Eivor’s Hunnish Bow – Silesti Makes

Character

Eivor gains a significant number of weapons during the course of Assassins Creed: Valhalla but this one in particular caught my eye. The overall structure and aesthetics is, to me, very pleasing and I continued to use this bow long after I obtained a better one.

My Eivor was very much a long-range assassin and a good bow is key to success so I thought I’d celebrate this by making Eivor’s Hunnish Bow!

Build

Other than in-game captures I made myself, there’s very little online reference material (at the time of making) of Eivor’s Hunninsh bow, so I gabbed a screenshot and did some tracing in Inkscape to give me a basic pattern.

Id’ decided that this build was going to be wood. I just felt it needed to be ‘real’ and substantial and I wanted to try something I’d not done before. I had some scrap ends of old shelves I’d salvaged from a skip (permission granted!) and I worked out thatI could cut all of the needed bit out of those so I transferred my pattern and started with the jigsaw!

With the rough cuts done, I did some initial shaping where the pieces would join and glued and clamped them together. (Part 3 in the pics was actually cut from some thicker stock I had as the shelving didn’t have the heft I wanted from those pieces).

After the glue was solid I started shaping – there is still a layer of dust over much of my garage after this exercise! – initially with a rough sanding wheel, then to the trusty rotary tool and mini belt sander. The goal was to get something which wasn’t ‘machine smooth’ and had some character in the surface so I wasn’t too fussed about getting a silky smooth uniform finish, just getting the rough shape and look. I actually added in a couple of dings and additional interest.

I then stained the whole lot with a dark oak stain and started adding the embellishments. the metal reinforcing pieces on the limbs are 4mm EVA foam and the armour plating around the grip is formed from foam clay sculpted and shaped in place, once again this gave a hand-finished look, especially when the hammered texture was added. The final toushed were the rivets which we made from hand-rolled foam clay balls cut in half when they were dry and glued in place. Hand rolling the balls once again introduced inconsistency in the sizes and helps to sell the look – I think.

Finish

the grip was wrapped in EVA foam and black faux leather and then the whole bow was given a gentle weathing with a dark wash and the highlights ot eh metalwork picked out using silver Rub’n’Buff. The bowstrings were made of plaited elastic cord with the loops whipped and tied back making the bow drawable.