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A Crooked Bow

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Eugene:
Agreed, Steve has made this a really fascinating and instructive topic.

We visited The Heritage Dockyard in Plymouth last weekend which gave me a chance to have a good nose around the archery part of the Mary Rose exposition. Apparently the bofffins recognised the skeletal remains of the archers by the development /deformation in their shoulders and spines. They had the mortal remains of one poor devil standing alongside a forensic reproduction of what he would have looked like in life. In todays terms we'd call him a powerfully built man of medium height, with a big barrel chest on him, a sort of old style rugby front row forward. The draw weights of the bows dredged up varied around the 120 to 180 lb mark, so they needed some big well trained lads to handle them in battle. One thing that in hindsight is obvious but I hadn't fully taken on board (groan) is that a longbow is actually very long, I'm five foot ten and they were taller than me.



If you get the chance of a trip to the Dockyard and the Mary Rose don't pass it up, for folks of a technical turn of mind it's well worth the entrance fee.

Eug



 

vtsteam:
I'm glad to be able to talk about bows here -- that's the nice thing about this forum, it's not limited to just one specialty, and you may find things to read about that you didn't know about beforehand. Bowmaking is new for me,too, and I'm just trying to explain what I've recently learned. It's hard to get some of this info because it's scattered in different sources, and uses an unfamiliar jargon. So I'm explaining just what I've learned -- practically as I've learned it! I'm glad it appeals to you guys.

The English longbow kinda intimidates me -- it needs very special wood to reproduce and the draw weights are tremendous. I'm comfortable around 40 lbs, and as you point out, it was common to exceed 100 lbs for military purposes. Those were the artillery of the day, intended to shoot long distance and through armor. I guess that would make the armored horseman the tank of the day, as well. Today they are often used in flight shooting -- long distance archery, highly specialized.

I probably won't make a longbow because it is so specialized. I'm not a hunter, either, so some of the specialized hunting bows, very short and relatively higher draw weight have less appeal for me. Nor a horsemaan, in need of a short lower limb bow wigh exaggerated recurve. What I shoot for is sort of personal development and concentration, as well as a connection with ancient life, people and arts. So perhaps my bows will become specialized for my particular purpose as well. I very much Identify with Kyudo the Japanese art of archery, but i am not of that culture, and don't have the materials to mimic their highly developed bamboo bows. I like to use indigenous materials. So I guess what will develop will mimic my true interest.

There is an ancient English bow, btw, that I am truly fascinated by, quite different from the longbow (except in length). It is the neolithic Meare Heath bow named for where it was discovered in the peat. I will surely build one of those soon except with local materials from my woods. I have a theory about the original design intent for that one, though I haven't seen anything in print about it. I'll probably talk about that more when I actually do start building one -- we'll see if my guesses are true in how it performs.

awemawson:
Interesting that neolithic man also had Yew as the wood of choice for his bows.

vtsteam:
That's one of the things that I question about the design, Andrew. I'm sure the wood in the only extant example is yew if the archaeologists have identified it, but the design of the bow, to me at least, is absolutely perfect for lesser woods. It seems like everything was done to make a bow that could be made from lower stiffness high set material. The bow is very long, very wide (unlike longbows) and had leather and sinew bindings.

If I had to design from scratch a bow for a lower quality wood, I would make it extra long (so the degree of curvature for the same draw length is reduced, thus reducing set), extra wide (so there is redundancy in wood fiber and more tolerance for irregularities), and as a safety feature, add cable support and banding to take some of the tension, and to prevent wood flying if it broke -- kinda like the way safety glass works -- and that's a perfect description of a Meare Heath bow.

In fact such a big bow almost demands low stiffness woods, because the draw weight would otherwise be tremendous with a monster like that . English longbows are narrow and made of yew, and yet tillered to 100+ pounds. Imagine if you widened an extra long longbow (75") to oversize width (2"+), even by today's wide limb standards. It would be practically useless except as a club, or tillered so thin at the tips it would be fragile.

I have a strong feeling that those bows weren't necessarily developed for yew, but were developed for a variety of woods, and the example found just happened to be made of yew in a traditional style. Maybe a special presentation or ceremonial bow, or maybe a yew preference developed over time from an earlier but retained "white wood" design, or maybe the bowyer saw a nice yew nearby one day and cut it and used in an older style bow. At any rate, it's a great design (I think) for many available white woods of lesser qualities, and that's what I'll be using to try that theory out.

I love thinking about this stuff, and puzzling about the mysteries of design!

vtsteam:
I have some saved elm bark which I wanted to used for a handle wrap and binding for the grape vine handle. The bark was soaked overnight in a strem to soften it, cut into a 5/8" strip with tinsnips, then scraped with a hatchet. That removed the corky outer bark and left the thin inner bar. The bark was then rolled up, tied with string and soaked in linseed oil.

I wiped off the excess oil and wrapped and tied it off on the handle area -- you can see a tag end sticking up while it's drying (and shrinking in place). That was later cut off. The bow has been finished some, because it would be tough to do that with the handle in place.

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