First, check this out. I'd say "watch the whole thing", but honestly, if you can stop watching after just a few seconds, I'm not sure there's much I can do to help you:
Okay, there's all the obvious awesome, and I do not mean to take from that. But for me, I think the most significant takeaway is that this is an instance of how craft makes a giant leap forward, and it is beautifully succinct as a statement thereof. Aside from the aspect of "rediscovering what has been long forgotten" (which is a whole other level of awesome), what Anderson has done here is just the same as what Jeff Cooper did to bring pistolcraft from an idea to a science.
Cooper, I strongly suspect, would have loved Anderson's approach of optimizing the instrument based on a combination of exhaustive historical research, and modern empirical assessment. I would so love to have seen Cooper's take on it, from his own hand.
And now I'm wondering how and where the "practical archery" bug might go... :-)
Dang, that's awesome.
