Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => English Warbow => Topic started by: Sammakesbows on June 10, 2020, 09:38:20 pm
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Most war bow weight longbows I've seen are small enough to fit completely in your hand. That would mean that making a lower poundage bow (Like 50 pounds) Would have to be slender. Would using a lower RPI stave be able to yield me a full size, yet lower poundage bow? After all, I might be able to get the stave for cheaper, if not free.
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Deflexing the stave might help? But it gives bad cast with low poundage...
Make the limbs wider and use some soft species of wood.
I think willow/goat willow would make a big bow, maybe poplar/aspen too.
Just speculations.
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Balsa
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a 50# yew longbow will still be 1 inch square (ish) in the handle.
Don't over think it just make one :)
Rough out dimensions for a yew longbow 50#@28 would be 1 !/8 wide for the center 12 inches. Then taper to 3/42 wide 12 inches form the nocks then into 1/2 at the nocks.
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Are you talking about an English war bow or an English Victorian long bow?
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Sam, do you know for sure how much you can pull? How tall are you?
if you want to make a bow that works, sorta like a warbow, you might be able to find some something at the lumberyard easy.
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Sam, do you know for sure how much you can pull? How tall are you?
if you want to make a bow that works, sorta like a warbow, you might be able to find some something at the lumberyard easy.
Im just under 5'7"
Im pretty sure i could use maple or something and heat treat the belly. My questions was just hypothetical.
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I don't think it can be done!
If you take a specific Mary Rose bow as the size and shape you want and make it from different woods, rather than simply being lighter, the belly will probably chrysal, take a load of set and possibly break whilst still being quite a high draw weight.
One problem is you don't define your terms... what do you mean by lower poundage? 50# 40# ?
I must admit I'd like to see Pat B's suggestion of a MR bow made of balsa to see what it did :)
Del
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I used to make a lot of ELBs from cherry backed with white or red oak. Attractive and dimensions are pretty decent at 1 1/4 wide for 50# bow around 70" long.
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ERC will make a physically larger bow for a given draw weight
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+ 1 for ERC as Marc mentioned. Plenty of massive looking bows, that would be in the 120-150lbs range if made from yew, but draw about 70-80lbs from ERC.
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I just finished #50@28, 71 inch long, 1 1/4 wide, >3/4 thick in handle following the 5/8 rule through the whole limbs from European? hard maple. Heavily rounded edges, belly more rounded than back. Set after unbracing 1,5", concentrated in outer limbs, tiller ellipsoid like Victorian ELBs (stiffer central part) since the poundage is medium-low and efficiency will be better due to virtually shorter limbs. So it is pretty much doable.
I made an European oak longbow before, #44@28, 69" 1 1/4" wide with flat belly and slightly rounded back with front profile of Saxton Pope's Old Horrible. It is flatter and better design for white wood than rounded ELB, having almost no set at all, but I needed to try that oval crosscut.
Tillering is tricky as it must be braced when very strong, otherwise it reaches the final draw surprisingly quickly, compared to flatbows. I will post final pics in a week.
Jurinko
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I agree that ERC is your best bet. If you make it long with an elliptical tiller that’ll help with keeping the handle thick. The thickness is the most difficult part to maintain with harder woods and length is the only thing that will really help.
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I think the best way to answer your question is to start with a fact.
Bow no 81A3977 recovered from the 'Mary Rose' warship is 1956mm long and 33.5mm wide and 30.5mm deep at the center and is made from Yew. It probably was one of the lightest draw weight bows found, but there are 4 or 5 others around the same dimensions.
My guess is that this bow would have been around 70-90 lbs draw weight.
This bow is obviously a 'Warbow', because it was part of the compliment of bows on board this Warship!
So to answer your question, if 70 - 90lbs is too much, then you could do as Marc suggested and use ERC and replicate those dimensions.
ERC does look like yew after the unique colour of ERC's heartwood is exposed to light and changes to a colour very much like Yew.
I know Marc has made Warbows from ERC that have a rounded belly, but I would keep it a little flatter to help avoid crystals developing.
At these dimensions the bow may well be as little as 50-60lbs but that's just a guess.
Of course, you could use a 'light' piece of Yew or one of the other authentic woods used to make bows back then such as Elm, Ash and Hazel.
So it's not hard to make a bow that looks like a 'Warbow' that only draws 50-60lbs but there will be plenty of people who tell you that it needs to have a higher draw weight to be 'classed' as that.
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Saxton Pope built a replica of a Mary Rose Long Bow that was 6' 4 3/4" long. He used Oregon Yew wood with 3/8" of sapwood.
He was very disappointed to find it drew only 52# at 28".
He then experimented by shortening the bow to 6' even he found it drew 62 # at 28 inches. Maximum range improved a bit.
Apparently the longer the bow the lighter the pull everything else being equal.
It also suggested that the wood used made a difference.
If I read his further comments properly the sapwood only serves to prevent the bow from breaking so reducing the amount of heart wood compared to sapwood might also reduce the pull.
In any case you'd be making a deliberately inferior bow, though it might be more durable in the long run.
PS
The Mary Rose bow he used as a pattern was one of two salvaged from the wreck when first discovered. They later determined that these were unfinished bow staves not yet customized for the end user. Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and finished the bow out to best suit the owner. So Pope was actually doing exactly what was required to create a good bow.
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Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and finished the bow out to best suit the owner.
Interesting that the skilled bowyer used piking as he presumably tillered initially, rather than an afterthought.
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Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and finished the bow out to best suit the owner.
Interesting that the skilled bowyer used piking as he presumably tillered initially, rather than an afterthought.
Before Pope was through with this stave he shortened it further to 5' 8" resulting in a draw weight of 70 lb, I suspect he adjusted the tillering at each step. He tapered the shortened limbs to best distribute the stress.
At each step the maximum range increased, in final form the max range was 245 yards, 60 yards further than at the first stage of 52 lbs pull. That was when using a "flight arrow".
This was more in line with the expected performance of the average long bow fitted out for the average English bowman of the era.
Pope pointed out that quality of the wood chosen made a great difference in performance.
Not all bowmen could draw a 120-160 lb bow and not all staves could handle being drawn far enough to allow use of the clothyard shaft. In fact the average 6' bow would likely break or be damaged at every shot if drawn much more than 30" while a bow 6' 6" in length handled the longer draw easily.
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Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and finished the bow out to best suit the owner.
You're mixing up Roger Ascham's advice for a personal bow written in Toxophilus with a livery issued military bow. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any of the MR bows were unfinished and waiting to be retillered to suit a particular archer. Ascham recommends that when buying your own bow for personal use, to shoot it in with heavy arrows then having a bowyer pike it to bring it into it's final, consistent and reliable form.
The MR bows were complete bows, with horn nocks glued in place and stored in chests ready for action. There's no point sending a warship out into an immediate naval battle full of bows that aren't ready for use, and the archers onboard weren't using personal bows but simply picking up bows from the assemblage and shooting them. The Mary Rose wasn't a snapshot of all archery equipment at the time, it was a snapshot of what was being sent into naval combat.
As an aside, the comment that not all bowmen could shoot 120lb is probably slightly unlikely - most healthy men today can shoot 100lb-120lb with a couple of years training, and that's without a culture of heavy military bow training from the age of 7 by law, an endless supply of bows to move up in weight and the undeniable fact that men who have been shooting regularly since a young age today are touching the 170lb, 190lb and 200lb drawweight ranges. I would imagine that the well paid, trained and fully equipped archers onboard Henry VIII's flagship would have been booted overboard if they couldn't shoot 120lb ;)
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Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and finished the bow out to best suit the owner.
You're mixing up Roger Ascham's advice for a personal bow written in Toxophilus with a livery issued military bow. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any of the MR bows were unfinished and waiting to be retillered to suit a particular archer. Ascham recommends that when buying your own bow for personal use, to shoot it in with heavy arrows then having a bowyer pike it to bring it into it's final, consistent and reliable form.
I went by Saxton Pope's analysis, he examining the only two bows that were recovered up to that point. The first two bows, more properly bow staves, were raised by hard hat divers just after the ship was located in 1836. The chests of completed bows were found till more than a century later.
Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches each, which proved to be too long to be efficient resulting in a low draw weight and sluggish performance. If used as they were they would have been practically useless.
Since by law every man between 16 and 60 , with few exceptions, were required to obtain and keep a long bow and at minimum 12 arrows ready to go its not likely that professional archers would leave the bows they had paid good money for behind to use whatever happened to be handy.
The MR bows were complete bows,
Those raised in the 20th century were, as near as they can tell. Not all have been fully examined even now.
There's no point sending a warship out into an immediate naval battle full of bows that aren't ready for use,
No one said they did, the two unfinished staves were the exceptions. It would be unusual for such a vessel to have no armorers aboard ready to repair or replace damaged arms.
All the bows not found in the wreckage itself rotted away centuries ago, so there's no way of knowing if any of the bows in the chests had been issued to bowmen aboard the ship or if they were cargo.
The Mary Rose went down in the heat of battle. The bowmen aboard would have had plenty of time before battle was joined to claim their bows and be standing at the ready.
As an aside, the comment that not all bowmen could shoot 120lb is probably slightly unlikely - most healthy men today can shoot 100lb-120lb with a couple of years training,
I rather doubt that. Perhaps most athletes could. Most men of that time period would not have had arms long enough to bring a 120 lb bow back to full draw without losing the leverage necessary to do so.
Last I heard the recovered completed MR bows that have been closely examined would have varied in weight from 80-120 lb and apparently one replica was constructed that has a 160 lb draw.
If every man could handle the 120+ lb bows then all the bows found aboard would have been of 120 lbs and up.
Long bows stored in arms chests in the hold of a ship aren't at the ready to be handed out. They didn't just toss a pile of bows on the deck and say grab one and go to it. Closing speeds of ships in those days meant it could take hours or even days before ships came into range. Plenty of time to form up and choose your weaponry. Not every soldier much less every crewman aboard could effectively use a bow at all despite having trained since youth. Some were armed with pole arms, some were gunners, some were sail makers etc.
Another thing to consider is that not only would an archer have to draw a bow once , during a battle he would be expected to fire volley after volley. What a modern archer may do under ideal conditions is no gauge of what a bowman in battle must be able to do several times per minute perhaps dozens of times per hour, hour after hour.
Nope, I figure most bowmen of the day could handle a LB with 80 lb pull all day long, but only the biggest and strongest could effectively use bows of 100-120 pounds and a rare few could handle the very rare bows of over 120 to 160 pounds.
Bows of 80-100 lb were suited to the common levies while anything heavier were for use of the fittest and most experienced professionals.
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I'm afraid your information is quite dramatically out of date. Current research and experiments puts the AVERAGE MR bow weight at 150lb. Many replicas (and I mean identical replicas down to the perfect dimension) have been made of specific MR bows that are well over that, some going into the 190lb ranges. I've personally made a number of copies of some of the bows I've actually handled and measured myself that are in the 160lb, 175lb range, and that's using medium quality English yew, not the dense, tight grained stuff.
I've examined the MR bows a number of times now, and I've yet to find one in the archives that would have been less than 100lb in my opinion.
I'm surprised you think 120lb was heavy. Its light today by serious warbow standards and again that's without a lifetime and culture of heavy bow training. I'll re-emphasise that people today are shooting over 200lb and they're not bizarre superhumans, they just shoot regularly and started young.
The other huge factor is the arrow - the vast majority of the MR arrows found would have been useless shot from bows less than 140lb.
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Well you provide food for thought.
The bow staves Pope examined could not have been stored where the arms chests the recovered finished bows were found. The lower decks were not accessible in 1836 only the stern castle.
I'd be interested in why you believe
The other huge factor is the arrow - the vast majority of the MR arrows found would have been useless shot from bows less than 140lb.
Since Pope managed 245-250 yard shots with his MR LB replica at 75 lb draw weight.
Do you ever use the 36-37 inch arrow with length of draw at 32" or more?
By Law each able bodied man had to keep a minimum of twelve 3/4 length arrows (compared to the "English Standard arrows" with his bow.
Some arrows were intended for close to medium range accuracy and penetration, others were specifically for maximum range.
Last I read on the subject it was believed Long Bows of 80-100 pound pull were for medium range shots at individual targets.
Its also accepted that the Bowmen on board the Mary Rose were the exception rather than the rule, hand picked highly trained well paid professionals who did nothing else, they did not represent the average bowman of that era or any other.
Its not unlikely that such men would have more than one bow each specialized for an intended role in battle.
When Mary rose went down almost all the men on deck were trapped under the anti boarding nets, any who were armed rotted away with their weapons while the arms chests below decks were preserved.
Since there was quite a long period between call to arms and closing with the enemy why were the arms chests not opened? Could it be that the designated bowmen already had their personal picked bows in hand when the ship heeled over and sank?
Are there any sources that describe the deployment of bowmen during a sea battle or that era?
Before heavy cannon became available archers and the occasional ballista were the only ranged weapons available. There was no competition for deck space with teams of gunners and lines of powder monkeys.
IIRC Seamen were exempt from bow training. Bowmen would be more like Marines than regular crew.
In a boarding melee bowmen would be employed picking off individuals at close range while the rest of the crew held the enemy back with pole arms and hand weapons.
Spaces on deck or in the rigging where a bowman could use the longest and heaviest bows was very limited even on the largest vessels of the day. The stern castle provided the best platform for raking the enemy decks with medium to long range volley fire .
No doubt the heaviest bows were best suited for fire arrows to set the enemy's sails and rigging alight.
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I'd be interested in why you believe
The other huge factor is the arrow - the vast majority of the MR arrows found would have been useless shot from bows less than 140lb.
Since Pope managed 245-250 yard shots with his MR LB replica at 75 lb draw weight.
Because the current distance record is just 40 yards further than that with a 170lb bow and a full weight Mary Rose approximation arrow. What Pope was doing and using I have no idea but his information and research is so far behind the current experimental archaeology and data that it's not hugely useful or pertinent any more. Even books published recently are full of misinformation and out of date opinions such as natural fibre bowstrings only being able to support 100lb bows.
For example, you claim Pope states "Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches (76") each, which proved to be too long to be efficient resulting in a low draw weight and sluggish performance. If used as they were they would have been practically useless." and yet that's an inch shorter than the AVERAGE Mary Rose bow at 77" which perform beautifully, as do bows made quite a bit longer. I've made a couple that are close to 7 feet in length which shoot beautifully when paired with a good arrow. The information is out there, I think you just haven't found it yet!
If you take a fairly average Mary Rose arrow as an example - let's say MR82A1892/9 as that's one I've measured and copied myself a number of times - you're talking about a 30" long Populus nigra shaft with a 12mm head, a heavy taper down to 10mm a few inches from the head and then a gradual taper to around 8mm at the nock. Shoot that from any bow under 120lb say, and it'll fly like a brick wall. You need at least 120lb to push it far enough to do any sort of damage at the other end, and around 140lb to really get the best from it. There were much, much bigger arrows than 1892/9 on the ship, some even thicker than 1/2" in diameter.
One thing I highly recommend if this stuff is of interest to you is to get yourself a copy of Weapons Of Warre and you'll be able to find up-to-date answers to the rest of your questions - including accurate measurements of each bow, the arrows and some reasonably current data on replicas and the testing thereof. You'll also be able to see the information on the bows that were actually fully braced when the ship sank, and compare those with the unbraced bows ready for use - spoiler alert, they're exactly the same ;)
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For example, you claim Pope states "Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches (76") each,
which proved to be too long to be efficient resulting in a low draw weight and sluggish performance. If used as they were they would have been practically useless." and yet that's an inch shorter than the AVERAGE Mary Rose bow at 77" which perform beautifully, as do bows made quite a bit longer. I've made a couple that are close to 7 feet in length which shoot beautifully when paired with a good arrow. The information is out there, I think you just haven't found it yet!
That proves the point of the Mary Rose bow staves recovered from the stern castle in 1836 being unfinished as Pope stated they had to be. His experiment followed exactly the stages described by Toxophilus with the bow vastly improved in draw weight and range at every step.
Your calculations are off a bit.
"Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches (76") each,
You should have written 76 3/4 inches which would be only 1/4 in shorter than the 77 inches you state as the average length.
Of course a properly finished bow will shoot well, that was not in question, it was whether a unfinished rough stave could shoot worth a darn, which they won't. Heck the unfinished staves were three and a half inches around a foot from the tips. They were obviously a work in progress.
(Edited to add. It turns out eight of these staves were recovered by 1841.)
You seem to believe that every bowman could draw a 120 pound bow. My nephew when a high school football player routinely bench pressed 380 pounds, not everyone who ever played high school football could bench press 380 pounds.
In medieval times few of those called to the king's banners was in great physical condition to begin with. They certainly weren't a race of giants. England in fact has few natural sources of vitamins , it's food crops have always been limited. This was one of the most serious problems for the civilian population during WW2 when imported foods were often in short supply due to the U-boat campaign. Not to mention scurvy which haunted the Royal Navy for centuries.
I don't doubt that among a company of the King's own hand picked professional archers that at least a few could draw a bow no other bowmen aboard could even begin to draw.
I don't know if they used the foot bow method or not, but every other military that depended on bows did so in certain circumstances. Pope tried his MR LB as a foot bow drawing with both hands and found the range was the same as when firing in the normal manner. He wasn't expecting any increase in range he was just testing the method.
A 200 pound bow would be courting diminishing returns. It would work best with a heavy projectile such as an incendiary or broad rigging cutter than with the standard sheath arrow. More of an anti material weapon than anti personnel, A good horse killer as well on land. The physical exertion of trying to fire ten to 12 arrows per minute for hours at a time with such a bow would put most athletes in a cardiac care ward.
I'll have to do some digging to find the details but IIRC Henry the 8th made a bet with his best bowman about besting a record shot at a match. The bowman won and received lands and a title as his reward. The range stated was far less than the 280 yard modern record you mention so apparently such shots were not at all common if even obtainable in those days.
PS
The Guardsman's name was Barlow. King Henry told him "beat them all and you shall be the Duke of Archers", Barlow beat the best shot of the day and was given the title of Duke of Shoreditch.
That is not all there is to the story but all I can find at the moment. Barlow was also given some sort of government post which he served at till his death of old age.
The source I originally found on this gave the range and more details of his rewards.
King Henry himself impressed many nobles by hitting targets repeatedly at 240 yards.
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Hi Will
Welcome back to activity on this forum.
Bet you missed this type of discussion?
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Hi Will
Welcome back to activity on this forum.
Bet you missed this type of discussion?
;D I don't know why I bother sometimes! Hope you're well mate.
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Heck the unfinished staves were three and a half inches around a foot from the tips. They were obviously a work in progress.
I'm not gonna bother addressing all the rest of the nonsense, but this sort of thing is exactly what gives new bowyers a misleading time when making heavy bows and is therefore relevant to the forum - 3.5" in circumference is 1.1" in diameter, or 27mm. You say that's a foot (12") from the tip and is "obviously" therefore an unfinished bow stave.
Three of the Mary Rose copies I've just measured in my collection are 26mm, 28mm and 25.5mm at this point along the limb. They are 140lb, 145lb and 130lb in draw weight, made of English yew and all shoot very nicely. They are not unfinished staves.
You are using one person's opinion from the 1800s to base your entire theory on, and completely ignoring the reams of current, tested data and information that says otherwise.
Just because nobody was around in Pope's time who could shoot 150lb bows doesn't mean that's it. It's not surprising that he looked at those bows and assumed they were unfinished but we know far more now.
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Well the only way to learn is to discuss things in depth.
We do know that quality of Yew available at any point in time varied greatly. Henry contracted for Italian Yew during that time period but other sources of quality Yew were drying up due to over harvesting.
I'd be interested in hearing more about the Italian Yew used for some of the MR reconstructions. Where sourced and how seasoned etc. Imported Yew staves cost three times as much as English Yew at the time.
What is your opinion of "Piking" the limbs to obtain a stronger more even draw?
What is your opinion of American Yew?
I'll allow that the staves recovered from the stern castle (8 in all, Pope having access to only two) were more exposed to the elements and unlikely to have been as well treated after being found to preserve their original dimensions.
All other historical sources state the Long Bow was to be the length of the owners height. I can see an elite company of the King's hand picked men being far taller on average than the vast majority of bowmen of the period. The Prussians had entire companies of men close to 7 foot tall, but they were not the average soldiers of that army.
During most of the Middle Ages periods of famine among the commoners were the rule. Bones recovered from people of the time show evidence of stunted growth.
I figure that far from being typical of long bows of any period, and the Long Bow was in use for centuries, the Mary Rose bows were exceptional examples as were the bowmen themselves.
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"The only way to learn things is to discus things in depth"
But it's not much good if discussing stuff that is poorly documented/hearsay/cherry picked from dubious sources.
The problem with trying to discus that sort of thing is that one gets drawn into the realms of
"... Yes but I read of a X1-3 replica that performed blah blah blah...." it degenerates to a load of unsubstantiated nonsense.
Much like all the magical properties of "Italian Yew".
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2016/07/old-wives-tales-and-yew.html (https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2016/07/old-wives-tales-and-yew.html)
Personally I'd rather go by what physical evidence we have and by actual practical experience. Discussing that is fine...
Del
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poorly documented/hearsay/cherry picked from dubious sources.
And what "dubious" sources would those be?
The post that was objected to as merely quoting Saxton Pope on his recreation of a Mary Rose bow, the information was easily found in his book.
What we have in the Mary Rose bows are exceptional bows once used by exceptional bowmen. The remains of at least one of these men found in the hull were of a man well over 6' tall.
I'm sure much of what Wills has stated is true enough but I'm also sure that what Saxton Pope wrote was true as well.
Pope examined the 1836-41 recovered staves and found no sign of a nock of any kind on either. Perhaps the more exposed staves from the sterncastle simply had surface details destroyed by the elements.
An article on examining the best preserved Mary Rose bows in recent times noted the odd absence of any signs of these having been used at all. There being no rub marks of an arrows passage. That might have been due to the archer's using the right side thumb rest confirmed as the most likely method by the preponderance of historical evidence in the form of artwork and manuscripts.
The recreations Wills speaks of were copied in high quality high altitude Italian Yew. Not all Long Bows were made of Italian Yew much less the highest quality. At that stage much of Europe's Quality Yew had been over harvested.
Wills seems to believe no archer of Pope's day was capable of drawing a 150 pound bow, yet one of Pope's associates involved in his studies was an exceptionally large and powerful man with thirty years of experience in use of every type of heavy bow.
Perhaps if Wills attitude were a bit less strident I'd give his words more weight.
I found this post from 2019 that may sound familiar
Ash is very hygrophobic so is pretty useless when it gets wet or is kept in damp conditions. This is one of the reasons the Mary Rose assemblage should potentially be seen as quite a different set of equipment to the more well-known period of the military bow such as the 100 years war. The danger we can get into today is assuming that once the bow and arrow had been figured out, it stayed that way until gunpowder but it was evolving and changing in response to all sorts of reasons - we only have equipment that was used and stored in a naval capacity and it would be somewhat naive to assume that bows and arrows were the same when used on land in pitched battles!
Denigrating historical sources and 20th century authorities out of hand doesn't add weight to any modern claims.
As for Pope's MR bow replica I gave the facts as he recorded them , this is not my claim it is his. Rather than make any effort to understand why Pope got the results he did using Pacific Yew Wills pontificates using the best quality italian Yew as the only possible wood. Pope himself stated not all wood is the same and a different stave might have made a stronger bow.
As it was Pope's 70-75 pound bow (being only ten pounds lighter than the minimum estimates of the strength of the unfinished staves before the experiment began} performed quite well and he also used replicas of English war bow arrows of the known dimensions for parts of his testing.
If any one wishes to read Pope's work on the study of historical bows done by close examination of bows preserved in various museums and private collections it can be found on the Internet Archive. Well worth reading.
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@ Gimli...
I'll just point out that I, as a modern day man of average build who spent his working life at sedentary jobs, doing only little exercise or sport managed, at the age of 60, to train up to shooting 100# in a couple of months.
Any claim that warbows were of lower weights is pretty facile.
I am willing to discus what I or you have done, or about the artifacts we have at our disposal. The accuracy and validity of claims by people long dead is a moot point, as one can't question them about their sources or methods etc. Just because something is written down doesn't mean it is correct or accurate.
Del
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@ Gimli...
Any claim that warbows were of lower weights is pretty facile
Did you get the impression that I or Pope had stated that no warbows were stronger than the 75 lb bow Saxton pope made or than none were heavier than 100 pounds?
Just because something is written down doesn't mean it is correct or accurate.
Del
I noticed that in grade school over 60 years ago and it remains true.
Rather than looking for points of disagreement why not look for points of agreement?
I didn't enter this thread as an authority figure I simply posted the results of Saxton Pope's experiments, he being a recognized authority on most all aspects of ancient archery and bow making.
The question was how to make a English Longbow of lesser draw weight , and Pope's experiments point the way to doing so while maintaining a high level of efficiency.
BTW
Do you disagree with this statement?
Not all bowmen could draw a 120-160 lb bow
If you disregard the fact of many bowmen being from the poorest classes and as long standing study of skeletal remains from the era prove that many of them were malnourished for much of their formative years and only go by those remains of professional soldiers of much greater than average stature you might be right.
During WW1 by 1916 casualties were so high that the British Army lowered its standards and allowed men of shorter stature to enlist. They created the "Bantam Rifle Companies". Most of the volunteers were from the poorest regions of the UK and showed the effects of long term malnutrition during their formative years just as the commoners of Merry Olde England often did. A major perk for professional soldiers was regular meals when not in the field yet often garrison troops found themselves on short rations for months at a time. During the siege of Acre some resorted to digging up long dead corpses and boiling the skin and bones to make soup. Not an unverified rumor since when caught they received a special dispensation to avoid summary execution ordered by the commander Tancred.
During the 100 years war when supplies ran low in winter they executed the French Prisoners. They only spared those prisoners who could give them the rules of card games they had not yet heard of, which were very few.
Not all Englishmen of any rank were all that healthy and well fed during the middle ages.
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The recreations Wills speaks of were copied in high quality high altitude Italian Yew.
I haven't mentioned any recreations other than my own which have always been in English yew, and the Weapons of Warre copies which were American yew.
Wills pontificates using the best quality italian Yew as the only possible wood.
You're putting an awful lot of words into my mouth, especially considering I think Italian yew is just an overhyped brand name attempting to lure beginner bowyers into spending hundreds of pounds on a piece of wood.
Not many serious bowyers today think much of "Italian" yew, and by using that term along with the mention of "foot bows", shorter skeletons, 75lb "war" bows, disbelief that trained archers were shooting well over 120lb and quite frankly anything by Saxton Pope its abundantly clear that you're many years behind the curve of research into the MR bows.
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disbelief that trained archers were shooting well over 120lb
Which is not what I said at all. I wrote "Nope, I figure most bowmen of the day could handle a LB with 80 lb pull all day long, but only the biggest and strongest could effectively use bows of 100-120 pounds and a rare few could handle the very rare bows of over 120 to 160 pounds.
Bows of 80-100 lb were suited to the common levies while anything heavier were for use of the fittest and most experienced professionals."
You had no problem with at least partly understanding what I wrote when you posted
the comment that not all bowmen could shoot 120lb is probably slightly unlikely
You wrote
I haven't mentioned any recreations other than my own which have always been in English yew, and the Weapons of Warre copies which were American yew.
Yet earlier you wrote.
Current research and experiments puts the AVERAGE MR bow weight at 150lb. Many replicas (and I mean identical replicas down to the perfect dimension) have been made of specific MR bows that are well over that, some going into the 190lb ranges.
In August of 2019 you claimed the Weapons of Warre measurements were not correct.
especially considering I think Italian yew is just an overhyped brand name attempting to lure beginner bowyers into spending hundreds of pounds on a piece of wood.
Yet Henry 8th contracted at great expense for Italian Yew and such staves fetched nearly three times the price of English Yew staves. English yew of the day was stated to be inferior.
Yew was also imported from Austria, Poland, and Spain among other sources. Careless over Harvesting resulted in dying off of some forests.
shorter skeletons,
Well perhaps O'Swami you can tell us exactly how many of the Lancastrian troops found in mass graves at Towton were no more than five feet tall? Were any over six feet tall?
Since by law no one under 16 was required to own and practice with the bow and some of the skeletons found were of short slightly built young men estimated to be 17 years old then the decades of practice bit has a flaw.
PS
If you take a fairly average Mary Rose arrow as an example - let's say MR82A1892/9 as that's one I've measured and copied myself a number of times - you're talking about a 30" long Populus nigra shaft with a 12mm head, a heavy taper down to 10mm a few inches from the head and then a gradual taper to around 8mm at the nock. Shoot that from any bow under 120lb say, and it'll fly like a brick wall. You need at least 120lb to push it far enough to do any sort of damage at the other end, and around 140lb to really get the best from it. There were much, much bigger arrows than 1892/9 on the ship, some even thicker than 1/2" in diameter.
Pope tested a reconstruction of a English war arrow built by another bowter who had studied all information on these available at the time.
His arrow was practically Identical to the majority of recovered MR arrows and modern reconstructions and weighed 2 1/5 ounces with bodkin head.
Pope made some impressive penetration tests with this arrow and 75 lb bow, penetrating the front side of a Syrian made welded ring mail shirt and passing through a torso substitute packed with beef liver.
The arrow struck with sufficient force to cause a shower of sparks.
Since no one seemed to be at all interested in why Pope's Oregon yew stave acted as it did I reread the little he wrote on it.
Apparently due to the proportions and a possible flaw at mid point the bow could not bend into a proper arch, the limbs being too stiff and heavy compared to the grip area. This resulted in the stiff limbs acting like levers.
At least that is how I interpret it.