No English bows at Crecy would have had arrow rests probably no leather grips or arrow plates either.
Victorian longbows wouldn't have arrow rests either.
I don't actually giveadamn, but having said that.
The bow would not qualify as an ELB anywhere on this planet to the best of my knowledge:- and if it is to be shipped to the UK and used in competiton, it could cause the owner some serious embarrassment if it was noticed.
Some archery organisations actually specify that the leather grip must not be thick enough to act as an arrow rest.
I have had a bow returned because it was considered to have too much reflex to meed the BLBS definition of ELB. This caused me considerable inconvenience as I had to make a replacement bow.
I am in no way decrying the superb workmanship... I'm actually trying to be helpful in a (hopefully) amusing manner.
Maybe I've misunderstood the tone of your response, and maybe you've misunderstood the tone of my original post.
Maybe you've also missed my signature line .
Del
Del,
'Twas meant in jest my friend.
I understand there are many rules applied to competition in the UK but, while very new to building bows, I am a semi-professional military historian and not new to the military equipment of the era.
I am aware, but far from conversant with the various rulebooks of diverse sporting governing bodies. Rules, I'm afraid, that are based on the particular 'traditional' tastes of a select demographic of archers but not on historical evidence from the 12th-15th centuries for the very simple reason, there is virtually no hard evidence to be had. It's not as though 10% or even 0.001% of the bows of the era survive in attics and sheds in villages throughout the realm.
So, I concede that an archer in modern competition may attract criticism or disqualification for leather handles of too great a thickness, too much reflex, recurved tips, etc. However, an archer of the 100 Years War couldn't have cared less as long as his bow threw a heavy war arrow where he wanted it to go, and the more efficiently it did so, the better.
While the evidence on either case is scant, with none of the hundreds of thousands of longbows of the era surviving to the present day, I personally believe there is credible indirect evidence to support the use of much more reflex and/or recurved tips than would be 'true to form', in many of the warbows of the era. I dare say, if 1,000 of the archers of Agincourt were suddenly transported to an event in England this summer, a considerable proportion of them would be immediately disqualified for one reason or other.
Therefore, 'true to form' is a statement rather open to interpretation and, while I'd agree that an arrow rest is unlikely to have been found at Crecy, as previously mentioned, lack of hard evidence dominates the discussion.
'Within the rules' may be a better phrase.
In any case, it's a beautiful longbow, whatever category it belongs in.