[Warbow] Warbow Technique : How authentic ?

risinglong

New member
Del

I found this part of Toxophilus interesting when I first read it, it echoes what you have posted about bows being made slightly heavier than need be and then maybe fiddled with to suit the archer?

Were the longbows on the Mary Rose all piked and whip tillered? did any of them have flat bellies? Did they need tweeking?
It's important to remember that Roger Ascham was of a different educational and social background and also era.

"Roger Ascham (c. 1515 - 23 December 1568) was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education. He acted as Princess Elizabeth's tutor in Greek and Latin between 1548-50, and served in the administrations of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. "

"Ascham was educated not at school, but in the house of Sir Humphry Wingfield, a barrister, and in 1533 Speaker of the House of Commons, as Ascham himself tells us, in the Toxophilus where they were under a tutor named R. Bond. Their sport was archery, and Sir Humphry "himself would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot"."






I fancy trying the three step method:scratchch

Remember there is no 3 step, 2 step or 1 step method as such , just me trying to make head or tail of a 500 year old treatise. :hypnotize

I think you're right about our heritage of target archery, some of the people I shoot with in my club have spent a fair amount of time to try to get me to draw under my chin instead of to my ear.
I don't shoot a recurve with a sight, so I ignore them and draw to the ear and look down the shaft to aim.
Yeah, and the anchor point is something that a target or longbow archer consciously changes from the victorian style of shooting but there are other inherited things. For example, standing bolt upright, imparts no power to the shot but I magine because for the victorian ladies in corsets and (and some of the portly men too no doubt) little else was possible it's become archery common sense. Doesn't it feel awfully naughty to hucker down before the draw ? :burp:

So as YewSelfbow says 'form follows function' but part of that function is cultural and social because that is the nature of humans. A Victorian gentlemen wouldn't be seen dead hunched over the bow as if he were a pickpocket, the form of shooting was an expression of his character.

Anyway back to the 14th century :yummy:
 

risinglong

New member
.....did Ascham ever shoot a bow ....
Ha ha ...maybe watched a bit.

Nice handwriting mind you:



He's quoted as being an "expert archer" by current writers but I can't find any period sources that confirm this.

By the way, as a nice illustration of where the modern technique of target archery springs from and in part at least why we shoot the way we do, have a look at this:



Tournament at the Royal Toxophilite's Society circa 1870, be hard enough to breath in that get up let alone move ha ha:tired:
 
I dont think your questions really have difinitive answers due to the lack of written information available. Whatever is available is always interpreted differently by individuals so its hard to come to a conclusion, all you can do is form an agreed opinion between a group of people which is what has happened. However I think that all the techniques for shooting heavy bows have evolved with a couple of common denominatons.

1 Build - If you are 20 stone and 6'6" you will draw a bow much easier than someone who is half the size
2 Technique - You adapt your draw to achieve what the stronger, bigger person can do.
Having a martial arts background in Aikido I noticed that although everyone on the mat trained the same everyone had a different style. Some were more fluid, others more stiff. Each person did the required move but not quite the same due to their body limitations I know that its possible to defeat a larger stronger opponent using good technique. This in my opinion is the same for drawing heavy bows.
So in conclusion, each person has his own style that they develop to draw the bow dependant on their build and strength. As described in historic books there are many different ways that people are described shooting warbows and they are probably all correct, as everyone has a different way of shooting. Some will be very different and others will look almost identical.
I hope this helps.

Lee
 

English Bowman

Well-known member
Hmmm, I was under the impression that Linen was better than Dacron and similar to fastflight?...it's only drawback (tee hee) being it's susceptibility to water.
It has a similar lack of stretch to Fastflite, but it isn't as strong, so the string needs to be thicker to withstand the shock of loose. This has a couple of effects,

1 it makes the string heavier, which slows the shot down
2 you can make a rough guess at the bow weight from looking at the nock size of the arrow, assuming that a linen string is used.

A linen string to withstand a 150lbs bow would have to be much thicker than the nocks in the arrows recovered from the Mary Rose. A string that would fit those nocks would take a maximum weight of between 100 and 120lbs before it broke every time you shot the bow according to Pip Bickerstaffe.

On the other hand if you measure the size of the bows recovered and make reconstruction bows to the same specs you get draw weights of up to 180lbs.

Which evidence is correct? The answer is we don't know, either the bows were made of weaker wood than the modern reconstructions, or they had stronger string materials than we know about. Both sets of evidence can't be correct.

Whilst on the subject of draw weight I agree with Alan, that there is a big difference between 80lbs and 120lbs, but I don't know how big a difference there is between 120lbs and 140lbs.

I believe that there is a law of diminishing returns, and the heavier the bow you shoot, the less advantage there is in going up further. There is a massive difference between 20 and 40lbs but not much between 180 and 200lbs to take it to extremes. At what point is the gain in performance no longer worth the extra effort needed to pull the bow?
 

alanesq

New member
I agree - I think the EWBS shoot records will be very useful for this type of information on bow draw weights
Its still early days but as more shoots are recorded and more people take part it should start to give a pretty clear picture.

Eventually the bow is not going to be able to pass all its energy into the arrow and so the remaining energy will just be dissipated as hand shock so there will be a point at which extra draw weight will be of no benefit.

In fact I think someone observed recently that it seems there is not much point going over 130lbs when shooting a BLBS standard arrow, but this is a very light arrow and with the livery arrow this is certainly not the case as with my 130lb bow I am not reaching anything like the distances that the heavy bows are.
btw - Maybe this is when the 1/4lb arrow came into play (when some archers get beyond the norm)?


I'm tolld that the type/quality of linen or hemp is not available now to make strong bow strings (but this is not a subject I know a lot about)
I know Ratty made a linen string for his 120lb bow which was surprisingly thin.

When reading Asham's book its clear that strings would very often break back then (its pretty much unheard of with modern strings) so I suspect they didn't make their strings as strong as we would expect these days?
We tend to make ours at least 4 or 5 times the bows draw weight
 

Yew Selfbow

Active member
There's an awfull lot of rubbish written about linen strings. During my university material science days, linen was one of the materials we researched in some considerable depth. Some of these results may shock some people.

Linen fibers U.T.S. (Ultimate Tensile Strength) increases by up to 20% (yes thats right increases) when wet.

Linen cordage will increase it's UTS by T.P.I. (Twists per inch). The increase in UTS is inversely proportional to the reduction in cross sectional diameter as the twisting compresses the fibres into a smaller and smaller space. Ideally 2.5 TPI is the optimum for maximum UTS.. so a linen string for a 72 inch longbow should have around 180 twists.
 

mezaman

New member
It has a similar lack of stretch to Fastflite, but it isn't as strong, so the string needs to be thicker to withstand the shock of loose. This has a couple of effects,

1 it makes the string heavier, which slows the shot down
2 you can make a rough guess at the bow weight from looking at the nock size of the arrow, assuming that a linen string is used.
Is fastflite string material the same mass as linen for the same size string?
If a linen string was thicker than a fastflite string of the same breaking strain, but linen was a lighter material then that could offset the deffiency of being a larger string, somewhat?

I believe that there is a law of diminishing returns, and the heavier the bow you shoot, the less advantage there is in going up further. There is a massive difference between 20 and 40lbs but not much between 180 and 200lbs to take it to extremes. At what point is the gain in performance no longer worth the extra effort needed to pull the bow?

Yes 40lbs is twice the weight of 20lbs and should in theory shoot twice as far, 200lbs is not twice the weight of 180lbs.
 

steve58

New member
There's an awfull lot of rubbish written about linen strings. During my university material science days, linen was one of the materials we researched in some considerable depth. Some of these results may shock some people.

Linen fibers U.T.S. (Ultimate Tensile Strength) increases by up to 20% (yes thats right increases) when wet.

Linen cordage will increase it's UTS by T.P.I. (Twists per inch). The increase in UTS is inversely proportional to the reduction in cross sectional diameter as the twisting compresses the fibres into a smaller and smaller space. Ideally 2.5 TPI is the optimum for maximum UTS.. so a linen string for a 72 inch longbow should have around 180 twists.
So the twists in a Flemish twist string would make it stronger? Would they also compress the string at all so that it might not end up too thick for the nocks?
 

Yew Selfbow

Active member
So the twists in a Flemish twist string would make it stronger? Would they also compress the string at all so that it might not end up too thick for the nocks?
I think you've hit the nail on the head Steve. If you maintain the length of the cordage in tension and twist, the fibers are compressed and reduce the diameter, but you must maintain the tension on the fibers when twisting.
It would certainly be an interesting experiment to see how thw diameter of the string compares to nock sizes.

....interesting thread
 

CraigMBeckett

New member
Been busy for a while so have not been here so am a bit behind with this thread.

.....did Ascham ever shoot a bow ....
I would suggest that if Ascham did not shoot a bow then Henry, who was supposed to be a very good archer when younger, would hardly have presented the man with a lifelong pension for writing the book, nor later would Ascham have been selected to be the then princess Elizabeth's archery teacher. What point a teacher who did not shoot? Therefore it is highly likely that in his day Ascham was regarded as being an expert in the field.

Craig.
 
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Wode

New member
I would think that the archer of the day would be asked 3 things: What poundage bow can you pull? How many arrows can you loose in a minute? And can you hit the mark? Most archers of the period were common men conscripted when needed. A man who could pull 140 pounds at 6 arrows a minute and consistantly hit a 200 yard mark while looking like a buffoon might be funny, but I would want him on my team.
 

charadam

New member
I am fairly convinced by the theory that "form follows function".

In other words, the bow is a simple machine. If a certain draw weight was necessary to reach or kill the enemy, then that draw weight would be a basic requirement of the military archer. Hence the famous "practice or else" laws. We were all differently built even back in the day.

Therefore the archer would find it necessary to adopt whatever technique he could to shoot the bow.

We are not so different from our forefathers - so why would we be able to invent new techniques to shoot the simple machine?

On the other hand - I can envisage the following:

Garth - "This new bow the Armourer has issued is too ******** heavy to shoot all day".
Ulfric - "Give it hither and I will tiller it softer".
Action - scraping with ballock dagger, sanding with sand in linen breechclout.
Garth - "That's much easier mate - I owe you a pint of mead".
Ulfric - "Not a problem pal. Do you mind if I stand in the rank behind you for tomorrow's battle?"

My message is that the soldier will always find a way to make it work.

Forgive my lighthearted contribution.

Charles
 

CraigMBeckett

New member
I would think that the archer of the day would be asked 3 things: What poundage bow can you pull? How many arrows can you loose in a minute? And can you hit the mark? Most archers of the period were common men conscripted when needed. A man who could pull 140 pounds at 6 arrows a minute and consistantly hit a 200 yard mark while looking like a buffoon might be funny, but I would want him on my team.
All probably true except for the question "How many arrows can you loose in a minute?" The minute did not enter use until the 14 century and even after it entered use there was no time piece that could display a minute, so the population had no knowledge of the lenght of that time span. Just think if I said to you that there were 15 quibs in a day and 150 semiquibs in a quib and 150 second-semiquibs in a semiquib and 60 , would you be able to accurately count off a semiquib without first calculating it out in seconds?, we can only count in relatively accurate seconds and thus minutes because of long exposure to methods of accurately measuring them. No much more probably they used a song or chant to keep time and were required to shoot a certain number during the time of the chant.

Craig.
 

Wode

New member
Where is a hourglass when you need one :) Change #2 to how many arrows can you shoot consecutively before you can not shoot any more? :)
 

CraigMBeckett

New member
Where is a hourglass when you need one :) Change #2 to how many arrows can you shoot consecutively before you can not shoot any more? :)
MMM! would that not change depending on how many hairy Frenchmen on large horses were charging down on you? :)

Craig.
 
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