What is "Warbow"

[duffontap]

Around 1 month ago I bought a new bow which is 130lbs at 32", it was VERY heavy for me and I didn't know if I would ever manage to fully draw it but now after only a few weeks I can shoot this bow surprisingly comfortably and it gets easier every time I use it 
 

Good for you!  I need to build a heavier bow and give that a shot.  I think I'm ready for another jump in weight. 

                     J. D. Duff

[duffontap]

Chris,
Thanks for the reply. 

Chris and Jaro,
Thanks for the time and effort you are putting into this debate. 

         J. D. Duff

[alanesq]

Good for you!  I need to build a heavier bow and give that a shot.  I think I'm ready for another jump in weight. 

My plan was that rather than spend a lot of money on lots of bows working up the weights, I would have this one as a long term project but I have been very surprised at how quickly it happens
Only a few weeks ago it seemed like a solid bar and I wasn't convinced it bent at all ;-)
BTW - I had a 100lb bow before this (I didn't go straight from the 65lb one)

I just kept shooting the odd arrow at whatever I could draw it to, mainly just to start shooting the bow in, but before long I was starting to get it to 32"

I wonder if having a bow which is too heavy for me to pull has forced me to fully learn to use the correct muscles (as my strength can't have increased that much in such a short time) ?

So maybe having a bow seemingly to heavy is the way to go

[ChrisD]

Well  Simon, I think enough heat has probably been generated to run a small galaxy, and my views are reasonably clear - so I don't plan to drag things out any longer

Jaro is clearly extraordinarily well informed on thi subject. I've had an interest since the early eighties - but I don't have as physically big a 'knowledge hoard' as he does and I'm sure you of all people will understand why. Where we disagree is on how the facts fit together, and heat generated notwithstanding, its the observers who get to do the judging.

Alanesq - well done indeed- I'm jealous. Do you think you could still do it though while diseased/half starved/seasick/knackered? I have a qestion for you wich I'll post in the 'traing up' thread later - my hands are full with 5 month old baby at the mo and I type this one fingered!

All the best all.

Chris

[alanesq]

Do you think you could still do it though while diseased/half starved/seasick/knackered?

My 100lb bow I have shot at my target club for 6 hours without a break and this bow now seems to me to be a very light bow,
When I first got it (around 4 months ago) it seemed very heavy
My 130lb bow is still pretty heavy to me and I would be struggling after a couple of ends but I fully intend to use this bow as my main bow eventually and so I may be able to answer this better in a few months ?

If I had been shooting heavy bows for 20 years and my life depended on it I would imagine I would have no problem pulling this bow even when knackered and ill

To modern archers a 130lb bow can sound like an idea of a mad man !
but when you start using these bows you soon start to think of them as normal and what seemed impossible soon becomes easy
I am pretty big built and so others may take longer to build up to 130lbs but medieval archers would have been people selected as being the best and would have been training since very young, it must have been truly amazing what they could do !

[ChrisD]

ok Alan, I've had a butchers at your website. You're using laminates and Jaro and I were discussing self yew bows only. Laminates will last a good long time and I'll be getting one from Pip this year as well as building my own. BTW my experience with Pip is that he's been very generous with time and advice with me also. A real gem of a man.

I see you know what I mean though - exploding self yew bows are exactly the point.

I have few comments on the draw weight points and will post this pm on the other thread. I'm interested that you are vegan and have some questions regarding your experiences during training.

Still one fingered C.

[Kviljo]

The Mary Rose bows were probably around 60 pounds (G. Rausing, 1967: 161).

 


- even if you got the reference, it doesn't always mean you're right

[ChrisD]

Hah!!

Thats funny - and also true!

C

[a finnish native]

here's my opinion about the true draw weight with english warbows: as Jaro said the bows truly were drawn untill 32 or so and the draw weight in my opinion truly was usually over 100#. Men in those days were stronger even if smaller. I'm definitely no superman, am only 16 and can pull 92#. I dont do any bodybuilding, or train my muscles othewise than in archery. So I truly belive that if one trains systematically from the age of 6 with bows. Then he can also pull 120# easily when 18 for example.
Oh and by the way I drew the 92# just with a plain "normal" style with only my arms, so with a little train on the style to pull heavy bows I belive I could reach 100+# quite quicly.
and about that strenght thing heres an example: http://www.riemurasia.net/jylppy/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=0

PS: sorry for not staying in the subject

[alanesq]

I was using a 90lb at 32# bow for a good while and this bow became to me that I could just pull it using my arms (using no technique)
I then moved upto pulling a 130lb bow within a few weeks (I suspect mainly by this forcing me to learn to use the correct muscles)?
so I would imagine you would be able to do similar although its probably not a good idea as your bones are probably still growing etc. ?
"getting in the bow" makes a big difference to how much weight you can pull

My bow should come down to around 120lb when its been fully shot in and by this time I suspect I will be using this bow happily all the time.

a 120lb bow to a medieval archer I am sure would be seen as a light bow

[sumpitan]

What athletics? What records on flight shooting where the break wasn't due to advances in materials?

C

Composite bows:Tozkoparan Iskender,  Turkey, 846 meters - mid-1500's vs. Don Brown, USA, 566 meters - 1996.

Backed bows: Curtis Hill, USA, 472 meters - 1939 vs Marlon Torres, USA, 323 meters - 2006.

Selfbows: Harry Drake, USA, 494 meters - 1945 vs. Simon Stanley, UK, 346 meters - 2006.

Tuukka

[ChrisD]

I think that sort of makes my point really.

I personally wouldn't regard people active in the 1930's and 40s as 'ancient' - thats when my parents were around and probably some people reading this site!!

As for Iskander Tozkoparan and kis Kyut (Ithink is the correct term?), I give you....

'A Drake bow designed in 1964 shot a record of 1,077 yard and on October 24, 1971 at Ivanpah Dry Lake in the high desert of California during the Official N.A.A. Flight Championships, from an unlimited footbow, he conceived, designed and built, Harry Drake shot an arrow 268 yards over a mile, (2,028 yards). The Guineas Book of World Records recognizes this feat as the greatest distance any man has cast a missile by means of muscle power alone.' - thats from a website BTW - not me typing typos.

and
'The furthest with a hand-held - and pulled - bow is 1,336 yds 1' 3" (1,222.01m) , shot by Don Brown with an unlimited conventional Flight bow in 1987.'

The point I was making is that theres nothing feeble about modern people by comparison with the ancients, in fact given our inherent advantages with regards to reaching growth potential, nutrition, training regimes, medical advances etc etc, modern humans have huge advantages over our ancestors, not the reverse.

On that small point, we often also hear the refrain 'but we're using inferior bow woods'. Now where does that idea come from and why should they be so inferior today, eh?

Chris

[sumpitan]

The Drake records (and ones shot by Brown using Drake's gear) you quote were made with synthetics through and through, including carbon arrows truly the size of knitting needles, whereas the modern records made with materials available to the ancients - the only records we have data for comparison from earlier times - are all well below what was reached by earlier generations. Apples and oranges. When the best bowyers of modern times make the best wood bows and arrows they possibly can and give them to the hands of the best modern archers, the pre-modern records remain untouched. This is really hard for many steeped in modernism to swallow (I am not referring to Chris D.).

It might seem we modern folk have infinitely better resources for achieving what has never been achieved before. And if we're talking about the 100 meters dash or Pro golfing, where huge amounts of money involved make it possible for thousands of people to dedicate their entire waking hours to the task, this surely stands true. But natural-material archery discussed here is nothing but a small fringe niche among dozens of obscure hobbies today.

Almost no-one today can or even want to spend his life crafting wooden bows and arrows and learning how to best use them. Compare this to the times when the bow was the most important long range weapon armies had and people had a very real incentive to get as good with them as possible? How many people today start shooting in the bow at age four, and continue to do this uninterrupted, day in, day out, through their adulthood? How many of us do this under professional peer-pressure? This difference in attitude, seriousness, focus is something we as casual hobbyists lack compared to the bow-wielding soldiers of the past. Just as we are fumbling fools in the woods, bow in hand, compared to any 18th century Native American hunter crafty enough to have survived into adulthood (scores of ethnographic data on this, unlike on English warbows and their users). Pictures of scrawny, 60kg Lliangulu hunters with 100# elephant bows at full draw come to mind...Think wolves and German shepards - same size, same outward appearance, but the former can shred the latter into pieces without breaking a sweat, despite (or because of!) the shep's more benign childhood, lesser disease and better nutrition.

About bow woods and their modern inferiority: The ring counts and earlywood-latewood ratios of studied MR specimens are decidedly superior to almost all the yew available today, plain and simple. Just as the very best American bow yew was cut down by the ancients of the 1930's and is nowhere to be found today, I hear. When a bow stave includes 150 years of growth, and maybe one tree in 100 is genetically gifted enough to qualify, things like this happen.

Tuukka

[ChrisD]

Tuukka

Sorry for not replying to your post - things have been a little hectic.

I think you're certainly right that the archers of old would have gotten more out of their bows than many (or even any - except one? ) replica warbow archers today. The thing is though, given the requirements of the day, that would have allowed for a lower draweight - not higher. Simon Stanley is often used as an example of an archer who uses heavy bows with ease - which he does. What is less talked about is that he can also turn up with a 90lb bow from time to time, and shoot further than people with much heavier equipment.

I'm not really proposing to re-state why it is that I think what I do, it'd take too long and its already posted anyhow. One thing I would say though is that I don't think my views could be described as arguments for a particularly low weight. 100lb is still a pretty big weight after all and there are some still arguing for 75lb or so!!

As I write this, I'm mindful that proper dendrochronological analysis of the MR bows is still at the 'pending' stage, so we don't really know how good they were. The piccy of the broken bow in Hardys first book though has 40 growth rings in it, which is pretty good I suppose - but on the same page, the bow referred to as 'Agincourt' is described as 'not very fine grained'.

I guess my plea is exactly described by William of Occam, referred to early. Shave off all unnecessary ideas so that  the simplest approach without need of any extreme requirements can be adopted.

I guess we're never really going to have the answer. Years ago, when I was much younger, I also believed the hypotheses about huge draweights. In the interveneing 20 years or so, I've learned a lot about what the human animal can do in certain situations though, and I've done a lot of science in unrelated (and some related) topics, and I've learned that in life, where general populations are concerned, the truth is almost always less spectacular than what was expected. When I look at everything I've read about warbows during that time, I see a hypothesis that fits everything that is currently in the domain of what is known, and the expected requirements of the equipment.

Anyway, I see from a neighbouring thread that Jd is planning experiments with linen strings - and I'm going to try too!

C

PS Wolves are anatomically very different to German Shepherds - difference which mean they can generate 1200lb per squ inch at the back teeth when they bite compared with 450 - which is why the shep becomes sushi in such a contest.

[duffontap]

I've been off this thread for a while but I was going to say that the flight records might be evidence for a lower draw weight.  Chris picked it up too (obviously).  It's a good point.

Chris,
On the growth ring counts--the pictures are deceptive in some cases because small-diameter trees were used and the growth rings are wrapping around and feathering out on the side of the bow.  I have heard some of the bows have actual ring counts closer to 150 rpi but I think that's pushing it.  You mentioned earlier the Don Adams bow that Glennan has.  While it is almost as big as the largest bow on the Mary Rose, it is made from the lowest-quality Yew likely to be found.  It doesn't in any way resemble high-quality Yew like the Mary Rose bows or even the mid-altitude yew I sometimes cut.  Glennan's bow did tiller out to 120#s, too.  (I love that bow by the way--it's just crazy). 

I'm not sure what dendrochronology would have to do with anything?  Tree-ring dating wouldn't tell you much about the MR bows.  I suppose you could date Againcourt if that's of interest.  An analysis of the wood quality would actually be useful.  Dendroclimatalogical studies might suggest likely places of origin or altitude, but would hardly be exact.  I guess, I'm just not sure what you meant by that. 

I liked your last post.  It was well-reasoned and I can see you've thought this through carefully.  Where I get stuck is looking at the bows on the MR and the replicas made these days of European Yew that have to be made to the dimensions of the smallest MR bows just to be shootable in the low-mid 100's.  You are a surgeon (right?) and you know the human body.  You believe it's unlikely that the archers at Againcourt would have been too sick and tired to have pulled very heavy bows.  You are extrapolating from what you know about how the human body can operate under sever stress/malnourishment/etc.  Pip looks at the arrow nocks and guesses that the weight had to be 100#s or less.  Other's say the benefit of shooting a 150# bow over a 100# bow doesn't justify the extra training to pull.  Arguments go on and on but they're not based on the bows--they're based on theory.  But, we have surviving examples of actual war bows and they look too big to be 100# bows or less. 

I could totally be wrong about this.  If I am, I hope a bunch of people will post about their MR-sized bows that came out around 100.  Glennan's is MR-sized, made out of some of the worst Yew I've seen (8-10 rpi, gray sapwood, 3 inches of set) and it's 120#s.  I don't know how heavy the MR bows were but I'd wager they were around 130-150#s just based on what I know about the dimensions and replicas. 

Thanks for continuing to post on this thread.  It's the best thread I've ever seen on PA.

           J. D. Duff