British Pathé Tuesday

Great find and blast from the past.

Love the feather fletching on metal arrows.

takotsubo's avatarThe Infinite Curve - an archery blog

It’s British Pathé Tuesday, and time for some Cholmondley Warner-style bowmaking, fletching and archery from 1961 in glorious Technicolor, fetching outfits, and staggeringly RP accents. Enjoy. 


archery 1961

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bad archery über alles

An excellent commentary on this video on how bows are used in films. In this case very badly. Made me smile and laugh lots. Thanks for posting.

takotsubo's avatarThe Infinite Curve - an archery blog

A man after my own heart. Nikolas Lloyd on YouTube has produced an entire video detailing the bad archery, terrible combat strategies, and nitpicky errors in the 2003 miniseries Helen Of Troy. Regular readers of The Infinite Curve will note that I have frequently picked up on ‘bad archery’ in the media, e.g. here, here, and here.

Coupla points: the reason why ‘stage’ bows do that pinging, doingy release is because the string is often a rubber band, which is why the limbs barely move. The reason why they are so low-powered is so as not to kill anybody on the set! Yes, they are hoping the audience won’t know/notice. Also, you don’t necessarily need three fletchings to stabilise an arrow, it’s just that three work very well. And bows can creak; have heard longbows creak on the line and my older wooden recurve limbs do the…

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Aiming for the fish’s eye

No I’m not talking about bow fishing, it is a quote from a book that came to mind after reading a recent archery article on the web.

A link to the artilce was posted on the Infinite Curve blog site http://theinfinitecurve.com/2013/03/07/bare/. If you have the chance read the post and follow the link to the full site http://www.bowyersedge.com/elements.html

As I said the article reminded me about I book I read over 20 years ago “The man who never missed” by Steve Perry. Its the first in a trilogy of books.

original book cover

original book cover

New book cover

New book cover

The story revolves around the main character Emile Khadaji and his mission to overthrow an evil galactic Confederation read empire. He masters a variety of skills including martial arts, bar tending, economic, smuggling etc, but one skill becoming a marksmanship in an exotic dart gun called a Spetsdōd.

Whilst being taught to shoot it he is told the story of the 3 archers at a competition run by the local lord. The 3 archers had been matched all the way through and were eventually pitted in a head to head round. As an alternate  target the lord placed a fish on the target boss.

After the final round the ruler asked the 3 archer what they had aimed for. The first archer said they aimed at the fish, the second said they aimed for the middle of the fish, the final archer when asked what they aimed for said they had aimed for the fish’s eye.

Well, you can guess who won.

The moral of the story being you only get as accurate as you try to be.

Reminds me of another sayings you hear from time to time.

“That was a lucky shot.”

“Yes it seems the more I practise the luckier I get with my shots.”

As always thanks for reading.