Author Topic: How War Bows were manufactured for wars  (Read 15584 times)

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Offline DarkSoul

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2014, 06:24:49 pm »
Hm, I've got a "dreadnaught file" blade laying around here. I've never heard of that term before, but after googling it appears to be the same as a car body file, which the thing is called locally. I've not yet used the thing at all, it was stashed somewhere in my bowyery stuff corner. Time to try and get this thing to work this weekend. It's 12" long and looks rather agressive. I'll try the blade itself first. If it seems to work, I might even make a handle for it. The blade feels sharp as is, and might take some skin without a holder for it. The intended adjustable handle looks very good, but is rather expensive. A simple wooden handle for it is probably sufficient and is easily mounted due to the two holes in the blade. Let's test the thing this weekend!

We're going slightly off topic, but okay :p
"Sonuit contento nervus ab arcu."
Ovid, Metamorphoses VI-286

Offline WillS

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2014, 06:37:26 pm »
I use mine for roughing out staves, chugging through knots and right through to chasing sapwood rings.  With pressure it eats wood for breakfast and yet with a bit of care you can use it for the craziest detail work.  I have a tonne of various cabinet rasps, files and so on and just never use them as none are as versatile I don't think.

Offline adb

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2014, 07:47:45 pm »
I don't think we'll ever know for sure how medieval bowyers made their bows, but it would sure be interesting to time travel and find out! I seriously doubt they did it much differently than we do now, or they knew the final draw weight, or that the bows were overly finished, judging by what I saw at the Mary Rose Museum. But, as Del said, we'll never know for sure.

Offline WillS

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2014, 07:56:22 pm »
I think you're right, although they were making hundreds of thousands of bows in a fairly short space of time and the bows had to be good enough to pass muster and be war-worthy.  You wouldn't send troops into the Middle East today with poor quality firearms, and they wouldn't have issued poor quality warbows back then.  While we can take our time and spend a week tillering one bow to a perfect draw weight, fitting beautiful grips and snake-skin accents and sanding it to look like glass and carefully shaping horn nocks and so on, I just can't see that back then.  Mass produced quickly but to a very high standard is my guess.

Whether this means highly skilled bowyers working in the same way we do, or whether there were methods used such as fast reduction of staves by one bowyer and rounding/tillering by another or a combination of the two we'll probably never know.

One thing that I'd really love to know is the draw-weight quandary.  Did they know draw weights, or was it all just base dimensions and the outcome was the outcome depending on the timber?  We'll never know that either.  Personally I find it slightly unlikely that the soldiers were trusting their lives to a bow with an unknown draw weight, but without accurate scales and methods of measuring the bows, I can't see how they would have been able to know.  Fascinating, either way, and all the more reason these weapons and their history are so exciting!

Offline Badger

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #19 on: March 07, 2014, 10:37:13 pm »
  If a bowyer were not held to a specific draw weight but instead an acceptable range I can easily see a bowyer making 2 bows a day with mostly a draw knife. When you are making that many bows you can pretty much finish it without even putting a string on it.

Offline Del the cat

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #20 on: March 08, 2014, 06:34:29 am »
  If a bowyer were not held to a specific draw weight but instead an acceptable range I can easily see a bowyer making 2 bows a day with mostly a draw knife. When you are making that many bows you can pretty much finish it without even putting a string on it.
Yup, once you get you eye in for a certain wood, style, size and draw weight it get much easier.
I've just gone from making 100# @32" to making 45# @ 30"... nightmare.
Now I'm trying to get back to 85# and I'm in danger of coming in under weight.
It's easy to get your eye in if you are makin' 'em all V similar.
I agree 2 a day no prob, especially if someone else is doiing the horn nocks.
Why I've may half a dozen this very morning! ;) >:D
Del
Health warning, these posts may contain traces of nut.

Offline toomanyknots

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #21 on: March 08, 2014, 10:03:39 am »
I think it would be a cool contest to have a bunch of bowyers see how many bows they could make from rough split stave to "shootable - ready - to - apply - finish" bows in a day. Maybe the winner could get a bottle of advil or something,  :).
"The way of heaven is like the bending of a bow-
 the upper part is pressed down,
 the lower part is raised up,
 the part that has too much is reduced,
 the part that has too little is increased."

- Tao Te Ching, 77, A new translation by Victor H. Mair

Offline WillS

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #22 on: March 08, 2014, 10:32:47 am »
I'd pay to see you guys do that!  It takes me four months to work out the best center line and taper at the stage I'm at!

It would certainly make for better viewing than the rubbish on tv these days.

On a serious note, I do think the top guys like Jaro for instance are able to crack out these bows super fast, and that's with (I'm assuming) far less time learning and watching older generations doing it as they would have in the middle ages.  I've also been told by a couple of bowyers I personally respect highly that the longer you take tillering the worse the bow performance so establishing shapes and tapers early on and only minimal bending on the tiller seems very logical.  It's something I didn't realise at first.  I would rush the first stage, and get very rough staves up on the tiller and spend days at a time sorting out hinges, stiff spots, weaker limbs and so on which is clearly the wrong approach!

Offline Badger

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #23 on: March 08, 2014, 10:50:07 pm »
  As Del said the key is making bows of similar length and draw weight. Simply sight down a limb pressed to the floor and making the other limb feel the same will pretty much deliver a finsihed bow without really bending it much. When I am changing length and style every day as I often do it really slows me down, but even at that I have no problem going from a raw stave to a shooting bow in about 4 hours if I choose to.

Offline killir duck

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #24 on: March 09, 2014, 12:56:39 am »
I think it would be a cool contest to have a bunch of bowyers see how many bows they could make from rough split stave to "shootable - ready - to - apply - finish" bows in a day. Maybe the winner could get a bottle of advil or something,  :).

Well I bet Blackhawk would probably win that without even trying.
PRIMITIVE ARCHERY what other way can you play with sticks and rocks all day and not look like a little kid

Every time i shoot at a bunny i recall the wise words of Elmer Fudd "I've got you now you waskally wabbit!"

Offline Hrothgar

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #25 on: March 10, 2014, 08:49:57 am »
Interesting topic. The Guilds no doubt would have this down to a near science, probably like Henry Ford and his assembly line. Recalling that many of the bows on the Mary Rose weren't finished I suppose this allowed for individual, last minute adjustments.

I believe the rasp and file also have a long history and likely were regularly implemented.
" To be, or not to be"...decisions, decisions, decisions.

Offline WillS

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #26 on: March 10, 2014, 10:45:45 am »
Recalling that many of the bows on the Mary Rose weren't finished I suppose this allowed for individual, last minute adjustments.

Woahhhhhhhhhhh.  That's a big ol' can of worms you just popped open there.....   :o ;)

That theory has been pretty much disproved at this stage.  I don't think any of the "powers that be" still think they were unfinished.

Offline Hrothgar

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #27 on: March 10, 2014, 01:55:54 pm »
Really...oops.
" To be, or not to be"...decisions, decisions, decisions.

Offline adb

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #28 on: March 10, 2014, 02:02:46 pm »
None of the bows I saw at The Mary Rose Museum looked unfinished to me. Why would an unfinished bow be on a war ship?

Offline Hrothgar

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Re: How War Bows were manufactured for wars
« Reply #29 on: March 10, 2014, 02:17:48 pm »
Its been a decade or so since I ready Robt. Hardy's 'History of the English Longbow', but at the time of its writing, I recall some were of the opinion that some of the bows were still in the stave stage; on this premise I speculated that perhaps final tillering or finishing was to be done by/for each individual archer upon distribution. Just a theory.
" To be, or not to be"...decisions, decisions, decisions.