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What is "Warbow"

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sagitarius boemoru:
To be picky, Occam said: "dont introduce unnesesary inputs into the equation", which is what we call today principle of logicall parsimony.

The part of Adams bow I have in my collection has general dimensions of basebal bat and contains 60 percent of sapwood. It cannot be in any seriousnes compared to MR bows. Sapwood is far more elastic than heartwood, and that makes beam which is not enough stiff and more profile is needed to build up the weight. The thing is bloody two inches wide.

Anyway I m not quite catching up why is everybody talking so much about rpi, because that is SECONDARY pointer to yew wood density. 30 rpi grown in park and in mountains is whole different quality of wood. Aside of SG another factors like wood consistency are to be looked upon, I was said by best english bowmaker today that it needs to be "fat" and curl under scraper.  And as sidenote a wood from male plant is reddish in collor, harder than comparable from female plant and it does make more lively bow.


Neverthelles bows made from high altitude alpine yew made to MR dimensions come out in 110# +, modern replicas by Celestino are made mostly in longest range of MR spread (because they are again sold to generally amateur public) (means 80-82´´) and they come as heavy. If you cut such a  bow 4´´ to get proper lenght you get 20# or more of drawweight and these are in median or lower MR girth dimensions. Go figure.

The longevity factor is what I call pure bull---t, these bows are not flight shooting specials, they are made to be reliable, nobody goes to war with weapon which lasts only for 600 shots as armament of main battle array .  People who have them do not notice drastic reduction in cast or breakage or much of string follow after severall thousand shots, so its contrary to what we are being so vehemently told.

Why we have worse wood today than them should be quite obvious - yew has become basically unaccessible to generall public, numbers of high altitude grown yew bowstaves availble go in tens, while by 1500´ it still was in ten´s thousand´s, even if we take in consideration the bemoaning of wood buyers about selling bad wood bundled with good in sheaves alike. This itself would allow for much better sellection of wood we can even dream of.

J.

alanesq:

--- Quote from: alanesq on May 26, 2007, 07:52:53 pm ---On the subject of what draw weight the bows would have been, just thought I would pass on my experiences so far of taking up the warbow:
I am reasonably large built but I work in I.T. and have never done any job or hobby which involves a lot of heavy work lifting etc.
I took up archery around 1 year ago but up until January I was shooting a 65lb bow (28" draw)
I do not do any training other than shooting my bows once or twice a week
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    (I have checked the draw weight and it has not dropped yet - I wondered if this was why myself ;-)
The point I wanted to make is that if I can pull 130lbs after a few months of not very intensive use of warbows I find it difficult to imagine that professional archers who had been shooting these bows since boyhood would be shooting bows much lighter than mine ??

--- End quote ---

Just thought I should confess;

Yesterday I managed to find someone with a set of calibrated weights to let me use them to calibrate my bow scales
I can now measure the weight of my bows with confidence that my scales are spot on and it turns out my bow was 120lbs (not 130)
so I am not as butch as I thought ;-)

so let this be a lesson to you, never get your scales calibrated ;-)

SimonUK:
120 lbs is still quite butch Alan.

Can I ask a slightly unrelated question... When measuring draw length, should it be from the back of the bow or the belly? I usually measure mine from the belly.

alanesq:

Hello,

Thanks, its good to know I have not lost too much respected in the warbow community because of it ;-)

As I understand it, it should be measured from the back of the bow (i.e. far side)

BTW - I attach my rope to the bow string via a large carabina so really its like drawing the bow with one finger, so I don't know if this is correct or if you should have something wider to simulate the 3 finger draw ?

SimonUK:
I don't think that would make much of a difference Alan... maybe 1/2 cm or so. There is probably more variability than that when you draw the bow by hand a few times.

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