Archey BowmanDoug Parry · Bowyer · Ellensburg, Washington

Hand-made English longbows by Doug Parry

…I have to walk away from the bow and turn and look at it. And in that instant, I can feel where it's off.

I'm Doug Parry, and Archey Bowman is me: a bowyer in Ellensburg, Washington. I've worked wood for fifty years, and since 2008 I've made nothing but traditional English longbows and warbows, one at a time, by my own hand. My bows are listed on eBay as archeybowman, and if one has gone, I'll make you one like it. There's no "we" here, just me.

See the bows Hear Doug, 4 min

Doug Parry, white-haired with a long white moustache, smiling in his workshop
Doug Parry, bowyerIn the workshop, Ellensburg, Washington

Hear it from Doug

Four minutes from WHYY's The Pulse, on wood, its smells, my failures and the moment a stick becomes a bow. The whole transcript is on my About page.

Handmade Tales · WHYY's The Pulse · 2021

"Handmade Tales," produced by Diana Opong for WHYY's The Pulse (September 24, 2021). Hear the full episode on WHYY

I'm trying to take raw lumber, which is rough cut, and see a story. It's all a new story each time.

Normal wood sits there and is pretty… I'm looking for wood that's known more for its strength.

I've tested all kinds of woods and I've had all kinds of failures and I pretty much know what to look for, but I'm always learning.

  • 50years working wood
  • 2008the year I went to nothing but bows
  • 1,000slongbows from one bench
  • 1bowyer. Just me.

“…trust them to a good and cunning craftsman” · Roger Ascham, Toxophilus, 1545

Doug Parry is one of the finest makers of mediaeval English longbows… that I have ever known.

Dennis La Varenne, "The Bows of Doug Parry: A Review," Australia, 2016

I was compelled to want one of them once I realized how very good his tillering was.

I now have several of them and nothing has declined in production values from the first to the most recently obtained.

…I cannot work out how amazingly straight his bows remain after continuous shooting…

On YouTube · Bowmar Bowhunting

My bow is strong

Two hundred pounds is a lot of bow. That's one of my warbows in this video from the YouTube channel Bowmar Bowhunting, and getting it strung is half the show. The video is theirs, not mine; I'm just proud it's my bow in it.

If you'd like a heavy warbow of your own, or something a good deal kinder to the shoulders, write to me.

A muscular man in a gray tank top grimacing as he bends a long pale warbow against his body to string it, under the words "Stringing 200 pound bow!"Play the video
“I BOUGHT A 200LB BOW!” · Bowmar Bowhunting on YouTubeThe video plays from YouTube. It belongs to Bowmar Bowhunting.

In the workshop

Most of my bows are laminated: barrel-tapered Moso bamboo on the back, ipe and hickory on the belly. My tri-lams put an ipe core between the bamboo and white hickory, and I'll glue up as many as five layers in what I call my "quint" bows. Ipe gives me strength and color. Osage makes a lovely bow, but it's hard to find, and maple won't make a bow at all.

I glue each bow up on a form with about two inches of reflex in it, and shape the limbs after the bows raised from the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship: rounded, just a little wider than deep. Then I scrape them down, mostly by hand, thin the tips right down to the horn, and take the bow to the tiller.

A stack of long bow blanks laid across sawhorses in Doug's workshop
Fifty of a hundred bow blanks, Christmas 2016
A pale longbow drawn to 22 inches on Doug's tiller against the maple wall
Drawn to 22 inches on the tiller
A black leather handle wrap bound with white sinew, the draw weight pencilled on the limb beside it
A deer skin and sinew wrap, the draw weight penciled on the limb
Cross-section of an original Mary Rose bow, not one of Doug's, labelled to show the sapwood layer over the heartwood
An original Mary Rose bow, not one of mine: sapwood over heartwood
The lower buffalo horn nock of a pale longbow with its twisted string
The lower horn
The upper buffalo horn nock of a pale longbow with its twisted string
The upper horn, with its bracing nock

On eBay now

Every bow is one of a kind. My bows are listed on eBay as archeybowman, and if one has already gone, write to me and I'll make you one like it.

What every bow comes with

  1. Custom buffalo horn tips, shaped by hand
  2. Inlaid strike plates, right and left handed
  3. A deer skin and sinew handle wrap, if you want one
  4. Three coats of hand-rubbed satin hard wax oil
  5. Built to the specs for proper longbows
  6. A B-55 Flemish twist string and a B-55 stringer
  7. A one-year full replacement warranty. If anything goes wrong with the bow from workmanship or material within a year, I'll replace it at no cost to you.
The left buffalo horn tip of the 150-pound bamboo-backed ipe warbow, with its twisted stringThe deer skin and sinew handle wrap of the 150-pound bamboo-backed ipe warbow, its draw weights pencilled on the limb
Doug Parry leaning on his workbench in his workshop, a longbow on the wall behind him
Doug, at the bench

No cart. No checkout. Just write to me.

Tell me your draw length and the weight you're after, or which bow caught your eye. If it has already gone, I'll make you one like it.

Doug's email address

Write to me at the address in the picture, or message me through eBay.