Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Next

A faster arrow does not make any difference in accuracy if ypu are doing plunging fire. It's debatable if it matters even in direct fire, while it is true the arrow will drop less there is still going to be a drop at any kind of range. The best arguement for fast arrows and accuracy is that the target will have moved less by the time the arrow reaches them.

What extreme range does is magnify any slight problem with form or aim, millimeters of deviation from true at the point of fire will turn into feet or yards at target. A bow that is less sustible to errors in form will start make a big difference.

Also not sure that horse bows shot faster arrows then longbows, while the composite design is more efficient (unless the weather is wet) the poundage of the bows in my understanding was significantly less then the Mary Rose stuff. Though I understand there is some debate on that...
Guy Bayes wrote:
A faster arrow does not make any difference in accuracy if ypu are doing plunging fire. It's debatable if it matters even in direct fire, while it is true the arrow will drop less there is still going to be a drop at any kind of range. The best arguement for fast arrows and accuracy is that the target will have moved less by the time the arrow reaches them.


Given the historical text I cited in my last post combined with the near obsession many modern archers have with arrow speed, I'd say it matters quite a bit with direct shots.

Quote:
Also not sure that horse bows shot faster arrows then longbows, while the composite design is more efficient (unless the weather is wet) the poundage of the bows in my understanding was significantly less then the Mary Rose stuff. Though I understand there is some debate on that...


According to tests by Adam Karpowicz, the average 110lb Turkish bow would have shot light (20g) war arrows at 90 m/s and heavy (40g) ones at 69 m/s. 150lb Mary Rose reconstruction bows manage about 64 m/s at most with light (53.6g) arrows. And that particular figure was with a tailwind helping out. Very heavy (113g) arrows bring that down to 51 m/s. So the Turkish bow wouldn't necessarily be much faster if comparing arrows of similar weight, but it could be a dramatically faster - 39 m/s faster! - when comparing light Turkish arrows to heavy English arrows.
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:

Given the historical text I cited in my last post combined with the near obsession many modern archers have with arrow speed, I'd say it matters quite a bit with direct shots.


Is this with target shooting or hunting? or both?

Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:

According to tests by Adam Karpowicz, the average 110lb Turkish bow would have shot light (20g) war arrows at 90 m/s and heavy (40g) ones at 69 m/s. 150lb Mary Rose reconstruction bows manage about 64 m/s at most with light (53.6g) arrows. And that particular figure was with a tailwind helping out. Very heavy (113g) arrows bring that down to 51 m/s. So the Turkish bow wouldn't necessarily be much faster if comparing arrows of similar weight, but it could be a dramatically faster - 39 m/s faster! - when comparing light Turkish arrows to heavy English arrows.


I ran these numbers and came up with this:
Light Turkish Arrow: 162J
Heavy Turkish Arrow: 190J
Light Longbow Arrow: 221J
Heavy Longbow Arrow: 293J

Those numbers seem to high. What am I missing? (used mv^2 for KE)

Regardless, it illustrates how a heavy arrow can pack a bigger punch even when going significantly slower.
There is actually a huge amount of debate in the modern archery community around whether lighter/faster arrows are better then heavier/slower arrows for hunting. The modern archery industry has been pushing speed improvements for awhile as a way to sell new bows

http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=1501207

However most of the people having that debate are having it around modern compound bows where even a light arrow from a 50# bow has more then enough punch to kill anything

The Karpowiz tests that I am familiar with (link below) are interesting but misleadong in several ways. Firstly he does not spine match for the weight of the bow on a majority of the tests, secondly he is mostly using arrows that are so incredibly light for the bow poundage they would actually be extremely dangerous to shoot with a high likelihood of exploding. Thirdly he uses a machine with a mechanical release which is well known to add fps. He then compares to unstated modern recurve based on "private comminicstion" where modern recurves are typically never made at higher then around 70# and also can easily shoot 250fps with unsafe light arrows. I am also pretty unclear what arrows he even used. It looks like modern carbon arrows in the picture and its difficult to imagine wooden arrows of the weights he is claiming being used in anything other then flight contest

You have to look at the heavy end of his test to get a realistic feel for what would actually be shot.

http://www.atarn.org/islamic/akarpowicz/turkish_bow_tests.htm
Guy Bayes wrote:
There is actually a huge amount of debate in the modern archery community around whether lighter/faster arrows are better then heavier/slower arrows for hunting.


"Better" depends on what is better. Heavier arrows give better penetration into targets (and this is what the pro-heavy people say). Faster arrows give better accuracy (more the case for traditional hand-made arrows, less so for mor consistent modern arrows). Faster arrows are better for target shooting; what is better for hunting depends on your target (type of target, and distance). Note that lower draw weights are typically used for target shooting compared to hunting and traditional military archery - one gets more gain in accuracy from more comfortable shooting at lower draw weights than from higher speeds from higher draw weights.

Guy Bayes wrote:

The Karpowiz tests that I am familiar with (link below) are interesting but misleadong in several ways. Firstly he does not spine match for the weight of the bow on a majority of the tests, secondly he is mostly using arrows that are so incredibly light for the bow poundage they would actually be extremely dangerous to shoot with a high likelihood of exploding. Thirdly he uses a machine with a mechanical release which is well known to add fps.


Why are these problems? Firstly, mismatched spine won't give misleadingly more speed. Secondly, what is wrong with using arrows of historically correct weight? 20-40g is what was used historically from such bows (also typical for Indian and Korean bows). By modern standards, yes, these are light arrows for such draw weights, but given the historical usage of such arrows, it isn't wrong. Thirdly, mechanical release is important for consistency. Even if significantly less energy is lost in flexing the arrow, the comparative results should still be good (thumb draw is supposed to give less loss in arrow flex). Note that this reduces any problems with the first point - mismatched spine.

What, in particular, do you think is misleading about Karpowicz's results?
"Better" as in "more accurate". If you read the thread I posted there are many people on it that think that heavier arrows are more accurate. You have a lot of experienced archers that do not believe that faster arrows are more accurate arrows. You also do not see archery tournaments being won by people shooting extremely light arrows.

In general the arrow needs to be matched with the bow. It's not enough to say "they used light arrows" but did they use them with really heavy bows or did they use the, with lighter bows? In general a bad spine to weight combination is going to make accuracy problematic, it's a good bet arrows and bows were not paired like that, so how fast a never used combination is, is only interesting in an extremely academic way.

I don't think the type of draw has anything to do with archers paradox and arrow flex, that seems contrary to physics to me.fps sure, a less efficient release is going to waste a bit of energy

Also a 20g carbon arrow is going to perform very differently from a 20g wooden one, for one thing it might not explode when shot put of a 100lb bow .
Hmm. We do see people winning archery tournaments with extremely light arrows. Some use down to 5gpp. I'd call under 20 grams a light arrow. Given the drop in bow efficiency as the arrow weight goes down, one doesn't get much improvement in speed past a certain point, but will get the problems with lighter arrows. So light enough to get the benefit in speed, but not lighter. What the optimum weight is depends on the weight of the bow limbs. For the classic Central Asian composite bow, a good all-purpose weight is about 30g; one then sees light fast arrows of 20g and heavy arrows of 40g (see the increase in arrow energies in Karpowicz's tests in this weight range).

Since you appear to be skeptical of the historical use of 20-40g arrows from such bows, see A. Karpowicz, “Ottoman bows — an assessment of draw weight, performance and tactical use,” Antiquity, vol. 81, pp. 675–685, (2007) or P. E. Klopsteg, Turkish Archery for weights of historical Ottoman arrows, and G. N. Pant, Indian Archery for Indian arrow weights, and S. Selby, Chinese Archery for Ming and earlier Chinese arrow weights.

Side-to-side flexing on release is caused by sideways motion of the string on release. Supposedly, the thumb ring gives a release with less sideways motion, so less flexing of the arrow. Suitable mechanical release gives even less.

What, in particular, do you think is misleading about Karpowicz's results? The variation in speed and energy with arrow weight is as expected; the efficiencies are plausible. What is misleading?
The English didn't match spine with bow either. They had hundreds of thousands of arrows that were all made to a general standard and every archer was expected to shoot the same arrows regardless of what bow they had.

"Better" does not mean "more accurate" for English tactics. They needed long range and stopping power. As I said, if they used the same arrows that the Turks used against Joinville's horse, they would have been slaughtered in the first cavalry charge.
no army could precisely max spine with arrows. they did seem to have a degree of standardization between bow and arrow. Also being overspinned is less of a big deal, especially at longer ranges

What I hae heard is most male archers in Olypic field are shooting around 6-8 gpp which fo a 50# bow would result in a 300-400grain arrow which is 20-30g. But that is with a 50# bow

The general rule of thumb is 5-10gpp, most modern bows are not warrented under 5

when you are saying 20g you mean 20g right not 20gpp? Like 8 pennies? he only thing i could see using that for is flight shooting

I think you are incorrect on the reason arrows felx side to side do you have any links for that it is caused by the force of the of the shot itself. Using a mechncial release, which is way better thena thumb ring, does not alleviate it at all


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archers_paradox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGNslUNBrEM

http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~byron/bhca/d...wswork.pdf
Matt Lentzner wrote:
What am I missing? (used mv^2 for KE)


You're forgetting to divide by two.

Quote:
Regardless, it illustrates how a heavy arrow can pack a bigger punch even when going significantly slower.


Absolutely. As a general rule, heavier arrows penetrate better.

Dan Howard wrote:
They needed long range and stopping power. As I said, if they used the same arrows that the Turks used against Joinville's horse, they would have been slaughtered in the first cavalry charge.


This claim exemplifies overreaching. While the weight of the evidence indicates that arrows from English infantry archers hit harder than ones from Turkish horse archers, I'm skeptical that we're necessarily talking about the difference between slaughter and success - not that the English always stopped cavalry charges! First, no single injury account tells us terribly much about wounding dynamics as they're so wildly variable. Florange, for example, claimed to have suffered forty-some significant wounds at Novara 1513. Should we read that as an indictment of the Swiss pike and halberd? Joinville defend his horse with a piece of fabric armor, so it's hardly shocking that the arrows that penetrated inflicted relatively minor injuries.
I think the arrow in that reconstruction was 1/2" thick at the head and tapered to 3/8" at the nock, which is the thickness I keep seeing given for the Mary Rose arrows. (Though I'm sure there was variation)
The second poster here also seems to also think that 1/2" to 3/8" is accurate
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=4239.0
Guy Bayes wrote:

What I hae heard is most male archers in Olypic field are shooting around 6-8 gpp which fo a 50# bow would result in a 300-400grain arrow which is 20-30g. But that is with a 50# bow

The general rule of thumb is 5-10gpp, most modern bows are not warrented under 5


Sure. Potential destruction of the bow as the efficiency goes down (meaning the bow has to dissipate that energy) also limits practical minimum arrow weight. Olympic archers accept a higher chance of breakage of limbs in exchange for a higher chance of winning.

Note also that Olympic archers use quite high draw weights for target archery. The benefit they get from this is speed (and they can get that speed with heavier arrows, reducing the problems one gets with light arrows). The downside is that they need more strength.

At least some Olympic archers shoot 5gpp. I haven't heard of any shooting lighter than that. Many are reluctant to give details.

Guy Bayes wrote:

when you are saying 20g you mean 20g right not 20gpp? Like 8 pennies? he only thing i could see using that for is flight shooting


20 grams. That's at the light end of the range, so presumably for long range shooting, but this weight seem to include long range military, rather than sporting flight arrows alone. One sees arrows as light as 15g, which are perhaps sport flight arrows.

Guy Bayes wrote:

I think you are incorrect on the reason arrows felx side to side do you have any links for that it is caused by the force of the of the shot itself. Using a mechncial release, which is way better thena thumb ring, does not alleviate it at all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archers_paradox


From your first link: "Flexing of the arrow when shot from a modern 'centre shot' bow is still present and is caused by a variety of factors, mainly the way the string is deflected from the fingers as the arrow is loosed."

Which is why, if using thumb release, you shoot off the other side of the bow (right side, if right handed). For reduced flexing, and thus reduced sensitivity to arrow spine, when shooting thumb ring:
http://www.africanarcher.com/thumbring2.html
http://www.tirendaz.com/en/?page_id=580
and googling for "thumb ring paradox" will find more.

I thought it was well-known that mechanical release aids can reduce the effects of archer's paradox. At least with a centre-shot bow. Is there something reliable saying otherwise?

(AFAIK, the thumb ring makes the difference, not the thumb draw itself. One could compare shooting with a thumb ring with Japanese kyudo, where a thumb pad in the glove is used.)
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
This claim exemplifies overreaching.

No, I'm not over-reaching. I'm generalising. That is all you can do in an online forum because there is no capacity to expand the answer into a nuanced and referenced 10,000 word essay.
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:

Dan Howard wrote:
They needed long range and stopping power. As I said, if they used the same arrows that the Turks used against Joinville's horse, they would have been slaughtered in the first cavalry charge.


This claim exemplifies overreaching. While the weight of the evidence indicates that arrows from English infantry archers hit harder than ones from Turkish horse archers, I'm skeptical that we're necessarily talking about the difference between slaughter and success - not that the English always stopped cavalry charges!


The English archers depended on field fortifications to stop cavalry. Where they were caught without time to fortify, and without sufficient protection by friendly cavalry, charges were not stopped, and the archers fared rather poorly. E.g., Bannockburn, Patay.
Timo Nieminen wrote:
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:

Dan Howard wrote:
They needed long range and stopping power. As I said, if they used the same arrows that the Turks used against Joinville's horse, they would have been slaughtered in the first cavalry charge.


This claim exemplifies overreaching. While the weight of the evidence indicates that arrows from English infantry archers hit harder than ones from Turkish horse archers, I'm skeptical that we're necessarily talking about the difference between slaughter and success - not that the English always stopped cavalry charges!


The English archers depended on field fortifications to stop cavalry. Where they were caught without time to fortify, and without sufficient protection by friendly cavalry, charges were not stopped, and the archers fared rather poorly. E.g., Bannockburn, Patay.

yeah if the arrows were sufficent why would they have had bother to trim tree and carry hammers to hammer stakes in the first place?
I think there might actually be a safety rule against lighter then 5gpp for Oly archery. Still , the reality is that tournament shooters could be shooting lighter and don't, which is counter to the claim "lighter is always more accurate"

They may use high draw weights for target but the draw weights in general are still really low, many shoot < #50. This allows them less issue with form and since they don't have real penetration requirements there is no real downside

it's not so much destruction of the bow that they worry about, though that can happen, as destruction of the arrow and through that destruction of the archer. An arrow that is underspined can break on release which can often injure the archer, sometimes quite seriously which will ruin your Olympic chances or battlefield performance. If you image search "exploding arrow" you will see some nasty pictures. And those are arrows made of modern materials which are quite a bit stronger then natural ones

Thanks those links are helpful with regards to paradox, it makes sense that the thumb ring counter rotation would in theory cancel out to some degree the paradox.

I'm not sure to what degree that is going to cancel out oscillation, stress and risk of fracture on the arrow though, this does not seem to happen with mechanical releases on compound bows, even with heavier properly spined arrows, and at least the conventional wisdom is that shooting really light arrows out of heavy bows even with a mechanical release is a good way to kill accuracy and end up in the hospital.

Would make an interesting experiment to see if to what degree it actually happens, does not seem that anyone has done it

Timo Nieminen wrote:
Guy Bayes wrote:

What I hae heard is most male archers in Olypic field are shooting around 6-8 gpp which fo a 50# bow would result in a 300-400grain arrow which is 20-30g. But that is with a 50# bow

The general rule of thumb is 5-10gpp, most modern bows are not warrented under 5


Sure. Potential destruction of the bow as the efficiency goes down (meaning the bow has to dissipate that energy) also limits practical minimum arrow weight. Olympic archers accept a higher chance of breakage of limbs in exchange for a higher chance of winning.

Note also that Olympic archers use quite high draw weights for target archery. The benefit they get from this is speed (and they can get that speed with heavier arrows, reducing the problems one gets with light arrows). The downside is that they need more strength.

At least some Olympic archers shoot 5gpp. I haven't heard of any shooting lighter than that. Many are reluctant to give details.

Guy Bayes wrote:

when you are saying 20g you mean 20g right not 20gpp? Like 8 pennies? he only thing i could see using that for is flight shooting


20 grams. That's at the light end of the range, so presumably for long range shooting, but this weight seem to include long range military, rather than sporting flight arrows alone. One sees arrows as light as 15g, which are perhaps sport flight arrows.

Guy Bayes wrote:

I think you are incorrect on the reason arrows felx side to side do you have any links for that it is caused by the force of the of the shot itself. Using a mechncial release, which is way better thena thumb ring, does not alleviate it at all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archers_paradox


From your first link: "Flexing of the arrow when shot from a modern 'centre shot' bow is still present and is caused by a variety of factors, mainly the way the string is deflected from the fingers as the arrow is loosed."

Which is why, if using thumb release, you shoot off the other side of the bow (right side, if right handed). For reduced flexing, and thus reduced sensitivity to arrow spine, when shooting thumb ring:
http://www.africanarcher.com/thumbring2.html
http://www.tirendaz.com/en/?page_id=580
and googling for "thumb ring paradox" will find more.

I thought it was well-known that mechanical release aids can reduce the effects of archer's paradox. At least with a centre-shot bow. Is there something reliable saying otherwise?

(AFAIK, the thumb ring makes the difference, not the thumb draw itself. One could compare shooting with a thumb ring with Japanese kyudo, where a thumb pad in the glove is used.)
Guy Bayes wrote:
I think there might actually be a safety rule against lighter then 5gpp for Oly archery. Still , the reality is that tournament shooters could be shooting lighter and don't, which is counter to the claim "lighter is always more accurate"


The correct claim is "faster is more accurate, ceteris paribus". Lighter is one way to get faster, but brings its own problems. Higher draw weight is another way to get faster, and also brings problems. The optimum choice is a compromise. When optimising for speed (whether for accuracy or range), an arrow about 2/3 the weight of a general purpose arrow looks good. When optimising for energy, about 1/3 heavier than the general purpose arrow looks good. That's judging by historical arrow weights, but it make sense if you crunch the numbers (see graph in http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=179644#179644 ).

Guy Bayes wrote:

it's not so much destruction of the bow that they worry about, though that can happen, as destruction of the arrow and through that destruction of the archer. An arrow that is underspined can break on release which can often injure the archer, sometimes quite seriously which will ruin your Olympic chances or battlefield performance. If you image search "exploding arrow" you will see some nasty pictures. And those are arrows made of modern materials which are quite a bit stronger then natural ones


They either had faith in their arrows, or accepted the risk. They're probably in more danger from the enemy shooting arrows back at them. Bamboo makes for strong arrows, stronger than modern wooden arrows.

Modern exploding arrows are typically damaged (from previous shooting). Presumably the same would be the case with pre-modern arrows. Inspect! (Though I did have a batch of reed arrows that couldn't take being shot. First batch were good, 2nd batch was not strong enough.)

The lightest I've seen shot: Korean half-arrows/baby arrows: http://www.koreanarchery.org/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=217 , 13 gram arrows, 50# traditional bow, 283fps. Very short arrows, so they're not likely to break.
A thought "Henry Barrett in 1562, for example, assigned light armors or none to archers. Smythe thought eyelet-holed doublets able to resist the thrust of a sword decent armor for archers."

Would a garment that can repel a sword thrust not also repel an arrow?
Neal Matheson wrote:
A thought "Henry Barrett in 1562, for example, assigned light armors or none to archers. Smythe thought eyelet-holed doublets able to resist the thrust of a sword decent armor for archers."

Would a garment that can repel a sword thrust not also repel an arrow?

A light arrow - yes. A heavy arrow at long range - yes. A heavy arrow from short range - no.
Timo Nieminen wrote:
The English archers depended on field fortifications to stop cavalry. Where they were caught without time to fortify, and without sufficient protection by friendly cavalry, charges were not stopped, and the archers fared rather poorly. E.g., Bannockburn, Patay.

English archers depended on heavy arrows, wooden stakes, a prepared position, and a line of armoured infantry to stop cavalry. A deficiency in any one of these caused problems. Their tactics could not work if their arrows did not disrupt the charge in the first place. The way to counter these tactics was to dismount and advance on foot in armour that is heavy enough to withstand the arrows, while hitting them with your own archers. Instead of a large initial cavalry charge you keep a smaller contingent of cavalry back to exploit any breaks in the line that your infantry cause. It didn't take French commanders long to work this out. Their main problem was maintaining control over the barons so the commander could execute his plan.
Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Next

Page 4 of 5

Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum




All contents © Copyright 2003-2006 myArmoury.com — All rights reserved
Discussion forums powered by phpBB © The phpBB Group
Switch to the Full-featured Version of the forum