Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
Pre 14thC bulbous English arrows.
bow-toxo:
I go mostly by gathered information. As far as you have gone sounds good. The head to tail taper with horn slip reinforcement was a new idea in Tudor, not mediaeval, times. Previously the nock was strengthened by being left the maximum thickness while the shaftment was much thinned to improve archers paradox. With ½” thickness and 1/8”bowstring you wouldn’t need binding reinforcement. There may have also been pieced nocks besides the brass ones from pre-Viking Scandinavia, but I don’t have the info..
Fletching is best when cut and trimmed, but was sometimes stripped as Ascham mentions. Four vane fletch was used on Nydam and some Viking arrows but three vane was more common. Some archers find four vane more accurate, and it fits with cross nocks. I don’t know about the fletching grooves, which were used in crossbow bolts. It sounds like you are thinking of the Roman period Nydam arrows that with shaftment wrappings and birch tar are a real challenge to reproduce. Half inch shaft sounds good . Most mediaeval arrows I know of are tthat maximum thickness. Some fletching lengths; Nydam-3 ¾”, Alemannic-3 ¼”, Viking- 4 !/4..Tudor ones went up to 9”.You are pretty safe with either swine back or square shorn fletching for any mediaeval culture.
cheers,
Erik
davecrocket:
Thank you Erik for your most informed input.
I think the bulbous nock is going to have to be half inch as you mentioned. I tried out my comparison arrow today and it was impossible to feel the bulb on the release. As for the pinch grip I had no chance. Despite being heavier and having four fletchings, on average it came about 4th out of 6 of the three fletched arrows that I shot. What I was expecting really, especially because the fletchings were put on by hand as jigs can`t reach into recesses.
I note with interest you think three fletchings may be the way? I picked up the four fletching and cut in from Nydam I think. I thought it was a good idea at the time because as long as you find your nock you do not need to worry if your arrow is upsidedown! I thought this would be a huge advantage on the battlefield.
I will be shortly starting on my full sized arrow. I will try to put up a picture before I loose it.
Thanks again Erik.
Dave.
bow-toxo:
Dave- I overlooked referring to your pinch grip experiment. While some cultures like North American Indians used a pinch grip with a bolbous nock, that was probably never the case in mediaeval Europe. Earliest written descriptions, from before the Hundred Years War, as well as earlier manuscript illustrations involve two or three fingers on the string. I suggest that. It is true that with the four vane fletch you can nock without looking and as I mentioned, some preferred it. Some still do.
Erik
davecrocket:
Erik - I wanted to put the pinch grip to bed for good. The general consensus with the bulbous nock is the pinch grip. It cannot be so.
North West Europe used two fingers and the rest of the world used rings. As soon as you loose an arrow from a ring it is on it`s way - full tilt.
Two fingers holding a bulbous nock has the same effect...but better. The arrow is in the "V" of the string. With a ring the arrow has to sit above. That is why most very old arrows have a narrow nock, so they can sit on the string as close to the ring as possible.
There are two things I really need to know. The first is the release. "Pingability". If you can hold an arrow and then let it loose without distorting the string away from the "V" shape then it will ping.
The second is aerodynamics. The feathers sit in a recess. I do not know how this works, but it does. If you have a recess then it leaves a bulbous nock.
I hope you can see what I am saying.
Dave.
Rod:
I seem to recall (and I will check) that Ascham distinguishes between deeper nocks for reliability in a livery shaft and shallower nocks for shooting at marks.
The "bulbous" nocks are I think intended to pinch the string rather than to be pinched except lightly between the string fingers, not to be "pinch gripped" as we normally understand the term.
Most cultures that use the pure primary or secondary pinch grips will have placed a draw weight limit on themselves, defined as the weight at which the shaft will slip out of a simple pinch grip, probably on average in the order of a mid to high end hunting weight, from around 65lb to 70lb or perhaps a little more.
A bulbous nock obviously makes retention of a pure pinch grip easier, but I think that ceased to be a common English style long before the period that you are interested in.
As has been noted, I think you need to be careful of the distribution of force (diameter of the core) in a built up nock and I would nonetheless always prefer to bind or otherwise reinforce such a nock.
Rod.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version