Is this true: "A bow full drawn is 7/8 broken." ?

[criveraville]

I heard a quote today and wanted to ask the experts. I also found this article on the subject.

"A bow full drawn is seven-eighths broken," said old Thomas Waring, the English bowmaker, and he was right. Draw your bow three inches more than the standard cloth yard of twenty-eight inches and you break it. It is more accurate to say that a full drawn bow is nine-tenths broken.

It is also essential that the bow be stiff in the handle so that it will be rigid in shooting and not jar or kick, which one weak at this point invariably does.

A bow should be light at the tips, say the last eight inches, which is accomplished by rounding the back slightly and reducing the width at this point. This gives an active recoil, or as it is described, "whip ended." This can be overdone, especially in hunting-bows, where a little more solidity and safety are preferable to a brilliant cast.

http://www.archerylibrary.com/books/pope/hunting-with-bow-and-arrow/chapter05_2.html

Thanks,
Cipriano

[bow101]

Thanks for the info, makes so much sense

[LivingElemental]

This will make for some good reading at work. Thanks.

[PatM]

No,.It's a generalization that's passed around based on the fact that stressing materials close to the max delivers the best efficiency but testing bows to breakage shows that bows usually break well beyond the 3 inches past full draw mark if well tillered.
 Manny showed some tillering tree test breaks of a repaired bow or two and  he had them out to 40 inches of draw or something ridiculous like that.

[AJMag]

If I built the bow, it's probably true... 

[toomanyknots]

"Manny showed some tillering tree test breaks of a repaired bow or two and  he had them out to 40 inches of draw or something ridiculous like that."

I've had the same results. Different woods have different tension strengths. The hardest bow to break for me has been a well tillered hackberry bow. Of any ntn length, draw weight, or draw length really. They just won't break on a tree. They will gain alot of set if over drawn, but they almost will never break on a tree. A well tiller osage bow will break before a well tillered hackberry bow, and that is a fact, if anyone wants to call buff on me then try it out for yourself, and tell me how many pieces of the osage bow ya got left.

[lostarrow]

My interpretation of the addage was that" if tillered to get maximum potential out of any given piece of wood, with a margin of safety  (1/8)your finished bow is  as close to being broken as it can be." I don't think there is any scientific basis to this comment ,rather a statement to make you strive for perfection.

[Pat B]

"A bow fully drawn is 9/10th broken" refers to the full draw being no more than 1/2 the bow length. At that point much more draw will break a bow(selfbow).

[Judo Point]

I say ya don't know till ya got a broken bow. I had one that was 8/8 broken at full draw! Lol

[Del the cat]

It's not a serious quantitative statement.
It's just to make people think (especially non bowyers) by deliberately making a seemingly nonsensical statement, (for partly comic effect) to illustrate a serious point.
There is probably some fancy name for it but I can't find it .
Closest I can come up with is 'Oxymoron' which uses two contradictory words together like in 'Parting is such sweet sorrow'.
Statements like this are fine untill you meet some pedantic guy who want's an argument .
Del
(Hmmm sorry if that got a bit fussy, but I quite like that stuff )

[mikekeswick]

My interpretation of the addage was that" if tillered to get maximum potential out of any given piece of wood, with a margin of safety  (1/8)your finished bow is  as close to being broken as it can be." I don't think there is any scientific basis to this comment ,rather a statement to make you strive for perfection.

Yup

[Del the cat]

Hmmm 7/8th broken...
So that's like Microsoft software then?
Del

[Slackbunny]

I say ya don't know till ya got a broken bow. I had one that was 8/8 broken at full draw! Lol

That made me laugh. 

[toomanyknots]

I say ya don't know till ya got a broken bow. I had one that was 8/8 broken at full draw! Lol

That made me laugh. 

LOL funny, but also true.

[TRACY]

Jim Hamm made a similar statement in one of his books TBBs or Bows/Arrows of Native Americans.

Tracy