Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
What is "Warbow"
Loki:
Are'nt all the Bows from the wreck made from Italian Yew?
The Mary Rose had 350 Archers on board when she went down,as the Bows found on the wreck were all locked up in chest's, can we take it then,that the surviving examples are spares?Surely the soldiers on deck would of been armed with there own gear,maybe even superior.
duffontap:
I'm offline for a few hours and I miss all the action. A lot of great posts going on here.
Let me just say: if you have a personal message/grievance/vendetta--please use the personal message feature! There are more than a couple people crossing the line on this thread and I don't want to use all my time to clean up the language and tell people to cool it. If the rules are abused this forum will be closed by Primitive Archer. I would hate to see that happen!
On What a Warbow is:
As I have said before, the murkiness of history allows for some speculation and personal opinion but neither of those are worth getting militant about. It is true that English Warbows had very high degrees of standardization. Stacked sections, fairly consistant length, favored materials and tiller, specific mass placement/width and thickness tapers, high weights, long draws, universal nocks, etc. All I'm saying is, it's more specific than some posts let on. If you have another style of English Warbow that you know to be authentic--post with some solid iconic or textual evidence to show you've done your homework. That should keep unnecessary fights to a minimum.
I hope everyone has been enjoying this English Warbow forum as much as I have. There has been some fabulous information shared in this thread so far. This is quality debate--just keep the tone friendly.
Welcome Steve!
J. D. Duff
Kviljo:
JD, but isn't that a Mary Rose bow you describe rather than a english warbow? I'm sure you agree that the MR-bows are only the 1545 version of the english warbow. There has obviously been some development, so I think one can stretch the MR-specifications a bit when making a "english warbow", without being historically bankrupt.
Though I do agree that it is a bit sad to see the term stretched to linnen-backed red oak board bows :)
stevesjem:
--- Quote from: D. Tiller on May 07, 2007, 10:27:50 pm ---Hey Steve! Welcome to the site. Nice to see you found us here. That one bow your holding is massive. Do you happen to know an estimate of what the draw weight of that bow was? Cant believe how straight the grain is on that bow and the tight growth rings. Do you think it was Yew from a tree farm in the Itallian Alps cerca that time period? I can imagine some Italian out in the Alps going out and cutting sucker growth off the trunk of yew trees and lovingly caring for them untill harvest then selling them to a wine merchant who shipped them back to england with the wine he purchased. If only that bow could talk! ;D
--- End quote ---
We can only estimate these draw weights, but in saying that a lot depends on the wood density, i personally beleive all the bows were of a similar weight and the fact that they are all different in dimensions suggests different density pieces of wood, after haveing a large number of replicas made from Italian yew, i can hazard a guess at between 130-150lb draw weight. Yes i do beleive it was a piece of farmed wood, either from Italy, Spain, Portugal or possibly carpathian.
For Kviljo... I have some other pictures of the belly of some of the bows which do show tooling marks, i would think from a "Float"., A Mary Rose bow is a warbow, there are no others that survive that we can examine, these are all we have to go on, so as far as i'm concerned the MR bows are warbows.
For Loki... No not all the wood was from Italy, some would have come from, Spain, Portugal or possibly carpathian. The bows in the chest were probably on board the ship in storage for overseas land battles, i would imagine only very few would have used on the deck on the ship, some were as when they were brought up from the bottom of the solent they were still in there brace shape.
Cheers
Steve
Loki:
Ahh,of course!
DOH! 350 armed Bowmen on the deck of a tudor WarShip,that will make a mess of the rigging ;D.
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