How to make a Flemish Twist bow string

Okay, my name is Todd Weldon with Oklahoma South Bow Society, and we're here in Three Forks getting ready to make a 55-inch bow string. Okay, so you're going to take your longbow, and you'll measure from string knot to string knot on your longbow, and if it's, say, this one, this bow, particular bow here, was 58 inches knot to knot, and so I'll take off three inches, make a 55-inch string. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to make a, we're going to make a 12-bundle string, so we've got to make two bundles of six strands each. So I'll tie a little clove hitch right there to hold it. I've got my pin set at 55-inch, which is the final string length I want, and you just wrap these on here until you get your six strands. Okay, there's six strands for the first bundle. Take your knife and cut right down the center, and what we're going to do is we're going to put some wax on about the last 12 inches of this string just to hold it together while we twist it so it'll stay together and twist upright. And it's really warm today, so the wax is really working good, but just get that waxed up, switch ends, wax up the other end about 10 or 12 inches, and that's one of your two bundles. So we're just going to set that aside, get our other string, and do the same thing. Clove hitch on here and get us six strands for the second bundle. One of the things you have to know is the width of your limb tips and the limbs so you'll know how big to make the loops. Most of these long bows are a pretty small tip, and usually about the same size, but I'll take my ends and I'll hold eight inches right here for the first loop, and I'm going to put my alligator clip right there on that eight inch. So you take these two bundles, and the whole process of a Flemish twist string is you twist away from yourself and wrap over the top. Twist away, wrap over, and we're going to do that until we get about two inches, two inches of twisted bundles here. Still twisting away and wrapping over. So now I've got about two inches worth of the twist, and I'm going to bring this tag end around back to where I started, remove my alligator clip, and lay those bundles together right there, and just kind of blend them together like this, and it's going to be the same procedure. Twist away. So let me see the how the loop lays back on top. Just like that. You just lay it lay right where the where the V comes together. You just lay them right together. Twist away, sorry, wrap over. Twist away, wrapping over. Twist away, wrapping over, and you just continue that until you get past your tag ends. So you have these tag ends and they're staggered, and that was the principle of this on the jig. It staggers all your ends so you don't have a real blunt transition from from this part to the regular string. So that's the only purpose of the staggering. You'll just do this process of twisting and wrapping until you get past all your tag ends, and when I get past the last of the tag ends, I'll usually go three or four more twists. So there's the first loop. So after I get it all twisted up, I'll just hook it on something and give it a little pull just to kind of set it in. So when we made the first loop, it put all these twists in the string. So when we do the second loop, it's going to compound that because it's going to put the same amount of twist in it. So what I'm going to do is take all the twist out and then put back twist in it so when I make the second loop, these shouldn't have any twist in them at all when that's done. So on this here, I'll just work like about six inches at a time, and you can see the twist in it. And so you just take the twist out, move your hands down about six, untwist that, keep going, taking the twist out, taking the twist out, and the way you're twisting it now, when you get to the end, I'm just going to keep twisting that direction and put about 20 back twists in it. Okay, so I got that one. I'll kind of lay it over there so it don't untwist and do the second one. You see the twist in it? Take the twist out. Okay, now on this string here, it's going to be 55 inches end to end. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to measure to my 55 inches. I'm going to get to 55 and I'm going to go a half inch past. I know I want a 55 inch string, so I'm going to go to 55 and a half right there, and I'm going to put my alligator clip right there and start my second loop. And my first, the first bundle, my tag ends were eight inches long, and on this this fixture, it's a little bit different, but I'm eight and a half inches and that won't hurt a thing, so I'll just go ahead and make it right there. So it's the same as the first loop. You're going to twist it away from yourself and wrap over. Twist away, wrap over. You want to twist it up pretty snug. If you start twisting and wrapping too hard, you'll feel it back here in the back, but you just want a snug twist and a good tight wrap. The first, the first loop, I went two inches. This one here, I'll go a little bit farther, and then the bigger loop will be used for the top limb. Okay, so I got all my twists, and I'm going to bring my bundles together. So right there, I've got where I started, and I'm just going to lay those together right there where that clip is. Remove that clip, and right there where the V, where the twist starts and stops, you just lay that right on top of each other right there. Kind of blend those together. Same process, twisting away and wrapping over. And just like the first one, you'll do that until you get past the tag ends. So as we're, as we're doing this twist here, it's taking the back twist out of the bundles that I put in there. So when I get through, there should be no twist in the, in the two separate bundles. Go past the tag ends and do maybe three or four twist extra, and then I'm going to lock it down. Give it a little tug like that. Okay, now the, you look at the two bundles and there's not any twist in them. So now we got to twist the string together. So on this end here, you make sure you're going the right way that tightens up. It's tightening the bundles, and you're going to roll this that way, and I'm going to take my thumb and index finger and roll it the opposite way as I roll it up. Hold a little tension on it and just twist it up and that'll blend those bundles all together. Twist that up pretty good, go to the middle. Then you want to turn it around and do the same thing on the other end. Twisting in opposite directions like that. That should be about right. And it's supposed to be a 55-inch string, so just twist it until you get it right. There's a 55-inch string.