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New Article on Blunts and their use in medieval archery

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mikekeswick:
Also when you are shooting at a well designed backstop why would you be snapping points off? Especially off a 1/2 inch thick shaft.
Anybody who makes a backstop then goes shooting and finds that all his arrow points have snapped off is likely to try and make a better backstop.
I think it's as simple as this.

WillS:
I'm not convinced it was due to losing arrow heads, but more down to the cost of making them.

If you've already got every blacksmith making heads for the millions of arrows required for war, you don't want them wasting time and materials making heads for practice arrows.  Therefore you use wooden blunts that weigh the same so that archers can practice without needing expensive heads.

I think its similar to bows in that respect - you have guilds popping out elm, ash, hazel and other meane wood bows for practice purposes, and using expensive outsourced yew to supply troops for warfare.  I can't see every archer in the country being given yew bows and stacks of steel-tipped arrows just to practice with them and ultimately lose/break them.

Give 'em something cheap that allows them to practice and improve without costing a fortune, and save the "real thing" for actual conflict.

adb:
I see your point Will, but I don't entirely agree. I don't think there has been any armed forces in history that has practised with one weapon, and gone into battle with another. I know they're both longbows, but it doesn't make sense.

I do a lot of shooting, and even when I'm flight shooting with warbows, I don't lose many heads. Actually, I've never lost one of my hand forged heads while flight shooting my warbows. The only heads I lose are lost arrows, or heads that stay in the target when I pull them out.

I agree that blunts were likely used extensively during this period, but it's not for new or different reasons. I don't go stumping with broadheads most of the time... I use a blunt!

PatM:
If you shoot at a typical target at long range with a blunt, does it stick in?

WillS:

--- Quote from: adb on January 27, 2015, 09:54:06 am ---I see your point Will, but I don't entirely agree. I don't think there has been any armed forces in history that has practised with one weapon, and gone into battle with another. I know they're both longbows, but it doesn't make sense.

I do a lot of shooting, and even when I'm flight shooting with warbows, I don't lose many heads. Actually, I've never lost one of my hand forged heads while flight shooting my warbows. The only heads I lose are lost arrows, or heads that stay in the target when I pull them out.

I agree that blunts were likely used extensively during this period, but it's not for new or different reasons. I don't go stumping with broadheads most of the time... I use a blunt!

--- End quote ---

Here's my thought - you make perfect sense in context of today's usage, but then a few guys shooting today with cheap ways of getting/making heads is quite different to the many thousands who would be training regularly.  Personally I still think it would make sense for the "higher power" to decide that the thousands of archers practicing need a cheap, sustainable type of arrow head that allows the same form and technique skills to be practiced, without wasting arrow heads.

Many who are into shooting warbows these days make their own heads - steel is incredibly cheap - and if they don't then buying hand-forged ones is no longer expensive or difficult.  Compare that to the medieval period when you needed millions of them to be made from steel that needed to be sourced for that specific use and it's quite a different thing!

I guess the main point of Mark's research is that zero heads have been found anywhere other than battle sites.  When you take the massive number of archers require to practice (and let's use 100 years as a base estimate) even if only a few heads are lost for one archer's entire career of practice you're still looking at hundreds of thousands of missing arrow heads (lost in towns, cities, villages etc that are constantly excavated and turned over for various reasons) and not a single head has been found.  That simply doesn't make any sense, until you factor in the idea that the heads are perhaps wooden instead of steel.

As an aside, the blunts we're talking about have sharp points in the end of them, they're not just "blunt" so to speak.  They'd be useful for all kinds of shooting, from target to stumping.

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