Leatherworking: Archery Bracers and Finger Tab

Much to my astonishment last year, I learned that our sleepy little town (pop. 14,500) has its own archery club. Not only that, but the field where they practice in summer is about 1500 feet from our doorstep. So last July we decided to have a go and, after completing their beginners' course, joined the club. Up to now, we've been borrowing all our equipment, but over the holidays, we decided to take the plunge and buy some of our own kit. In the interest of saving some money while simultaneously avoiding unnecessary fluorescent nylon, I decided to make some of the simpler bits of gear myself; namely, a finger tab and arm guard. In the interest of being able to start using the stuff as quickly as possible, I opted for a fairly simple design for each.

The role of a finger tab is to keep your fingers from getting sore from holding the bowstring and then letting it slide off your fingertips when releasing the arrow. In modern target archery, finger tabs can get quite quite complicated, with spacers that go between the first two fingers so that you don't pinch the arrow nock, and a little shelf that helps you to find a consistent anchor point under your chin instead of on your cheek. Steve has opted to shoot with a sight, which is why he didn't get a homemade finger tab. I'm shooting barebow, which means I can get away with something a bit more bare-bones.

The simplest finger tabs are cut from a single piece of leather, with one or more holes for your fingers to go through. In re-enactment circles, this is the style that you tend to see most often.

At this point, I'm using string-walking as an aiming technique, so I wanted something that would give me a consistent reference point on the finger tab. In the cheap beginners' finger tabs that I've been borrowing from the club, you use the stitches that hold the layers of (p)leather together as your reference point. For my tab, I based the design off of this VLBB finger tab which I found on pinterest. I liked this particular design because it doesn't require any special hardware or fasteners to put it together and aesthetically, it looks suitably rustic for my taste.

The VLBB tab

My homemade tab

My finger tab is just two layers of leather roughly the size of the first three fingers on my right hand, with a single line of stitching to hold them together. At the side closest to the base of my fingers, there are two slits through the leather, with a loop that goes through the slits and around my middle finger. The loop is slightly wider at one end, with two slits cut in it near the wide end, and the other end tapered to a point. The tapered end gets poked through two slits and the friction is enough to hold it in place.

 

I initially cut the finger tab slightly too large at first, and have been gradually trimming down to a better size as it moulds to the shape of my hand. I also cut a slit between the first and second fingers, thinking I might try gap shooting with one finger above and two below the arrow nock at some point, but the tab was so quick and easy to put together that I will probably just make an entirely separate tab for that when I need one. Or make an archery glove.The bracers are a single thickness of leather, with a second layer at the edges so they don't buckle when laced tight. I also added a second thickness of leather to the middle of mine because I bruise rather impressively and still hit my arm with the bowstring rather more than I'd care to admit.

I opted for a X-stitch over the edges of the extra reinforcements so that there wouldn't be a pronounced ridge at the edge of the extra layer. I don't yet have a skiver (or a knife sharp enough to do freehand skiving), so paring down the edges of the leather wasn't an option. If I were making another one of these, I would probably pare down the edges and then sew around them with a straight saddle stitch. That way, I could just burnish the edges of the leather instead of running a whipstitch around the entire bracer. The choice is primarily an aesthetic one though. I haven't yet done an edge finish on Steve's bracer because he wasn't yet sure whether he was going to want a second thickness of leather in the middle of his bracer.

A lot of "traditional" archery bracers on the market have loops of elastic that hook over buttons or hooks. I rather liked the look and functionality of the hooks and even got as far as ordering some on ebay, but one of my re-enactor friends who is in charge of archery safety for her group pointed out that a bowstring could potentially get caught on these, and that just on the off chance that it snagged and then snapped, there's an awful lot of tension being released awfully close to your eyeballs, so I opted for metal grommets and round elastic lacing instead. To get the bracer on and off, I just pull it on, stretching the elastic lacing.

Initially, I wondered whether I would need to put cable ties, popsicle sticks, or some other stiffener in between the two layers of leather on my bracer. So far though, the leather on its own seems to do the job, even with our new bow with a 28-30lb draw weight (up from the 18-20lb club bows we'd been practicing with before). I'm dimly aware of when I hit my arm with the bowstring, but it doesn't hurt beyond a dull ache if I do it too often, and most importantly, I haven't gotten a single bruise while wearing my bracer.