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Photos of intentionally deflexed bows?

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organic_archer:
I’ve been scouring the archives for photos of bows with intentionally deflexed tips and was only able to find one.

Does anyone have photos or links they can share? I was hoping to attempt a historical recreation in the near future but it’s been difficult to track down examples. I’ve tried PA, PaleoPlanet and Google with little success.

EDIT : Not reflex-deflex or gull-wings. Referring to the bows we often see in old drawings and paintings that look to be mostly straight with heavily deflexed tips.

Thanks in advance!

Selfbowman:
You probably won’t find many because they are not a good design and they figured that out a looong time ago. Just a guess.

organic_archer:
I’m aware of the downsides. A self gull wing tends to have fairly wimpy cast compared to a straight-limbed selfbow, but that didn’t prevent it from being a common design. In my experience, sinew transforms a gull wing, but that’s beside the point.

There are always tradeoffs, and I intend to find out what they are. Maybe it’s the ability to be strung indefinitely with no ill effect. Maybe it’s a totally silent shot. No idea… yet.

I understand adding even more intentional deflex will be even more anemic than a self gull wing. It was an idea passed to me as a future bow build to discuss the pros and cons of the design, and I thought it sounded like a fun.

I ended up finding several examples throughout the Encyclopedia of Native American Bows : Plains and Southwest. Hoping anyone with more info or photos can still share!

bassman211:
A lot of that deflex may have came with bows that were used frequently causing set. Then may be they would reflex the handle to get some power back. Just some thing I think could have happened.

lonbow:
That's an interesting topic. Intentionally deflexed bows were quite common around the Mediterranean Sea in the ancient world. There are Mycenaean and ancient Greek depictions on stone walls and pottery showing bows with deflexed tips. This kind of design was also used a lot in ancient Egypt. Thanks to the dry climate, quite some of these bows are still in existence. These bows have different amounts of deflex at the tip regions and their cross sections are round over the entire length. Many of them were made out of acacia wood. Today, there are some African tribes who are still using the same bow style!

I've read that this bow design was made that way in order not to break in the hot and dry climates like in Egypt. I don't be live this to be true:

1. Despite of the deflexed tips, these bows are neither reflex nor deflex in total. The grip section of this bow style is reflexed and compensates for the deflexed tip regions. The material stress isn't reduced therefore. So this design wasn't made that way for preventing tension failure.

2. The backs of the bow would be flat and not round, if tension failure was a problem.

So there must be another reason for this design. Was it just a question of style or were there some practical reasons? So I've built an Osage bow of that design about 10 years ago. It didn't shoot that fast and it was more handshocky than my other bows. But it was the bow I could shoot most accurate with! I actually thought about building a new bow of this design. I think that it will be better than the last one, due to my grown experience. Maybe I should try. I can share this built on PA, if you are  interested in it. But it might take some time until I can start.

lonbow

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