Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
What is "Warbow"
Marc St Louis:
HHB will make a good war bow as well
duffontap:
Marc,
I was thinking the same about crabapple and a couple other woods. Oregon crabapple sinks like a rock in water and it doesn't follow the string. My OC bow is 69" ntn and 1 1/2" wide and it draws 95-100# at 30" and I've drawn it many times at that length or longer. It still has zero string follow. The tiller is too stiff in the tips for a warbow but I was only tillering it for my 27" draw. In hindsite it's way overbuilt for how strong OC is. I just didn't know it at the time. I'm going to try a narrower/longer design soon.
(This is not a warbow. I am posting this as a suggestion for another whitewood capable of being made into the warbow design).
J. D. Duff
ChrisD:
Actually I think the woods are irrelevant - If the materials were available to medieval bowyers , they would have used em and that means that any wood that can make a 'warbow' should be fair game. There are other reasons for adopting this approach e.g good bow woods can be hard to find and confining archers to 'hard to get' materials simply excludes many people. Another problem with sticking to the 'self yew' only argument is the liklihood that the genuine yew medival warbow was designed as a short life item which was only expected to provide top performance for perhaps 1 battle - perhaps less. That would make it veeeery expensive to run a 'I only use yew' philosophy. So, crab apple, osage, backed yew, multi laminates - why not?
Yeomanbowman:
Interesting points Chris,
Welcome to the forum :)
Do you think that the expendable nature of the warbow was due to archers hastily discarding ranged weapons (IE the bow) when they closed with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat? Or an apparent lack of longevity inherently in yew wood? If the latter it's not a conclusion my personal experience has led me to believe, if well looked after. Throwing a yew bow on the floor it the heart of a medieval would, however, considerably shorten its life. What is the evidence that leads you to think that yew warbows would last less than a single battle? Contemporary legislation was very tough on sub-standard workmanship and materials. Bowyers were prohibited from working after dark on pain of high fines and stringers had to suffer the the punishment of hemp strings burnt under their nose for shoddiness.
The historical validity of white woods is well documented and covered thoroughly in this thread already, so I will not reiterate (and backed yew for that matter).
The "They would have used it if available" argument really boils down to a point of view in the end. I suppose it can be used to justify just about anything but what we do have a good idea of is what the English warbow really was in history.
Cheers,
Jeremy
duffontap:
I would think a good Yew bow would last through a rather long campain--even a couple of years. I'm not sure by any means. Has anyone read anything on the longevity of warbows?
A Yew hunting bow of 90#s could last 20-30 years (or more) of hunting if it was properly cared for. I don't know why warbows would be discarded so quickly as every battle.
J. D. Duff
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