Longbow VS plate.

[Jaron Bernstein]

"Just out of curiosity, do any of you know what a good equivalent exercize to drawing a bow would be? Maybe 1 arm rows? That's definitely a lot of weight."

I don't know the name of the machine, but it looks like a handle on a cable attached to pulleys (like a lat pulldown weight thing, only you pull the handle with one hand horizontally). Of course as with sword work, the best exercise for archery is...archery. Draw your bow (don't dry fire it though) repeatedly. I recall reading of how the Brits would start to grow their archers young and the kids would start with baby bows and work up to the war bows. Later on as the culture changed, the crown actually mandated archery practice to keep the king supplied with them nifty archers. A fearsome tool. The downside of course being that it takes a lifetime to train the guy. Vs. a month to train a gunner or a crossbowman. Do the math, especially if they both die at about the same rate.

Does anyone here know of a modern test where a war bow (or even a modern compound) was tried out on some decent thickness plate? Anyone here with a bow willing to try and report the results (my parents sold my old compound off years ago).

[JeffGentry]

Hey Casper

Just out of curiosity, do any of you know what a good equivalent exercize to drawing a bow would be? Maybe 1 arm rows? That's definitely a lot of weight.
Some of those draw weights make me wonder what psi it takes for a bowstring to cut off human fingers

There realy is no one motion that simulate's drawing a bow because you push with one hand and pull with the other, the pulling hand realy use's alot of back and shoulder one armed row's would do for somewhat of a simulation not real close though, normaly if you use three finger's on the string and it is not that much of a cut on the hand if you use a finger gaurd, i don't know why they wouldn't have used one.

Jeff

[philippewillaume]

hello david
know i am puzzled
From harris book and the marry rose thrust.
only one bow was [email]185@31'[/email] or 175 at 29" plull. and the condition of the stave made some people wonder if it was not suppose to be finish in situ.

the rest of the bow where between 110-130 lb.
from the same book the abbe bows are about 90-110 lbs

i am not aware of bows heravier than 175-185, and i am quite intersted in the warbow/horse/armour thigny. could teel me where more about that 240 lb longbow (where it was found and stuff)

cheers mate

[Stacy Clifford]

The downside of course being that it takes a lifetime to train the guy.

If you need expert archers for sniping, guerilla warfare, or command positions I can see this, but for massed firing in the general direction of an approaching army, do you really need a whole squadron of Robin Hoods? You can become at least a decent shot with a few months of diligent training with a bow. (The actress Geena Davis took up archery out of the blue and nearly qualified for the Olympic team within a couple of years.) The main difference with war bows of course is getting the strength needed to use it to go along with the skill, but in the age of intense manual labor this may not have been as hard to find as it sounds (except for those 240-lb. mini-ballistas). Probably still not as fast to train as other missile troops, but just the same for mass combat firing, they don't sound like they should be quite THAT irreplaceable.

[Gene Tausk]

Stacy:

I don't know very much about archery, but historically, to train an archer who was effective in combat required no small amount of time and training. I'm not sure that it took a "lifetime," but some effort was required. Two examples from history are:

1. Battle of Lepanto, 1570, when the Venetians kicked the Turks butt out of the Mediterranean. One of the deciding factors was the fact that the Italian crew were manned by individuals trained in the use of firearms, while the Turks relied on their excellent archers. The problems the Turks found was that when an archer was shot, oh well, end of the archer, while anyone could pick up a firearm and replace the Italians when a gunner was hit.

It is my understanding that this is also one of the reasons that firearms replaced archery - the early (and sometimes later) firearms were no more powerful than an arrow shot from a bow, but it was much easier to train a person trained in the use of firearms than an archer.

2. The numerous edicts of the English kings requiring the planting of Yew trees so that archery would be encouraged (bows made from Yew wood). Also, the Welsh were almost required to train and maintain archers for use by English armies, with deadly effect (e.g. battle of Agincourt).

I'm not sure of the 240 lb pull either. Sounds like you would need a steroid freak to even bend the thing, but perhaps some more research is needed in this area.

"do you really need a whole squadron of Robin Hoods?"

Too funny!


-------------->>>>>>>>>>gene

P.S. From what I understand, Ms. Davis had a lot of time on her hands. This is not, of course, to undercut her accomplishment. Going from 0 to almost Olympic caliber took a lot of practice.

[Casper Bradak]

Heh, if the poundage is more than I weigh, if I could theoretically string the bow, would it launch me in the air if I messed up?
Anyhow, we know that especially in england, they took a lifetime to train many archers, but that doesn't mean they needed to. It was mainly tradition and law, and getting them started early and efficiently.
If it really did take so long, that's a depressing thought indeed for anyone now who wishes to take up medieval combat archery.
That's not to say it didn't take a long time, especially compared to crossbows and firearms.

[JeanryChandler]

I did a bunch of research on bows and crossbows for a book I just wrote for an RPG game. The longbows were around 80-120 lbs draw max. Anything larger is not proven IIRC. Still, a 100 or 110 lb draw longbow is very powerful.

Another thing I learned was that the power of the bow is a combination of three factors, the draw weight, the stroke (how far the arrow travels before the bow resets) and the length of the bow or prod (for crossbows). Thus for example while a crossbow with a 26" prod pulling 200 or 300 lbs draw wasn't particularly exceptional, it was not necessarily more powerful than a longbow of 100 lbs draw. I saw an exact formula for this somewhere... (I'll lok for it).

This is why the very heaviest spring-steel crossbows, ("arbalests") which I believe outlasted longbows on the battlefield, were eventually made with draw weights of 1,000 lbs or more. These were the true armor piercing weapons.

Another interesting fact I remember about the longbow is that they found some in Scandinavia dating back to the bronze age.

I think the necessity of the culture of trained archers was actually quite important. Skeletons of some welsh soldiers were found to have enlarged bones in their right arms like some weightlifters or football players. It took immense strength, skill and a special technique to draw that weapon (they did not draw them like an ordinary bow) and hold it at your ear in readiness to fire in a volley. It apparently also took practice to conduct effective area fire, as they used to train firing at colored rectangular sheets of cloth down range, again IIRC. (I apologize for not posting source for all these factoids, hopefully other folks can corroborate or if not when I get home I'll look them up)

Jeanry

[Casper Bradak]

Just to note, the term arbalest referred to no specific model of weapon (at least for the most part), being used as one of many names for crossbows, and even used to refer to some siege weapons and artillery in period.

[JeanryChandler]

True, as with many of the terms for sword, terminology can be quite vague. But I have generally seen the term Arbalest used later on and more associated with the heavier Renaissance crossbows, especially the steel prod types. The German term Arbmrust seems more general.

DB

[JeffGentry]

Hey Guy's

As i was saying earlier diffrent people have diffrent draw length's so if i were to find a bow and arrow's on a battfield i could not just pick it up and say "oh i'm an archer now" i know my draw length is 29 inche's so if the bow i find has a draw length of 30 inche's i could shorten the draw length, now i have arrow's that are too long it is still not to useful to me because it has lost it's accuracy that may be why it was hard to get archer's, bow's and arrow's have to be put together in pair's with the archer, it is hard to just pick one up when the original user is killed.

Another thing I learned was that the power of the bow is a combination of three factors, the draw weight, the stroke (how far the arrow travels before the bow resets) and the length of the bow

this is also another factor if the draw is to long for me and i don't adjust it i lose some of the power of the bow, archery is actualy alot more complicated than what it first appear's, as this thread is bearing out, the mechanic's of actualy drawing ad shooting a bow are relatively simple it is the knowledge of the working's of the bow itself and what it does when the arrow is shot that make it complex.


Katherine you got more info than you wanted yet? lol



Jeff

[Stacy Clifford]

I do think England is a special case because archery was much more respectable and widely practiced than in other parts of Europe, so the number and average quality of available archers was bound to be higher, and I imagine their battlefield exploits were better recognized as well. Outside of England though, if your corps of archers got slaughtered in the battle last week and you need to replenish them in two or three months, I agree with anybody that it ain't gonna happen. However, if your army is retreating to break for the winter and you have six months, I think it sounds plausible to train a passable group of archers for battle the way you would train any other group of conscripted soldiers. They certainly wouldn't be high-quality troops, but possibly decent enough to be better than having no missile support at all.

In the immediacy of the battlefield, I would agree archers are going to be hard to replace on short notice. I do agree that you will not be as effective picking up and using equipment tailor made for somebody else, but as long as you've shot a few deer and rabbits back home and can get an arrow in the air in the right direction, I doubt the guy next to you will complain too much. That said, I do sort of doubt that much of this went on anyway, since to be scavenging equipment from dead archers pretty much means you've lost your own somehow, in which case you are probably more in need of a spear or sword at that point.

[JeanryChandler]

Historically, actually, archers as military units seemed pretty rare in Europe. Even in England the famous longbow archers of Crecy / Poitiers / Agincourt fame were almost all recruited from in or near Wales. Back in Greek and Roman times, archers were recruited from a few very specific places where there was a strong local tradition of archery. A lot of them came from Crete, for example. Same thing with slingers, who mostly came from Rhodes and the Baeleric Isles if I remember.

Even Crossbowmen in the Renaissance were mostly mercenaries hired from Italy (Genoa?) and Switzerland...

So just on that basis, it seems like there is some cultural factor needed to build an actual army of archers.

Jeanry

[Stacy Clifford]

I think I've heard something like that before, and it makes sense that you will get better performance from your archers if you get them from someplace where their craft earns some respect. I believe some knights actually considered using archers in battle to be dishonorable and looked down on them as peasant rabble not worthy to kill or capture a knight, even if he is the enemy. Smart commanders probably got past this kind of thinking and used them anyway, but when most commands were inherited, arrogance was probably in greater supply than intelligence.

[Jack Lynn]

I have never heard reference to the use of archery being considered a dishonorable tactic. Crossbows, however, carried a huge stigma. The knights hated them. The pope banned them. Basically, the crossbow allowed a group of men with comparatively little training to do damage to knights. A knight could still absolutely destroy a crossbowman man-to-man, but crossbowmen were comparatively cheap to train and equip. We've already pointed out how expensive knights were. Any bowman was cheaper and quicker to train than a knight. Crossbowmen were even easier to get on the field and had a better chance of inflicting casualties on opposing knights. This led to a certain stigma applied to the use of crossbows. I have heard it describled as something like what using nukes today carries. Suffice it to say it was considered impolite.

[JeanryChandler]

It appears to be something of a myth that crossbowmen were so easy to train (I think spread by some English historians who were longbow advocates). In Thomas Arnolds "The Renaissance at War" for example it shows that crossbowmen were paid more than regular soldiers (though certainly less than knights) As I said before, crossbowmen had to often be imported from other countries. This is largely due to maintenance of the weapon, and loading it. Firing it is indeed easy compared to a longbow , but winching up a 1200 lb draw can be both tricky and dangerous....

Crossbows, however, carried a huge stigma

That definately depended where you were and who you were. Crossbows were abhorred in Germany, for sure, but they were well liked by at least some folks in Italy (which is supposed to be the major reason why the Italian plate armor was heavier) and positively loved in Switzerland (land of William Tell) where it was a key part of their nearly undefeatable war machine. Peasants also used them with great zest in various uprisings to slay knights, such as notably with very good effect in the Hussite rebellion in Bohemia, which fended off 6 (?) Crusades and ended up invading Germany all the way to the north sea, using wagon laggers protected by crossbows, small cannon, and peasants (of both sexes) wielding threshing flails...

Jeanry