How do you explain the penobscot bow's performance?

[Kegan]

so would it be possible to have a super heavy mini bow and a light say 35 pound bow and reach a weight of like 60 with very little mass on the large bow and it is all on the small one. i guess what i am asking is what are the limits to this cool design and does anyone have some good web pages on this stuff.

I built one when I started into archery. I built a recuirved D bow that bent WAY too much in the handle, and only drew about 40#. Well, I jsut attached a little bow to the back and bount it all together. Jumped up to a sweet little 60# flinger. I was pleased as punch .

[Judson]

   The people who built the Penobscot bows seemed to under stand "Bowology"  It appears apparent that they knew that there are two to make a bow shoot "harder".    One way of course, is to increase draw weight.    This is the route that the English took with their long bow with weights reaching as high as 150 pounds.    The second way is to make you work harder drawing the bow during early and mid draw with the final draw weight remaining the same.    This is the idea behind the modern compound bow and it seems that the members of the Wabanaki confederacy realized this over 1000 years ago.
    When drawing a properly designed Penobscot bow one will find that the draw weight climbs very fast until a bit after half draw, then the weight climbs very slowly up to full draw.    On my reflex deflex bow from 20" to the full draw of 28" it gains only two pounds per inch.    When Dean Torges tried my static recurve Penobscot in Coudersport, he asked me what it gained as he drew the bow several times.   Not sure what he meant I asked him and he replied.   "From about half draw on it feels almost as if it has let off like a compound."    I was very pleased that he had noticed the same thing about these bows as I had and it was not all in my head!   
    Going to that Penn. shoot was one of the highlights of Barb's and my life.    Steve Hulsey invited us to set up at their tables with Primitive Archer Magazine and we got to meet so many great people such as Gary Ellis, Dean Torges and so many others.    Thank you again Primitive Archer for the opportunity.
    The following year I came down with R.A. and it was 8 months before I could even dress myself.    Archery was out of the question and my weight dropped from 165 to 130.    Thanks to Remicade and  great doctor I am once again able to shoot a bow and get back to doing the research I love on the Penobscot Bow.    But I can't post a dam picture, help what am I doing wrong?    However all the pictures and force draw curves are at webshots under my name so you can still see them if you want.

[Judson]

If this picture comes out it will show 3 variations of the Penobscot bow.    Top is a static recurve next a reflex deflex and the lower one a slight recurve, this is the bow that was on the cover of Primitive Archer Magazine.    The silencers on the top bow are Turkey feathers striped and wound onto the string.

[1/2primitive]

Judson, I had thought of the turkey feather thing, and put them on a string, but didn't know if they would work. I guess they do, huh?
      Sean

[mitchman]

beautiful bows judson. now why are the mini bows not recurved i thought that was part of the design.

[Judson]

   When the bow is not strung there is some recurve to The back bow.   The Micmac variation of these bows is very highly recurved to the point of lookinc sort of like a "C" when unstrung.     On thing sort of intresting about the Micmac bow is that unlike the rest of the Penobscot bows where the draw weight climbs very fast thenlevels out the Micmac version is different.   The Micmac bow has no stack or drop off in the draw weight.   For example on my bow the draw weight gains 3 pounds per inch from brace height up to full draw and 65 pounds of weight.    This is the bow I am talking about I will try to post a picture of it un strung.

[Judson]

This is a force draw curve graph comparing several different bows the two solid lines are from a static recurve Penobscot bow set at 60 pounds and at 65 pounds.    The dotted lines show the force draw curve for a 55 pound flat bow and the one that drops off is the curve for a Martin Warthog 60 pound compound. As you can see from the graph the Penobscot bow stores the most energy.   The numbers to the right of the graph are the # of squares below each line  representing stored energy.

[Judson]

   Here are a few more pictures of the Micmac bow.    This is the only version of the Penobscot bow to be specifically a war bow it is also the most recent design.     This is the bow at full draw


Details of the upper nock carved as a wolf's head.

This the gliding nock on the back bow I was told that these were of moose antler but I used deer since no body seemed to want to let me cut up their moose antlers.    The next picture is of the horn nock down by the grip.    Sinue was used to hold these in place on the origional bows.   On this bow I used "A" thread which is the thread used to wrape guides on fly rods.
 

[AKAPK]

Haven't tried one of those yet Hmmm.

[Krebal18]

This is a force draw curve graph comparing several different bows the two solid lines are from a static recurve Penobscot bow set at 60 pounds and at 65 pounds.    The dotted lines show the force draw curve for a 55 pound flat bow and the one that drops off is the curve for a Martin Warthog 60 pound compound. As you can see from the graph the Penobscot bow stores the most energy.   The numbers to the right of the graph are the # of squares below each line  representing stored energy.

Hello! Sorry for digging up an old thread, but I would be really interested to the draw force curves, wondering if you could possibly upload them again? It looks like they disappeared somehow. (tried pm:ing but it wouldn't let me)

[PatM]

He's not a member on here anymore.