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Bow length

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Kegan:
It seems that I have been spending alot of my time shooting a variety of the bows I've made off and on. Well, for a few days I had been shooting longbows (68+") and then switched form the traditional flatbow to a simple little hickory D bow. What a difference. The longbows were forgiving and nice shooters, but even with matched or underspined and light arrows the were slow.

The short bow, however, even with overspined arrows, shot with great speed, at a shorter draw. The bow was much farther from center shot as well.

It seems that little bows don't get as much attention as they should ???. They seem like top performers to me.

Ryano:
Bows of all different lengths have there advantages and disadvantages it just depends on what you want to do with it.. If designed and tillered properly a long bow can shoot equally as fast as a short bow and vise versa....its more the design, tiller, type of wood. Some wood needs to be longer/wider to store energy some can get away with shorter narrower designs. :)

Kegan:

--- Quote from: Ryano on July 10, 2007, 03:38:48 pm ---Bows of all different lengths have there advantages and disadvantages it just depends on what you want to do with it.. If designed and tillered properly a long bow can shoot equally as fast as a short bow and vise versa....its more the design, tiller, type of wood. Some wood needs to be longer/wider to store energy some can get away with shorter narrower designs. :)

--- End quote ---

Ahhh... makes sense. I was just comparing two hickory  bows, and the longer one, despite having the heavier drw weight, seemed to shoot slower when compared to the short bow. I was just eading an old article in Primitive Archer, "A tale of Two Bowyers" where they described the use of 22" draw bows or 43" as "screamers", which got me and thinking about the many short bows of the Native Americans. I klnow they took what peices they could get, but maybe the weren't "settling" for the shorter peices?

Auggie:
It could also have somrthing to do with wether the stave is from the reaction part of the tree or one stave just may have better properties for being a bow than another. All bows are good, some just better than others.

Justin Snyder:
I would suggest that the long bow was probably overbuilt.  It is possible to get 170 fps out of a bow at 24" then draw it to 28" with a higher draw weight and shoot 170 fps. Different bows have different ideal draws.  Like Ryan said, tiller etc..  You certainly can make a 68" bow that shoots fast. Justin

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