
heads, are they substantially different? Yeah they are, because they're two parts. Always two part?
Normally two parts, but in general from the evidence that we've got they were made with
one socket and then either steel or iron bars were welded or braised to that socket. So these ones,
absolutely beautiful arrows, we've got wrought iron heads and that's a mild steel you're using
there? Yeah. So a fairly similar carbon content and both fairly soft in the world of steels. Yeah
the one the big difference for me working with these is that mild doesn't want to delaminate,
yeah it's a homogenous piece of material. Has no grain structure. Yeah there's no grain in this
at all, whereas in wrought iron you can actually see it when you etch it, there's a lovely kind of
almost wood pattern effect that you get on those, yeah which is lovely to look at and quite sought
after but it means when you're working them at very thin thicknesses, they tend to delaminate
a lot and split on you. There's a lot more work, a lot harder to make them work for you, yeah? So
we've got the red on here, yep and I've certainly had arrows from you before which have been green,
so what's going on with that? So the red is kind of my own my way of standing out from the crowd
really, what we know they did was use a wax and animal fat glue which goes hard, really
hard when you when you heat it up and let it cool down again and then we know they put in copper
because the Mary Rose arrows have traces of copper in them. We don't really know why,
there's no documentation on why, but the most common theory is that it's an insecticide, so when
they're in storage feather mites and things don't eat them and make them useless. Yeah. They're
also really good to look at and there's perfectly every chance that they were using them for colours
because they look amazing. Well I mean colours must have been an issue actually because whenever
we see manuscripts you always see them with white feathers or whatever unmarked but you know we know
it, if you just shot half a dozen arrows into a field you don't know which are yours and which are
your friends (exactly), so they had to be marked somehow, yeah they had to be. We've got drawings
of cresting on them so, they've got individual patterns on. I thought that was a modern thing. No
there's definitely there's a 14th century tapestry that shows the cresting on them and we've even got
drawings of them with uh colours spliced into the feathers. Ah okay I've I've done that before
things yeah I've fletched my own with with uh yeah they were definitely doing that for
decoration yeah. I obviously do a lot of work with crossbows, I did some tests with a feather bolt,
feather fletched bolt and a wood fletched bolt and there was a very slight difference, but
the wood fletched bolt did not go as far as the feather fletched, so in my experience there was
a disadvantage to using wood and yet they did and so. What what are the advantages in other ways?,
because there must be a reason. Yeah it must be for longevity isn't it?, for storage. I think so.
You've got to be very precise with your hammer strokes there because
with a hammer that size it's not going to take much to mess up that socket.
I've done a few of these now. So we've got the binding on here, and it's a silk binding, even
though it's, I thought actually, it only came from China, but apparently I think since the seventh
century they've been making silk in Byzantium, so it's not quite as expensive as I thought,
but still, why that instead of a thin linen? I don't know, we've got records of them using silk
yeah and then we're using silk for bow strings, it was coming into the country for
archery purposes. Often or a bit? A bit. I think hemp and linen were more common.
The only record we've got of any guaranteed medieval arrow has a silk binding. Oh does it?
Whether that's Mary Rose which is Tudor and Westminster abbey which is 1400's,
the binding is silk. So we've got wrought iron head, type 9 so this is Museum of London find,
dated 1403 or something from memory? Yeah, there's a there's one that we used in the first film that
was 1400s, that one is a little bit earlier, it's a little bit it's easier for us to work onto these
half inch shafts because they were found with an 11 or 12 mm socket, so we changed to that one,
but they're the same head really. And then so we've got an ash shaft? Yep. Ash because it's
very strong, it's heavy, it carries a hell of a punch and it's bob tailed down so it's thinned
at the back. Yeah so a bob tail isn't a direct taper from the head to the nock, it starts out
at 11 or 12 mm here and then about this point here it starts to taper down to nine/eight and a half
nine millimeters at the nock. So so it's parallel for the the first third or so and then starts to
taper down, horn insert in the nock so that's there basically to take the force of the string
pushing up the back of the shaft trying to split it open. Yeah before they did the horn,
they had these kind of bulbous nocks because there are drawings of them being used. Oh okay then,
that's interesting because I knew that they used the bulbous nock that was for reinforce, instead
of reinforcement? Yeah they just got a little bit awkward on your fingers as the bow weights go up,
there needs to be an easier way of shooting them, so they take that bulbous nock down and
put a horn insert in there instead. And the feathers traditionally goose? Goose, Swan,
heron has been mentioned. That's a bit naughty these days. Yeah but any any big water bird is the
best, they've got this kind of natural oil line that you cut to. Okay. I'm going to say something
stupid here, could you do it with like eagle feathers or something like that? Yeah the Vikings
used eagle feathers. So you can't just pick up any arrow and make it shoot nicely from any bow,
they have to be matched yeah and these are matched to a 160 pounder. If the bow was lighter, these
would be thinner or not as stiff. Exactly. Because sometimes you can get the same wood thickness of
different stiffnesses can't you know it depends how fast it grew and that kind of... Yeah I've had
plenty of ash that's been completely useless for a heavy bow even at half an inch thick,
they're just no good. But they're just things of beauty and they really are and you know. I mean
I know you're busy; how busy are you? I'm done for the year, I'm booked up until December really,
just arrows and arrow heads. You know I'm the same, I've got a long waiting list
and I just find it really odd that a job which was frankly redundant 500 years ago is still keeping
me going. I shouldn't have a job and yet I do and it amuses me every day you know? Oh thank
you so much for taking the time Will. Welcome. It's been a pleasure and thank you for these.
No worries. We'll see you in a few weeks when we get to use them. Don't break them too quickly.
Oh I'm going to break them all. All right, see you Will. Thank you. See you in a bit.
you