Tod here has another of his testing of " simulated " longbows using 3 different crossbows standing in for 3 levels of power with Longbows: A) 160 pound draw weight B) 120 pound draw weight C) 75 pound drawweight simulators.

For those who haven't viewed any of his previous tests simulating longbows, he is using the same weight of arrows that one would use with a longbow using crossbows that produce the velocities that one would typically get from the same arrow loosed by a longbow ..... The targets don't care if the arrow was loosed by a crowbow or a longbow if the mass and velocity of the arrows is close to identical.

In this video he has made a new mid-sized modified modern crossbow to simulate a medium power period longbow of 125 pounds of draw weight, and he compares the results on the same shield in penetration with his original " Lockdown Longbow " that simulates a 160 pound longbow, and also compared to his least powerful crossbow that he initially estimated simulating a 100 pound longbow, but that he has corrected his evaluation to it being closer to a 75 pound draw weight longbow.

There is also an " expensive " and " unfortunate " OOOPSY accident that is funny, but not as funny for Tod .... ;) :lol:

Have a look at the Video, I'm not giving a " spoiler " for the OOOPSY .... ;) :p

bhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SUpufShBVg

I'm glad he has three levels of power now, because that adds a lot more room for context than just using the higher end of the common Mary Rose bows, some of which were definitely in the 100-130lb range. The 70lb bow (I think it's more like a 80lb bow based on the efficiency of Joe's bows, but 70lb is close enough) is also welcome as the minimum useful standard for much of the Middle Ages.

All I'd like to see now are aspen shafts for 15th-16th century arrow types - aspen being the primary wood according to written and archaeological sources - some 10-11mm arrow shafts for the "Little Brother" (matching early 14th century diameters from Holm Hill and Faccombe Netherton), and some ~9mm arrow shafts for the "Baby Brother" (matching large numbers of LM16/M4 arrowheads, the most common 11th-13th century LM7/M8 arrowheads, and the LM13 arrowheads from Dyserth Castle). I'm not entirely sure whether ash or aspen is more appropriate for 11th-14th arrows, as a number of hunting arrows in records are made form ash, but one Anglo-Norman arrowhead from Holm Hill had traces of aspen or willow in the socket. Unfortunately, almost none of the securely dated finds from Holm Hill had enough wood fragments in the socket for identification, and I've yet to find another report that provides wood types where they were found. Pine, a favourite of Scandinavia, might be a good middle ground for the 11th-14th century arrowhead types in terms of compromise between the two extremes of weight.

Brilliant!

As well as being very entertaining, these videos are a goldmine to those of us who like being able to put numbers to things.
Thanks Tod!
(and Ouch! Collateral damage :eek: )

Andrew

Great to see how Tod is making lockdown manageable for us!

I also wonder if the lockdown longbow has anything like the 'archer's paradox' and I wonder if that would (materially) affect a similar weight and velocity projectiles shot from either?

Thanks for posting this up Jean and I have just solved my expensive moments; film to come.

These films are hopefully entertaining, but the aim is to try and get some real information, even if in a fairly shallow way, but what is really important is that I do not lie or misrepresent anything. It all started because I watched a couple of You Tube films where aspects of targets were clearly not what was portrayed and so I decided to try and set some reliable benchmarks.

The three bows will be useful and I will try to weave them into the upcoming films as appropriate and maybe revisit a couple of the previous as my discussion about the arms race and bow power from teh first introduction to the "baby brother" is I think valid, so we should be looking at teh lower poundage bows too.

As regards archers paradox, this is a tricky one because I view it a little different to the norm (at least I think I do). An arrow is a flexible and springy object with a weight at the front. Push it from the back and the inertia of the head will cause it to buckle and then spring back and that creates the wobble that you can clearly see in slo mo. People describe the arrow moving around the bow as if it is sentient, but in fact the arrow cannot bend down because of the fist and cannot bend toward the bow, so the inherent instability on launch means it has to bend outward or upward or a combination of the two and it is this bending out combined with the amount of spring i.e. the spine that allows it to pass the bow and allowing it to solve the archers paradox.

From a crossbow the inherent instability of pushing a springy shaft with a weight on the end is still there, it still buckles and springs back and the only significant difference I can see is that the wobble cannot initiate downward because of the deck, but otherwise it is there. In one of my early films about this, you can clearly see slo footage of this wobble.

So does the launch system make a difference to arrow penetration performance? I very much doubt it.

Tod

Tod, I was wondering, do you have/will you be testing any handmade (as in, from scratch) mail? Most tests are done with Indian mail, which for a variety of reasons is not a good representation of historical mail, and the only test I know of where both the mail and the padding are historically accurate has a target that leaves something to be desired compared to how you've been handling things. I'm very interested to see what energy threshold is sufficient to penetrate good mail.

Jonathan Dean wrote

Quote:

Tod, I was wondering, do you have/will you be testing any handmade (as in, from scratch) mail?

Yes I will be and very soon. I keep getting distracted by other things, but I will be conducting some tests using maille from Isak Krogh under the Lockdown Longbow banner, but these will be indicative tests looking at a particular aspect of arrow heads.

However we are planning another "arrow vs armour" test later in the year that will look at maille attached to a helmet, and some of this will be handmade by Nick Checksfield and some will be commercially produced bought for cost reasons.

There will be a Kickstarter fund raiser for this one as we are going full out for four films at present culminating in so meshing pretty special.

Tod

Hi Tod

First of all I would like to say that I really love your testing videos. Nobody on YouTube or even on TV has done such amazingly well thought out, well planned and accurate testing of medival arms and armour.

You have solved a lot of myths concerning the english (welsh) longbow that even specialists among the topic thought of as true.


The point I want to adress is that I think you also should be testing swords,spears and bladed melee weapons in general against the armour.

Because so far you have basically only been testing bows...the english longbow almost exclusively...but the bow was just one weapon in medival times, sure an important one, but armour was build to protect you from all types of weapons, and therefore I think you should also test all types of weapons against it.

This is quite important to me, because I think the way you are doing it now is very good in terms of the gathered information concerning bows and crossbows against armour, but it leaves a very big gap.

And this big gap of information may lead to a big misunderstanding of the effectivness of the armour.
For example in your upcoming mail testing video....I am very sure that most of the arrows will punch straight through the mail, as we have seen in the famous breastplate vs 160lbs english longbow video with Joe Gibbs.

Now some people will say something like "Oh well, that mail stuff isnt that great after all, right ?", because they dont know that a sword would be simply glancing of the mail without doing any damage, as we have seen in other videos, which they probably havent seen.

Therefore I think it is utterly important to always try to cover the hole spectrum if possible.
And often enough it is possible!
What keeps you from hitting that mail with a sword or a battle axe, in your next testing video?
Or if you dont feel qualified enough, just ask some expert of swordsmanship to come over and do it, like you did it with Joe Gibbs....
The same thing you could have easily done in case of the breastplate, the brigandine etc.

Maybe you have in fact planned to do sword testing in future videos, but that would be a waste of resources in my opinion, as you would have to buy the same armour again.



My intention is not to downgrade your videos. I very much like them and think that they are the best testing videos of medival arms and armour that I have ever seen.
This is just meant as constructive criticism.

Thank you for understanding,

Markus

While digging for published data on my research into crossbows, I found an interesting and (I think) relevant physics paper containing some measured data for (modern) bow and arrow performance. There's also a mathematical analysis of the archer's paradox, which I found interesting, given the earlier discussion:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.02250.pdf

It also seems to support many of Tod's measurements (and my calculations) regarding aerodynamic drag (with the caveat that modern arrows will differ aerodynamically from longbow war arrows - the heads were different, as was the fletching (this paper notes that roughly a third of the drag is contributed by the fletching).

The parts dealing with the modern compound bow are, of course, less relevant.

Andrew.