How Raven Longbows Started.

   Hi. Welcome to my Raven Longbows website. My name is Cliff Gadd and my introduction to archery came at the end of 2012, Joining the local club, Raven Archers and starting with the normal take-down Recurve, then moved onto a full Recurve setup.  

  I worked as a design engineer and I am always keen to know how things work, so during the cold of January 2013 I decided to make my first English longbow and after the first outing with this bow and the first set of wooden arrows I had ever made, I was hooked on Longbow as my preferred shooting style and also realised that there was more to bow making than just sticking a few bits of wood together. 

  By the end of 2013, and after various local competition successes, I had attained my Grand Master Bowman classification and was well and truly hooked on the longbow. All the time I continued with my bow-making, slowly improving the shooting quality and performance of my bows. 

  The 2014 season came along with a few more local competition wins, and then the UK Masters invite arrived in the post. I decided I had to give it a go, so in June it was off to the National Sports Centre at Lilleshall. 

Not knowing what to expect from the weekend and being among names in the longbow world I had only read about and never dreamed I would compete against, the competition started. By the end of the weekend, and after some terrible weather on Saturday for the WA720, somehow I had managed to win to become the 2014 UK Masters Champion at my first attempt.

  It was around this time that archers started to ask about my bows and I started to supply a small number of bows as and when they were available and where the name Raven Longbows was first coined.  

  Since then,  I have continued to develop my bow, string and arrow making skills and now produce a range of fast, smooth shooting bows with stunning looks and proven competition winning performance.  

  Recent additions have been a range of arrows from basic club arrows through to tapered, barreled, and footed arrows, along with arrow racks to suit sets of 12,18,24 or 36 arrows along with a few handy tools for the longbow archer.   

  If anything on my site is of interest to you please feel free to contact me via the contact email I will get back to you as soon as I can.

 Happy Shooting.  

 Cliff.