It is kind of fitting isn't it? Mr. Easton has always been a grounded and unbiased source of information on these topics, and I'm not at all surprised that his facts-first credit-where-due approach holds steady when in uniquely native cultural territory. Characteristic of the quality we've come to expect. =) (I think I'm going to watch this a second time now just to make sure the ad-blocker was off.)
The reason for "full compass"is simple. If the whole bow flexes, that means that there is no specific point at which the wood is more under stress than any other. Having a bow of essentially a single material which has a point of stress either side of the grip means that you are engineering in a point of failure.
Got interested in this stuff when out birdwatching. (yeah, I know). I heard sounds of carpentry going on and found a guy making longbows. After showing an interest, he was kind enough to show me the process of making a longbow, and domonstrated various arrow and arrowhead types and thir uses. It's a wonderful memory. Anyway, I saw a cuckoo looking for nests to raid that day to, so WIN.
I've a friend who was training to pull a 180lb longbow. At indoor target range, maybe 25 yards, he punched through the target, backstop, and the 20ga wall of the steel building. I'm terrified of that thing. And he's no longer allowed to shoot it inside.
Braden Vande Plasse it's .8mm in metric. Mind you, this isn't a load bearing part of the structure, it's not much more than a wind break on a pole barn.
It's a simple design but the selection of yew for the wood and the retention of the sapwood to act as a natural composite is pretty sophisticated. It's a design that must have been in continuous use for at least 6000 years, possibly a lot longer.
Only problem being the spread of the correct type of fir trees for the more effective bows. So checking distribution maps of the taxus baccata can be rather interesting in determining why certain countries never really made much of regularized warbow/longbowmen in the makeup of their armies for large scale war purposes. They just did not have good enough access to the better materials. I can imagine that most yew got rather rare in England and Wales between AD 800 and 1500 from what I can make out there was a high demand and the felling was also rather extensive in Sweden and Norway as a result. Lets just be happy that Yew trees never really prospered in France or we would all be rather more erm French..
Matt, another fine job, a video full of good information, sorted and explained. Your description of the physics of the bow's operation, along with Bernard Cornwell's archer trilogy covering the most important battles in the 100 Years War, one can get a good idea of the life of an English longbow archer. Thanks for your fine work!
hey Matt, can you do a video on ancient and medieval logistics? 20, 30, 50,0000 man armies had to have been a logistics nightmare back then. How did they transport all of the food, water, extra weapons, cooking utensils, tents etc all the soldiers and horses needed? Did they just have a wagon train stretching out behind the army for miles on end? Did it differ from say Roman times versus medieval times? During medieval times did the knight's squire travel with him? Did they partake in the battle as well? Thanks
I know this comment is late-- I only recently found this channel But I just wanted to ask-- I thought medieval armies usually fielded less than 20,000 men? I have read that after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and that big armies of 20, 30, 50 thousand troops became quite rare. Is this not the case? As I understand it, medieval armies-- excluding rare big "event" campaigns like the Crusades --usually fielded around 10,000-15,000 men, including foot troops, archers, and cavalry?
Very late to this but I was looking into some stuff relevant to this comment and I thought I'd chime in. Ancient Greek writers noted a soldier would require one choinix of wheat daily. 48 choinikes make up a medimnos, which is about 40kg of wheat. For a relatively modest army of 10,000, using that level of food intake as a baseline, one would need to provide about 8300kg of wheat to feed them for a day, and 250,000kg of wheat to feed them for a month. That's a lot of wagons and pack animals required to move the food required to feed any kind of large army. Unsurprisingly armies right up to the modern era see troops "requisitioning" supplies from the areas the operate in, to varying extents.
What a unique experience that was! Having spent the best part of the last 2 decades making many examples of and studying both types of longbow this is the first and only time I have agreed with every word in a TH-cam video on the subject and believe me I have watched many of them. No fanciful claims or misinformation and no stating of personal opinion as fact. Such a refreshing change!
I shot traditional archery here in the states 20yrs ago. I had a flat bow hand made; it was modeled after the design the natives American's used to shoot from horseback. It was 1 piece of wood with a very short draw length and narrow arrow rest; it was much shorter than either of the bows shown in this video , but the limbs were much wider and flater. I also shot a standard fiberglass recurve, which I was much more accurate with and had a much smoother pull.
Such a great, informative and compact video about longbows. Im so happy - someone actualy showed that target shooting longbows and warbows arent the same. Thank you matt.
Thoughts on working vs. non-working handles. Having made a few bows myself, I would hypothesize that draw weight is a part of this, but also draw length. Draw weight because in order for the bow to have a non-working handle, it would have to be thicker (or wider) in order to be stiffer. At some draw weight that added size becomes noticeable for the shooter because you just can't get your hand around it as easily anymore. So at high draw weights I would expect the handles to become working for purely practical reasons. The other reason is draw length. A working handle essentially means each limb is half the length of the bow. A non working handle means the working limbs are shorter than this. And the longer the draw length, the more of an issue this is because stick bows often have a working limb length approximately equal to the draw length. With a target bow, you can often make do with a shorter draw length as you may be drawing to a chin anchor point (or corner of your mouth, etc) to maximize accuracy instead of further back to your ear to maximize power.
The heaviest bow I ever shot was 75#. I'm 63 now so I'm down to 50#. My left shoulder can't handle anymore than that. As a kid, I had an old York bow(40#) that was shot off the left hand. Gloved left hand ideally. When shooting a longbow, I get a bad anchor or bad release but the arrow still goes where i wanted it too. It's this 'sweet and forgiving' trait of a true longbow that makes it so much fun to practice and hunt with.
As a student studying material science, I agree with your theory on why the whole bow curved, as opposed to the limb-only bending. This is, as people who study this would say that the "reduction of the amplitude of load cycles" would "increase fatigue life." As an explanation for the layman: because the bending is spread out, the bow will last longer. Instead of getting a few hundred shots off before the bow broke, you could get a few thousand or more.
Matt, let me start by saying how HAPPY I am that you are beginning to dig into the lore and fact behind the medival archer. I'd understand if (because of time constraints) you chose to limit these upcoming videos to English or Western European archery specifically, but I do hope that you will at least lightly touch upon the other various 'famous' medival archers, specifically the Turks and Japanese traditional archery as well. Thank you for the great content man.
@@scholagladiatoria You could also mention that nobody in medieval times knew what a "Longbow" was as it was an18th or 19th century invention. In medieval times they wwere just known as "Bows/Bowes".
I really love the fame of the English longbow. It's a good weapon, and I think that the success of the English longbowmen due to any factors is a thing to be celebrated! By the idea of longbows being used since effectively prehistory one could argue that the longbow has been the most effective and long running weapon of history. It's an important item and it holds a special place in my heart. Thank you Mr Easton for bringing more information about it to my attention! I look forward to hearing more!
longbows are relatively easy and fast to make, cheap and good enough. compound bows often take months or a year to make to have the glue settled properly.
Dear Matt: You briefly mentioned the misconceptions about toledo steel and damascus steel in this video. I wanted to ask if you could make a dedicated video about these misconceptions and what the actual difference is if there is any at all. Thanks and keep these great videos coming
Completely agree about the full compass bows. the only way to get high draw weights is full compass or laminated recurve (turkish, Mongolian) But, full compass have beter "cast" for a given draw weight.
Ash bows have a weird "firing" impulse from memory . I have a thought on drawing the bow, inspired by medieval pictures that the way to draw a "war bow" is not to pull the at the string, but to hold it slightly in the air (40-50 dagrees ) and then lean and push the stave away with the off hand by leaning into it. I found it was much less tiring and lets you up the draw poundage. but I never seen anyone else do this. whats your thought on that?
Just saw this. Great fun. Using static spring theory stress analysis, one can show that a full circle bend contains the maximum energy that can be put in a bending beam. Observe the troubles current compound makers go to in order to get a clean circular bend (actually, straighten a circular bend out) in the flat working limbs. The energy stored would imply that the circular bending war-bow could cast a heavier arrow the same distance as a similar length/weight D-bow or cast a lesser weight arrow farther than a similar weight d-bow. Cheers.
Speaking a bit further about the anatomy of the English Self Bow, it's taken from the Yew tree's trunk where the outer, lighter, springier sapwood transitions to the darker, denser inner heart wood. The "back" of the bow is the sapwood and is flat. The "belly" of the bow is the heartwood and is rounded, this creates a "D" shaped cross section. Importantly, the bow stave MUST follow the natural growth pattern and growth rings of the tree, this is what gives the Self Bow its lumpy uneven appearance. It might even be slightly bent when relaxed, but importantly when it is drawn, the bow straightens out and follows a completely even curve. This is the goal of the Tillering process. Modern reproductions usually have a stiffer center (handle) section that doesn't bend when the bow is drawn; this isn't really accurate as Medieval bows usually bent slightly through the center handle section when drawn, describing an even curve. As Matt pointed out, the best Yew came from Italy primarily, and also from Spain. Yew from these areas was superior to English Yew because they grew slower in their climate, leading to denser wood with tighter growth rings. As a side note, if you're looking to make a Self Bow and cannot source Yew, Osage Orange makes excellent bow staves and you can purchase pre-cut blanks online! If you got this far... thanks for reading! I hope it was okay lol :/ Anyways, I hope you have a good day and most importantly please stay safe and healthy! :D
Good stuff! However, laminated two-wood bows WERE used in Medieval Europe, namely Northern Europe by Sami and Finnic peoples. That type of bow is very common all across the taiga, which is too northern latitude for yew or most other woods suitable for high quality self bow. Might be they were used by Vikings as well at some point, not sure.
I think you're right about the advantage of the full compass flexing function of the English longbow compared to the early modern longbow with the stiff center section. You're not hardly going to produce a bow with a stiff center section with the limbs being able to handle that much stress for really high draw weights. I really dig your attention to detail and your continuous efforts to speak from historical evidence. Too many youtubers make ALOT of assumptions based upon one bit of evidence or other small, isolated tidbits of info and basically wind up guessing and presenting their guesses as facts. Looking forward to more traditional archery stuff as I'm getting back into archery after a few decades and I'm approaching it from the traditional direction. Probably won't ever own a longbow but definitely will own a nomadic styled recurve ;D Love you, man... Keep up the awesome vids!
Yay, this is my topic. I am an Archer and I have shooten a Warbow once, it was hard as shit. I was exausted after a few arrows with arms like flummery. But it was fun too. The warbow which I had was also kind of bumpy but not as much as this one.
I would suggest looking into modern american archer Fred Bear. I believe he and several others pioneered the use of fiberglass laminates as a way of dealing with the mechanical limits of the self bow with a stiff riser Bear often hunted with 100lb plus draw weights but early 20th century self bows in high draw weights had a high rate of failure. I think the reason Bear and others encounteres the problem was that they only had access to English recreational bows from the 18th and 19th centuries without as even many archaeological examples as we have today.
I've been making bows here in central Canada for 25 years. My favourite bow woods are hop hornbeam, elm and hickory. They all make great bows of any weight you want. You just have to alter the dimensions to compensate for stress. If I make them "D" cross sections they suck. A flat belly spreads out the compression forces and you don't get any compression fractures.In a "D" cross section the compression forces are concentrated on the top of that curve - facing the archer. I've only made one bow out of yew and it was a recurve (very fast), but I suspect that if you were to make an "English" longbow (yew) with a flat belly instead of a round belly, you would get better performance. Again, because the compression forces are spread out, that wood on the belly won't be overly compressed and would probably rebound faster. When you unstring it and look look lengthwise, all things being equal, a flat belly bow will have less permanent bend than a round or "D' belly and therefore shoot a little bit faster. Yew can handle it because it's a freak of nature but I don't think it's an optimum design.
It's not optimum in performance terms, but as you say yew can do it. I believe there is one Mary Rose bow that is not yew, and it has a flatter profile. Having made both I reckon though the D profile is quicker to tiller, just in terms of removing belly wood, and no need of a thicker handle etc. If they wanted thousands of bows that might count. I don't know that a flatter shape would always improve a yew bow, my best yew longbow (Canadian yew) has no set, so presumably is resisting the compression forces OK, despite them being concentrated as you say.
Thank you for this great video. You are always contributing interesting content into the community of historical nerds. :-) Unfortunately I have now to admit that I am not shooting an medieval longbow. :-D Will you do a video about the different types of medieval arrowheads? I always get confused about which type was used for what purpose.
Not only that you wouldn't need warbow level draw weights for hunting, but in hunting there is a higher priority on shot placement and accuracy. You end up having to aim more carefully and end up holding at full or half draw longer thus necessitating a lighter bow. See in hunting if you miss or graze your target it runs away ,and you go hungry. Whilst in war you nominally are part of a block of archers and fire into massed groups of armour clad soldiers where shot placement isn't as important as penetration
I think there is something to the heartwood/sapwood line actually, Matt. Trees being natural columns subject to buckling loads, and the sapwood being the outer fibers of the column, it would make sense for it to be optimized for holding tensile loads, since that is how it will be loaded when the trunk flexes. By the same token the heartwood will naturally take more compressive loads and should therefore have evolved to be stronger in that mode. In my woodworking experience this bears out with sapwood generally being more flexible and less prone to cracking while heartwood is stiffer and harder. So you should be able to tiller a stronger bow--as in it can be flexed further without failing-- using that technique, while also using a bit less wood which as you know is better for reflex, via less mass in the limbs. But maybe you just meant that it's not better than another type of laminate? In which case I agree!
I observe that the warbow has more of its mass distribution towards the limbs, increasing their inertia, but reducing local material strain. (As you point out correctly.) Therefore, a warbow can accelerate heavier arrows to the same velocities that a longbow could a light arrow. But shooting a warbow with a light arrow would waste the energy, since it cannot accelerate its own limbs fast enough, thereby shooting it badly and perhaps even damaging the material of the bow itself.
Fun fact about composite bows from Asia: Even after you let the wood staves cure before working them, to cure the sinew and glue that make up the bow's backing and primary point of tiller takes a minimum of 6 months. However, the longer you let the sinew cure and the more reflex you impart, the longer it took. The best bows were cured upwards of 2 years! 3 to 5 years was the average turnaround for a bow after chopping down a tree.
As I understand the uses of a stiff section bow: The stiff section in the middle of a bow such as your "Georgian Bow" doesn't flex, _(duh, I know, gimme just a minute)._ This means that that section is not storing energy, the stave therefore stores a similar amount of energy as it would were it a much shorter stave _(the size it would be if the stiff section were removed and the flexible sections brought together)._ *However,* increasing the length of the bow reduces the angle at which the string is drawn, which improves the leverage the user has when drawing the bow _(Archer isn't working against as great a mechanical disadvantage)._ This means that such a bow can be as powerful as a shorter bow, while being much easier to draw, and therefore aim, it's aim might also be steadier due to the bow being larger and therefore harder to put into motion _(Bow moves less when the archers arm shakes)._ It may be that medieval cultures thought _"Why make a bow that does the same and is easier to draw, when I can make a bow that does more and is just as easy to draw."_ If you're already able to draw a weight, it would seem more useful to increase the power you get at that weight, rather than keeping the power and reducing the weight. Also, other common things like horse archery limit the functional size and draw of bows. Also, maybe it was considered wasteful of good bow wood to make two long staves for the same power bow as you could make three short staves for. Or maybe we just don't happen to have any survivals, who knows? Anyway, hope that was interesting ^_^
As I understand it the difference between sap- and heartwood is that sapwood is better at withstanding tension and heartwood is better at withstanding compression. Thus a 50-50 split in a stave would create an equilibrium for the forces on the bow. This may not be true for all woods Other decent bow woods used in Europe are Ash, Elm and Laburnum. The Norther European Wych-Elm is also renowned for its excellent properties for archery. I've shot Juniper bows that are very efficient as well, though that is less common. If I remember correctly, some Sami-bows were made from a Pine-Birch laminate, but they usually bound it in rawhide. Though the Birch was required to grow in a special manner, usually at a river bank, stretching out over the river, and one would use the part of the stem that bends towards the sky. Being a Bowyer was probably a hazardous profession, made so by handling poisonous woods like Yew and Laburnum. Regarding the full-bend in warbows I believe you are correct. Minimizing the stress on the limbs will result in a longer lasting bow. Thanks for the great video!
Well, it is better for the material to have a bow, that bends more at the tips, than at its center. It's because thicker parts of the stick are under greater stress than thiner parts. when being bend to the same degree. So by doing the tiller eliptic, you actually help the wood to deal with the stress. Medieval depictions shows often eliptic tillers. I bet that your yew bow has also slightly eliptic tiller.
Great vid detailing the differences Matt. Thank you! I’m getting into some amateur bowyery, and I’m currently seasoning some hawthorn staves to see what kinds of bows I can make from it.... Also gonna hunt down some maple and hickory to try my hand at that....
Now that I think about it, medieval England was just like medieval Japan. Isolated, a bow culture, and both island nations when compared to their larger, nearby landmass England to Europe and Japan to China
6:23 "There wasn't an awful lot of _you_ in England" The amount of accidental sound bites in this video is above average :P - btw, loving your bow videos Matt. PS: yes I know it's "yew".
A common reason for having a stiff (unbending) handle will have been the use of paired billets spliced & glued together in the handle section. The tillered shape should reflect the taper in the front profile and will have an effect upon how the efficiently the load builds in the draw and is transmitted upon the loose (gradient/mass distribution).
I have the last English longbow made from Spanish yew which was banned after the last four staves were bought . It has been hand made by a member of the English guild of Bowyer's and this one is made for the himself . I was fortunately allowed to buy it when his health became very bad . I would not sell it for a king's ransom . As a mark of respect to the man it stays with me til I die , before that I will pass it on to someone worthy of it .
Absolutely, whenever making a higher draw weight bow, you'd want to distribute the stress through as much material as you can, granted you're using the same material. It makes sense that they made the handle bend a bit too, which also let them leave a little more meat on the limbs, keeping the same tension(draw weight). That also lengthens the life of the bow overall(and wooden bows just don't last like most modern materials), which was probably a big deal considering staves were in high demand(not cheap), let along that having your bow snap is bad, having it snap in battle is worst.
I vaguely recall seeing it claimed that the secret of English longbow archery was that much of the force came from the archer's left arm pushing the bow, not the right arm pulling the string. Whereas Matt seems to hold the bow steady with his left arm and pulls with the right (e.g. at 8:49 ). I guess that for precise shooting at a target (which is the usual modern purpose) the latter method is best, but to get maximum force into the shot it is presumably best to make full use of the muscles in both arms. I know that medieval people were tough (especially if they had grown up working in the fields), but I doubt that they were generally twice as strong as their milquetoast modern descendants, which a simple comparison of draw weights might suggest.
There is a small advantage in stress distribution for a full compass bow but including the effect of the lumps and irregularities, there's probably no noticeable difference. I doubt the original bowyers cared enough about optimization to make it a conscious choice.
*Another full compass theory:* A bow that bends all the way through can deliberately be overdrawn. Whip ended designs tend to stack and become either very difficult to draw or simply snap when drawn to the ear, whereas fully bending bows can be shot from the ear if the shooter desires to.
I hear a story of an English merchant buyng a wood in Poland (dark ages), he asks the name of wood and they told him sprus (spruce). In polish sprus (z prus) means "from prussia"
I remember one of Lindy's videos where he had a bowyer talking about how the center of a natural bow would change based on humidity, so they would eschew any sort of grip.
Hi Matt, just to let you know - in the German (at least the Bavarian area) and also in Austria we had more Flatbows made of Ash and Elm. Reason: We sold all the good yew from our brilliant alps to you British stickthrowers ;-) all the best my friend. cheers Harry
Gday Matt, loved the vid, a weapon ive long been curious about and would love to hear you speak on is the bill, do you know enough about them to make a video about them
Matt. To the best of your wisdom we’re the archers of old drawing arrows from a hip quiver or from over the shoulder as in Robin Hood! I’ve tried over the shoulder and it seems really quite awkward! ? Thank you
So with the mysticism around the yew English Long bow, would it be inaccurate to say that the English long now is like the Katana of the west? Except the longbow isn't as popular in pop culture.
I've often said that the English longbow is the katana of the west; a really good weapon whose effectiveness has been exaggerated to ludicrous levels and strongly tied to nationalist identity. Also, I'd say the longbow (or archery in general) has had it's share of pop culture fame: from the Robin Hood stories of yore to the Legolas/Hawkeye/Katniss types of today. Katana fever really hit the western mainstream with the arrival of samurai cinema in the 70s, followed by the ninja craze and Highlander in the 80s.
Newton's 3rd law, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Therefore a bow which can shoot an arrow that destroys an aircraft carrier, must be stronger than the aircraft carrier itself. To protect your aircraft carriers, you will have to strap many English longbows onto your aircraft carrier as armor.
Of course, Katniss and Hawkeye and Green Arrow use modern bows, and don't have the classic idea of the old bow. And even then, Legolas's universe doesn't have guns, and Hawkeye is seen as useless and ridiculous and used as the but of the joke. The Katana is seen as amazing even though it's old. The bow is seen as skillful to use, but its only benefit seems to be "It's silent, I guess."
Pretty much. Anglo-saxon culture dominate the international western culture so the longbow became mystified as a part of it and is now tied to many myths, some of wich have very modern roots ("It's the bow that allow the poor oppressed peasantry to kill awful french knights !" even though England had knights too and longbowmen weren't usually poor peasants since they had to be able to afford their own equipement (wich included protections and a sword) as well as a horse). The two-handed sword/zweihander/épée double-solde also has some similar myths attached to it ("it can cut pike shafts !"), I think a lot of it comes down to misinformation, but it's especially bad for the longbow since it's tied to a war that participated in the construction of the english national identity.
Orange Face Not quite: The average person has probably been exposed to a whole lot more pop culture depictions of katana than longbows. Also, the longbow WAS actually a pretty effective battlefield weapon, while the katana served pretty much exclusively as a sidearm and only got most of its reputation after wars had mostly stopped. That's why stuff like Kendo doesn't take armour into account.
In a video of Lindybeige a bowyer says the whole sapwood/heartwood laminate is bollocks and that a bow made solely from heartwood works just as well. He states you simply get more bows from a single trunk if you use sapwood too. Do you know more about this?
It is true. It is easier to make a sapwood/heartwood bow as half of the work is done for you, so it's much faster to make a lot of them, plus you get more per tree - always handy considering how rare good bowwood is. However they are not especially more efficient than a pure heartwood bow. However one advantage of the natural laminate is that it's not weather sensitive. Many traditional glues come apart in damp conditions so the self bow is better suited to Northern Europe, the Yew sapwood/heartwood doesn't fall apart the first time it is exposed to the typical British Summer of rain and fog.
That's simply not correct. The entire point to using a laminate is that the back of the bow is stretched at the draw, while the belly of the bow is squashed. Using a material that is stronger in tension for the back and a material that is stronger in compression for the belly will always be better than a single material that is just kinda sorta good at both. With yew, the sapwood is stronger in tension than the heartwood (the heartwood simply isn't that stretchy), while the tougher heartwood is better in compression and can give you a stronger draw weight. The difference isn't merely cosmetic, there's a perfectly good physical reason why they don't make a bow the other way around with the heartwood forming the back and the sapwood forming the belly. A bow made entirely of heartwood simply won't be as good as it could have been with a back of sapwood. It might, however, still be a very good bow, but it won't reach the full potential of the raw material used.
The video in question was between Lloyd and Swedish boywer Henrik Thurfjell and Lloyd posed the question to the bowyer. Henrik in short replied much to the effect of what the OP said and claimed that he tested the mechanical properties of of the sapwood and heartwood and the tension/compression theory wasn't supported by his experiments. I guess I was convinced because the man went out and did mechanical tests rather than only perform theorycraft (allegedly)
During Azincourt the French lost the battle mostly because they were using heavy crossbows rather than light bows . Also the crossbows were taking ages to reload , definitely not as efficient as the soldiers shooting long bows were ..
There's a nice bit in an episode of Ray Mears' Bushcraft where they replicate a mesolithic bow based on a bog find using period tools. Certainly a familiar design, even then.
I have always wondered if The Little Ice Age was part of the reason the long bow/war bow faded from the European battlefield. The Little Ice Age had two stages, the first in the 14th to 15th centuries and a second far harsher period from the 17th to 18th centuries. The impact was far slower tree growth, particularly at altitude, during summer which gave wood cut from those trees a far denser grain. The impact would have been delayed as a mature tree may have done the bulk of its growing prior to the cold snap. But trees cut in the15th century and beyond would have had a far denser grain than those cut in the centuries before.
"It's lumpy and bumpy, just how I like it."
- Matt Easton, 2017.
Ban this sick filth.
Mail on Sunday and WSJ are there before you mate. Join the queue.
"..stiffness & power.."
Wait until this gets demonetized.
Not quite sure how the Misses is gonna feel about that one.
Its nice to hear a British TH-camr address the mysticism and poshness surrounding English war bows. Always the champion of context.
"Captain Context"
It is kind of fitting isn't it?
Mr. Easton has always been a grounded and unbiased source of information on these topics, and I'm not at all surprised that his facts-first credit-where-due approach holds steady when in uniquely native cultural territory.
Characteristic of the quality we've come to expect. =)
(I think I'm going to watch this a second time now just to make sure the ad-blocker was off.)
Getyourgrooveonsoldier I heard that a longbow could easily split a katana in half.
At 300 meters
and this even without putting cord on...
"they all had to pay tax, unfortunately"
matt confirmed anarchist
He didn´t say it wasn´t necessary x)
Picturing Matt with a mohawk and bondage pants is hilarious.
YOU'RE A BIG GUY
Bane? ALL TAXATION IS THEFT!!!!!!
an anarcho-capitalist
The reason for "full compass"is simple. If the whole bow flexes, that means that there is no specific point at which the wood is more under stress than any other. Having a bow of essentially a single material which has a point of stress either side of the grip means that you are engineering in a point of failure.
Got interested in this stuff when out birdwatching. (yeah, I know). I heard sounds of carpentry going on and found a guy making longbows. After showing an interest, he was kind enough to show me the process of making a longbow, and domonstrated various arrow and arrowhead types and thir uses. It's a wonderful memory.
Anyway, I saw a cuckoo looking for nests to raid that day to, so WIN.
I've a friend who was training to pull a 180lb longbow. At indoor target range, maybe 25 yards, he punched through the target, backstop, and the 20ga wall of the steel building.
I'm terrified of that thing. And he's no longer allowed to shoot it inside.
PXCharon 20 gauge?
That seems really thin
Braden Vande Plasse it might be. Id rather err on the side of realistic than assume it was something like a 14ga wall.
PXCharon 20 gauge is like wire thickness
Braden Vande Plasse it's .8mm in metric.
Mind you, this isn't a load bearing part of the structure, it's not much more than a wind break on a pole barn.
Otzi the iceman who died in the Austrian/Italian alps ~5300 years ago had an unfinished yew longbow on him.
There are records of longbows used by native African tribes as well, who called them "elephant bows". As Matt said, a very old and widespread weapon.
FuckYouYouFuck That is the simplest possible design of a bow. So probably one of the first bow man made was a longbow
It's a simple design but the selection of yew for the wood and the retention of the sapwood to act as a natural composite is pretty sophisticated. It's a design that must have been in continuous use for at least 6000 years, possibly a lot longer.
Only problem being the spread of the correct type of fir trees for the more effective bows. So checking distribution maps of the taxus baccata can be rather interesting in determining why certain countries never really made much of regularized warbow/longbowmen in the makeup of their armies for large scale war purposes. They just did not have good enough access to the better materials. I can imagine that most yew got rather rare in England and Wales between AD 800 and 1500 from what I can make out there was a high demand and the felling was also rather extensive in Sweden and Norway as a result. Lets just be happy that Yew trees never really prospered in France or we would all be rather more erm French..
How do you know thats a legit discovery?
"Oh boy, a new Matt video! I can't wait to see what sort of innuendo he's got for us today!"
Matt, another fine job, a video full of good information, sorted and explained. Your description of the physics of the bow's operation, along with Bernard Cornwell's archer trilogy covering the most important battles in the 100 Years War, one can get a good idea of the life of an English longbow archer. Thanks for your fine work!
hey Matt, can you do a video on ancient and medieval logistics? 20, 30, 50,0000 man armies had to have been a logistics nightmare back then. How did they transport all of the food, water, extra weapons, cooking utensils, tents etc all the soldiers and horses needed? Did they just have a wagon train stretching out behind the army for miles on end? Did it differ from say Roman times versus medieval times? During medieval times did the knight's squire travel with him? Did they partake in the battle as well? Thanks
This is still a great idea for a video. 4 years later.
I know this comment is late-- I only recently found this channel
But I just wanted to ask-- I thought medieval armies usually fielded less than 20,000 men? I have read that after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and that big armies of 20, 30, 50 thousand troops became quite rare. Is this not the case?
As I understand it, medieval armies-- excluding rare big "event" campaigns like the Crusades --usually fielded around 10,000-15,000 men, including foot troops, archers, and cavalry?
Very late to this but I was looking into some stuff relevant to this comment and I thought I'd chime in.
Ancient Greek writers noted a soldier would require one choinix of wheat daily. 48 choinikes make up a medimnos, which is about 40kg of wheat. For a relatively modest army of 10,000, using that level of food intake as a baseline, one would need to provide about 8300kg of wheat to feed them for a day, and 250,000kg of wheat to feed them for a month. That's a lot of wagons and pack animals required to move the food required to feed any kind of large army.
Unsurprisingly armies right up to the modern era see troops "requisitioning" supplies from the areas the operate in, to varying extents.
a 23 minute video from my favorite youtuber?! This sunday just got way better
"One point I want to finish up with..."
10 minutes until end of video.
#BloodyRayPurchase #YSTFUCF
What a unique experience that was! Having spent the best part of the last 2 decades making many examples of and studying both types of longbow this is the first and only time I have agreed with every word in a TH-cam video on the subject and believe me I have watched many of them. No fanciful claims or misinformation and no stating of personal opinion as fact. Such a refreshing change!
you've educated me so much. I was confused what to do my PhD in. Now I think ancient and medieval weapons would be my subject.
I shot traditional archery here in the states 20yrs ago. I had a flat bow hand made; it was modeled after the design the natives American's used to shoot from horseback. It was 1 piece of wood with a very short draw length and narrow arrow rest; it was much shorter than either of the bows shown in this video , but the limbs were much wider and flater. I also shot a standard fiberglass recurve, which I was much more accurate with and had a much smoother pull.
Such a great, informative and compact video about longbows. Im so happy - someone actualy showed that target shooting longbows and warbows arent the same. Thank you matt.
Thanks so much Matt! I love your new upload schedule and the archery videos! Keep it up!
Thoughts on working vs. non-working handles. Having made a few bows myself, I would hypothesize that draw weight is a part of this, but also draw length.
Draw weight because in order for the bow to have a non-working handle, it would have to be thicker (or wider) in order to be stiffer. At some draw weight that added size becomes noticeable for the shooter because you just can't get your hand around it as easily anymore. So at high draw weights I would expect the handles to become working for purely practical reasons.
The other reason is draw length. A working handle essentially means each limb is half the length of the bow. A non working handle means the working limbs are shorter than this. And the longer the draw length, the more of an issue this is because stick bows often have a working limb length approximately equal to the draw length. With a target bow, you can often make do with a shorter draw length as you may be drawing to a chin anchor point (or corner of your mouth, etc) to maximize accuracy instead of further back to your ear to maximize power.
The heaviest bow I ever shot was 75#. I'm 63 now so I'm down to 50#. My left shoulder can't handle anymore than that. As a kid, I had an old York bow(40#) that was shot off the left hand. Gloved left hand ideally. When shooting a longbow, I get a bad anchor or bad release but the arrow still goes where i wanted it too. It's this 'sweet and forgiving' trait of a true longbow that makes it so much fun to practice and hunt with.
What an absolutely beautiful bow!
basically the most entertaining history class I've ever watched! haha love your informative, enthusiastic style, keep it up :)
Nice to see that you're back into bows !
As a student studying material science, I agree with your theory on why the whole bow curved, as opposed to the limb-only bending. This is, as people who study this would say that the "reduction of the amplitude of load cycles" would "increase fatigue life."
As an explanation for the layman: because the bending is spread out, the bow will last longer. Instead of getting a few hundred shots off before the bow broke, you could get a few thousand or more.
Matt, let me start by saying how HAPPY I am that you are beginning to dig into the lore and fact behind the medival archer. I'd understand if (because of time constraints) you chose to limit these upcoming videos to English or Western European archery specifically, but I do hope that you will at least lightly touch upon the other various 'famous' medival archers, specifically the Turks and Japanese traditional archery as well. Thank you for the great content man.
'it's yew-sually' I loled at that part
The reason I've heard for the preference for Italian yew is that in rocky conditions yew grows more slowly and hence is more dense.
Yes that is my understanding. I think it means that you can have a high power bow that is thinner, and that means lighter and quicker.
Also they were taken from higher altitudes to the same effect. I think the Baltic also had good yew imported here for Bows.
@@scholagladiatoria You could also mention that nobody in medieval times knew what a "Longbow" was as it was an18th or 19th century invention. In medieval times they wwere just known as "Bows/Bowes".
This will be of great help in my writing. Thanks, Matt!
That is one gorgeous looking bow.
I was glued watching and listening to such a lovely wealth of information you gave in this video. Thankyou very much,😀
I really love the fame of the English longbow. It's a good weapon, and I think that the success of the English longbowmen due to any factors is a thing to be celebrated! By the idea of longbows being used since effectively prehistory one could argue that the longbow has been the most effective and long running weapon of history. It's an important item and it holds a special place in my heart. Thank you Mr Easton for bringing more information about it to my attention! I look forward to hearing more!
longbows are relatively easy and fast to make, cheap and good enough. compound bows often take months or a year to make to have the glue settled properly.
Dear Matt: You briefly mentioned the misconceptions about toledo steel and damascus steel in this video.
I wanted to ask if you could make a dedicated video about these misconceptions and what the actual difference is if there is any at all. Thanks and keep these great videos coming
Completely agree about the full compass bows.
the only way to get high draw weights is full compass or laminated recurve (turkish, Mongolian)
But, full compass have beter "cast" for a given draw weight.
Ash bows have a weird "firing" impulse from memory . I have a thought on drawing the bow, inspired by medieval pictures that the way to draw a "war bow" is not to pull the at the string, but to hold it slightly in the air (40-50 dagrees ) and then lean and push the stave away with the off hand by leaning into it. I found it was much less tiring and lets you up the draw poundage. but I never seen anyone else do this. whats your thought on that?
tisFrancesfault That’s why the English never “drew their bows” but “bent” them. It’s quite a different technique.
Just saw this. Great fun. Using static spring theory stress analysis, one can show that a full circle bend contains the maximum energy that can be put in a bending beam. Observe the troubles current compound makers go to in order to get a clean circular bend (actually, straighten a circular bend out) in the flat working limbs. The energy stored would imply that the circular bending war-bow could cast a heavier arrow the same distance as a similar length/weight D-bow or cast a lesser weight arrow farther than a similar weight d-bow. Cheers.
Speaking a bit further about the anatomy of the English Self Bow, it's taken from the Yew tree's trunk where the outer, lighter, springier sapwood transitions to the darker, denser inner heart wood. The "back" of the bow is the sapwood and is flat. The "belly" of the bow is the heartwood and is rounded, this creates a "D" shaped cross section. Importantly, the bow stave MUST follow the natural growth pattern and growth rings of the tree, this is what gives the Self Bow its lumpy uneven appearance. It might even be slightly bent when relaxed, but importantly when it is drawn, the bow straightens out and follows a completely even curve. This is the goal of the Tillering process. Modern reproductions usually have a stiffer center (handle) section that doesn't bend when the bow is drawn; this isn't really accurate as Medieval bows usually bent slightly through the center handle section when drawn, describing an even curve. As Matt pointed out, the best Yew came from Italy primarily, and also from Spain. Yew from these areas was superior to English Yew because they grew slower in their climate, leading to denser wood with tighter growth rings. As a side note, if you're looking to make a Self Bow and cannot source Yew, Osage Orange makes excellent bow staves and you can purchase pre-cut blanks online! If you got this far... thanks for reading! I hope it was okay lol :/ Anyways, I hope you have a good day and most importantly please stay safe and healthy! :D
Good stuff! However, laminated two-wood bows WERE used in Medieval Europe, namely Northern Europe by Sami and Finnic peoples. That type of bow is very common all across the taiga, which is too northern latitude for yew or most other woods suitable for high quality self bow. Might be they were used by Vikings as well at some point, not sure.
I like your crooked bow , it has character , something a mass produced item lacks . Cheers !
I think you're right about the advantage of the full compass flexing function of the English longbow compared to the early modern longbow with the stiff center section. You're not hardly going to produce a bow with a stiff center section with the limbs being able to handle that much stress for really high draw weights. I really dig your attention to detail and your continuous efforts to speak from historical evidence. Too many youtubers make ALOT of assumptions based upon one bit of evidence or other small, isolated tidbits of info and basically wind up guessing and presenting their guesses as facts. Looking forward to more traditional archery stuff as I'm getting back into archery after a few decades and I'm approaching it from the traditional direction. Probably won't ever own a longbow but definitely will own a nomadic styled recurve ;D Love you, man... Keep up the awesome vids!
I did not know that medieval bows were lumpy and bumpy, but I heartily approve, they are like my walking sticks.
Yay, this is my topic. I am an Archer and I have shooten a Warbow once, it was hard as shit. I was exausted after a few arrows with arms like flummery. But it was fun too.
The warbow which I had was also kind of bumpy but not as much as this one.
I would suggest looking into modern american archer Fred Bear. I believe he and several others pioneered the use of fiberglass laminates as a way of dealing with the mechanical limits of the self bow with a stiff riser Bear often hunted with 100lb plus draw weights but early 20th century self bows in high draw weights had a high rate of failure. I think the reason Bear and others encounteres the problem was that they only had access to English recreational bows from the 18th and 19th centuries without as even many archaeological examples as we have today.
I once shot a Katana from my Longbow.
Pluto was no longer a planet afterwards.
i have a 160lbs self yew ive been meaning to make a video with, but never got around to do. very beautiful bow made by Daniel Taralrud
I've been making bows here in central Canada for 25 years. My favourite bow woods are hop hornbeam, elm and hickory. They all make great bows of any weight you want. You just have to alter the dimensions to compensate for stress. If I make them "D" cross sections they suck. A flat belly spreads out the compression forces and you don't get any compression fractures.In a "D" cross section the compression forces are concentrated on the top of that curve - facing the archer. I've only made one bow out of yew and it was a recurve (very fast), but I suspect that if you were to make an "English" longbow (yew) with a flat belly instead of a round belly, you would get better performance. Again, because the compression forces are spread out, that wood on the belly won't be overly compressed and would probably rebound faster. When you unstring it and look look lengthwise, all things being equal, a flat belly bow will have less permanent bend than a round or "D' belly and therefore shoot a little bit faster. Yew can handle it because it's a freak of nature but I don't think it's an optimum design.
It's not optimum in performance terms, but as you say yew can do it. I believe there is one Mary Rose bow that is not yew, and it has a flatter profile.
Having made both I reckon though the D profile is quicker to tiller, just in terms of removing belly wood, and no need of a thicker handle etc. If they wanted thousands of bows that might count.
I don't know that a flatter shape would always improve a yew bow, my best yew longbow (Canadian yew) has no set, so presumably is resisting the compression forces OK, despite them being concentrated as you say.
and now England is confiscating butter knives
"Lumpy and bumpy, just how I like it" - Matt Easton, 2017
To produce a longbow without flex in the centre section would require massive limbs to stand the strain making the bow heavier and less manageable.
Thank you for this great video. You are always contributing interesting content into the community of historical nerds. :-)
Unfortunately I have now to admit that I am not shooting an medieval longbow. :-D
Will you do a video about the different types of medieval arrowheads? I always get confused about which type was used for what purpose.
Not only that you wouldn't need warbow level draw weights for hunting, but in hunting there is a higher priority on shot placement and accuracy. You end up having to aim more carefully and end up holding at full or half draw longer thus necessitating a lighter bow. See in hunting if you miss or graze your target it runs away ,and you go hungry. Whilst in war you nominally are part of a block of archers and fire into massed groups of armour clad soldiers where shot placement isn't as important as penetration
Italian and Spanish Yew because the growth rings are tighter due to less precipitation and different air pressure at the alpine level?
I think there is something to the heartwood/sapwood line actually, Matt. Trees being natural columns subject to buckling loads, and the sapwood being the outer fibers of the column, it would make sense for it to be optimized for holding tensile loads, since that is how it will be loaded when the trunk flexes. By the same token the heartwood will naturally take more compressive loads and should therefore have evolved to be stronger in that mode. In my woodworking experience this bears out with sapwood generally being more flexible and less prone to cracking while heartwood is stiffer and harder. So you should be able to tiller a stronger bow--as in it can be flexed further without failing-- using that technique, while also using a bit less wood which as you know is better for reflex, via less mass in the limbs.
But maybe you just meant that it's not better than another type of laminate? In which case I agree!
that's one lovely bow you lucky bugger !
I heard the english had a song about making longbows called "Shape of Yew"
Very informative, very interesting.
The bowyers bible (volumes 1-4) has a heap of practical info on all types of bows, well worth a read :)
hes going ballistic with the innuendos now lol
I observe that the warbow has more of its mass distribution towards the limbs, increasing their inertia, but reducing local material strain. (As you point out correctly.)
Therefore, a warbow can accelerate heavier arrows to the same velocities that a longbow could a light arrow. But shooting a warbow with a light arrow would waste the energy, since it cannot accelerate its own limbs fast enough, thereby shooting it badly and perhaps even damaging the material of the bow itself.
Fun fact about composite bows from Asia:
Even after you let the wood staves cure before working them, to cure the sinew and glue that make up the bow's backing and primary point of tiller takes a minimum of 6 months. However, the longer you let the sinew cure and the more reflex you impart, the longer it took. The best bows were cured upwards of 2 years!
3 to 5 years was the average turnaround for a bow after chopping down a tree.
As I understand the uses of a stiff section bow:
The stiff section in the middle of a bow such as your "Georgian Bow" doesn't flex, _(duh, I know, gimme just a minute)._
This means that that section is not storing energy, the stave therefore stores a similar amount of energy as it would were it a much shorter stave _(the size it would be if the stiff section were removed and the flexible sections brought together)._
*However,* increasing the length of the bow reduces the angle at which the string is drawn, which improves the leverage the user has when drawing the bow _(Archer isn't working against as great a mechanical disadvantage)._
This means that such a bow can be as powerful as a shorter bow, while being much easier to draw, and therefore aim, it's aim might also be steadier due to the bow being larger and therefore harder to put into motion _(Bow moves less when the archers arm shakes)._
It may be that medieval cultures thought _"Why make a bow that does the same and is easier to draw, when I can make a bow that does more and is just as easy to draw."_ If you're already able to draw a weight, it would seem more useful to increase the power you get at that weight, rather than keeping the power and reducing the weight.
Also, other common things like horse archery limit the functional size and draw of bows.
Also, maybe it was considered wasteful of good bow wood to make two long staves for the same power bow as you could make three short staves for.
Or maybe we just don't happen to have any survivals, who knows?
Anyway, hope that was interesting ^_^
As I understand it the difference between sap- and heartwood is that sapwood is better at withstanding tension and heartwood is better at withstanding compression. Thus a 50-50 split in a stave would create an equilibrium for the forces on the bow.
This may not be true for all woods
Other decent bow woods used in Europe are Ash, Elm and Laburnum. The Norther European Wych-Elm is also renowned for its excellent properties for archery. I've shot Juniper bows that are very efficient as well, though that is less common. If I remember correctly, some Sami-bows were made from a Pine-Birch laminate, but they usually bound it in rawhide. Though the Birch was required to grow in a special manner, usually at a river bank, stretching out over the river, and one would use the part of the stem that bends towards the sky.
Being a Bowyer was probably a hazardous profession, made so by handling poisonous woods like Yew and Laburnum.
Regarding the full-bend in warbows I believe you are correct. Minimizing the stress on the limbs will result in a longer lasting bow.
Thanks for the great video!
Well, it is better for the material to have a bow, that bends more at the tips, than at its center. It's because thicker parts of the stick are under greater stress than thiner parts. when being bend to the same degree. So by doing the tiller eliptic, you actually help the wood to deal with the stress. Medieval depictions shows often eliptic tillers. I bet that your yew bow has also slightly eliptic tiller.
Great vid detailing the differences Matt.
Thank you! I’m getting into some amateur bowyery, and I’m currently seasoning some hawthorn staves to see what kinds of bows I can make from it....
Also gonna hunt down some maple and hickory to try my hand at that....
Brilliant historical lesson..Thanks¬¬
Now that I think about it, medieval England was just like medieval Japan. Isolated, a bow culture, and both island nations when compared to their larger, nearby landmass England to Europe and Japan to China
6:23 "There wasn't an awful lot of _you_ in England"
The amount of accidental sound bites in this video is above average :P - btw, loving your bow videos Matt.
PS: yes I know it's "yew".
A common reason for having a stiff (unbending) handle will have been the use of paired billets spliced & glued together in the handle section.
The tillered shape should reflect the taper in the front profile and will have an effect upon how the efficiently the load builds in the draw and is transmitted upon the loose (gradient/mass distribution).
I have the last English longbow made from Spanish yew which was banned after the last four staves were bought . It has been hand made by a member of the English guild of Bowyer's and this one is made for the himself . I was fortunately allowed to buy it when his health became very bad . I would not sell it for a king's ransom . As a mark of respect to the man it stays with me til I die , before that I will pass it on to someone worthy of it .
Absolutely, whenever making a higher draw weight bow, you'd want to distribute the stress through as much material as you can, granted you're using the same material. It makes sense that they made the handle bend a bit too, which also let them leave a little more meat on the limbs, keeping the same tension(draw weight). That also lengthens the life of the bow overall(and wooden bows just don't last like most modern materials), which was probably a big deal considering staves were in high demand(not cheap), let along that having your bow snap is bad, having it snap in battle is worst.
Am I the only person who became a fan of the long bow because of Cornwell's historical fiction stories and subsequently research them?
From Australia thank you sir, Subscribed.
"Yew is better."
Thank you, Matt!
I vaguely recall seeing it claimed that the secret of English longbow archery was that much of the force came from the archer's left arm pushing the bow, not the right arm pulling the string. Whereas Matt seems to hold the bow steady with his left arm and pulls with the right (e.g. at 8:49 ). I guess that for precise shooting at a target (which is the usual modern purpose) the latter method is best, but to get maximum force into the shot it is presumably best to make full use of the muscles in both arms. I know that medieval people were tough (especially if they had grown up working in the fields), but I doubt that they were generally twice as strong as their milquetoast modern descendants, which a simple comparison of draw weights might suggest.
There is a small advantage in stress distribution for a full compass bow but including the effect of the lumps and irregularities, there's probably no noticeable difference. I doubt the original bowyers cared enough about optimization to make it a conscious choice.
i wonder what monster could possibly shoot a 200 lb bow and what would they shoot with it...
maybe aerodynamic swords for maximum carnage.
A little late, but...th-cam.com/video/MjY2QrU4sm4/w-d-xo.html
*Another full compass theory:*
A bow that bends all the way through can deliberately be overdrawn. Whip ended designs tend to stack and become either very difficult to draw or simply snap when drawn to the ear, whereas fully bending bows can be shot from the ear if the shooter desires to.
"Lumpy and bumpy, just how I like it."
Matt, have you ever made a video about Composite Mongol bow vs Longbow? I'm looking forward to hear about it
I need to learn how to make these bows
I hear a story of an English merchant buyng a wood in Poland (dark ages), he asks the name of wood and they told him sprus (spruce). In polish sprus (z prus) means "from prussia"
Alpine yew would likely grow more slowly, being at altitude. It would thus be more dense, with closer rings.
Robert Hardy & William Strickland wrote a magnificent book on the longbow - The Great Warbow. It's expensive, but worth the money.
Interesting stuff, hope you do some more on the English Longbow.
fantastic video, as usual. Matt
Are you ever going to have a video about slings? Perhaps comparing them to bows?
That’s like comparing a toy car to a real Ferrari 🙄
Nice ELB! I'll bet his arrows make for a rather fletching addition to one's collection as well.
I remember one of Lindy's videos where he had a bowyer talking about how the center of a natural bow would change based on humidity, so they would eschew any sort of grip.
"Medieval warbows" Ooooh. I do like that term! :D
I'd love to see you do a video on mounted archery
Hi Matt, just to let you know - in the German (at least the Bavarian area) and also in Austria we had more Flatbows made of Ash and Elm.
Reason: We sold all the good yew from our brilliant alps to you British stickthrowers ;-)
all the best my friend.
cheers
Harry
Gday Matt, loved the vid, a weapon ive long been curious about and would love to hear you speak on is the bill, do you know enough about them to make a video about them
Matt. To the best of your wisdom we’re the archers of old drawing arrows from a hip quiver or from over the shoulder as in Robin Hood! I’ve tried over the shoulder and it seems really quite awkward! ? Thank you
Longbowman uses "Whatever it is they did"
It is super effective
So with the mysticism around the yew English Long bow, would it be inaccurate to say that the English long now is like the Katana of the west? Except the longbow isn't as popular in pop culture.
I've often said that the English longbow is the katana of the west; a really good weapon whose effectiveness has been exaggerated to ludicrous levels and strongly tied to nationalist identity. Also, I'd say the longbow (or archery in general) has had it's share of pop culture fame: from the Robin Hood stories of yore to the Legolas/Hawkeye/Katniss types of today. Katana fever really hit the western mainstream with the arrival of samurai cinema in the 70s, followed by the ninja craze and Highlander in the 80s.
Newton's 3rd law, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Therefore a bow which can shoot an arrow that destroys an aircraft carrier, must be stronger than the aircraft carrier itself. To protect your aircraft carriers, you will have to strap many English longbows onto your aircraft carrier as armor.
Of course, Katniss and Hawkeye and Green Arrow use modern bows, and don't have the classic idea of the old bow. And even then, Legolas's universe doesn't have guns, and Hawkeye is seen as useless and ridiculous and used as the but of the joke. The Katana is seen as amazing even though it's old. The bow is seen as skillful to use, but its only benefit seems to be "It's silent, I guess."
Pretty much. Anglo-saxon culture dominate the international western culture so the longbow became mystified as a part of it and is now tied to many myths, some of wich have very modern roots ("It's the bow that allow the poor oppressed peasantry to kill awful french knights !" even though England had knights too and longbowmen weren't usually poor peasants since they had to be able to afford their own equipement (wich included protections and a sword) as well as a horse).
The two-handed sword/zweihander/épée double-solde also has some similar myths attached to it ("it can cut pike shafts !"), I think a lot of it comes down to misinformation, but it's especially bad for the longbow since it's tied to a war that participated in the construction of the english national identity.
Orange Face
Not quite: The average person has probably been exposed to a whole lot more pop culture depictions of katana than longbows.
Also, the longbow WAS actually a pretty effective battlefield weapon, while the katana served pretty much exclusively as a sidearm and only got most of its reputation after wars had mostly stopped.
That's why stuff like Kendo doesn't take armour into account.
Very good video, learned something new
In a video of Lindybeige a bowyer says the whole sapwood/heartwood laminate is bollocks and that a bow made solely from heartwood works just as well. He states you simply get more bows from a single trunk if you use sapwood too.
Do you know more about this?
DushinSC A Spandau is better.
It is true. It is easier to make a sapwood/heartwood bow as half of the work is done for you, so it's much faster to make a lot of them, plus you get more per tree - always handy considering how rare good bowwood is. However they are not especially more efficient than a pure heartwood bow. However one advantage of the natural laminate is that it's not weather sensitive. Many traditional glues come apart in damp conditions so the self bow is better suited to Northern Europe, the Yew sapwood/heartwood doesn't fall apart the first time it is exposed to the typical British Summer of rain and fog.
Giloup92 a Spandau is Ballet.
That's simply not correct. The entire point to using a laminate is that the back of the bow is stretched at the draw, while the belly of the bow is squashed. Using a material that is stronger in tension for the back and a material that is stronger in compression for the belly will always be better than a single material that is just kinda sorta good at both. With yew, the sapwood is stronger in tension than the heartwood (the heartwood simply isn't that stretchy), while the tougher heartwood is better in compression and can give you a stronger draw weight. The difference isn't merely cosmetic, there's a perfectly good physical reason why they don't make a bow the other way around with the heartwood forming the back and the sapwood forming the belly. A bow made entirely of heartwood simply won't be as good as it could have been with a back of sapwood. It might, however, still be a very good bow, but it won't reach the full potential of the raw material used.
The video in question was between Lloyd and Swedish boywer Henrik Thurfjell and Lloyd posed the question to the bowyer. Henrik in short replied much to the effect of what the OP said and claimed that he tested the mechanical properties of of the sapwood and heartwood and the tension/compression theory wasn't supported by his experiments.
I guess I was convinced because the man went out and did mechanical tests rather than only perform theorycraft (allegedly)
you'd expect wood from warmer spain and italy to be good..less rainfall means slower growth and higher density
During Azincourt the French lost the battle mostly because they were using heavy crossbows rather than light bows . Also the crossbows were taking ages to reload , definitely not as efficient as the soldiers shooting long bows were ..
No. It's "you _are_ better," not "you is better." But thank you for recognizing it.
There's a nice bit in an episode of Ray Mears' Bushcraft where they replicate a mesolithic bow based on a bog find using period tools. Certainly a familiar design, even then.
I have always wondered if The Little Ice Age was part of the reason the long bow/war bow faded from the European battlefield. The Little Ice Age had two stages, the first in the 14th to 15th centuries and a second far harsher period from the 17th to 18th centuries. The impact was far slower tree growth, particularly at altitude, during summer which gave wood cut from those trees a far denser grain. The impact would have been delayed as a mature tree may have done the bulk of its growing prior to the cold snap. But trees cut in the15th century and beyond would have had a far denser grain than those cut in the centuries before.