[Austin Demshar]

Well ive been looking and collection good weapons a for little while now, but bows caught my eye so i went to the local shop and shot one and it was very easy to do. I liked it and it was fun. He offered me a Bullseye bow and package with everything in it for like $160 and i really wanted it. I decided to wait anyways and do some research. Now i have found that i dont want a modern looking bow, i want an old fashion long bow made of a nice wood(you know what i mean). So now i just need to know some things if anyone would be so kind as to point me in the right direction as far as draw weight and length, wood type, glas backed or not, and the neccesary things. I have an idea of some things but i need some help. I started looking here and found some nice bows i could get around $160 that id MUCH rather get than that new age looking one. http://rudderbows.com/ . ANy help would be appriciated because i dont want to go the the guy and squeeze alot of info out of him and then walk out on him lol. Im gonna keep looking around on the info on the internet, but like i said any info is appriciated. Thanks.

Austin

[Miha M.]

Hi
I have a english longbow at home as well my father has one. We bought them here in Slovenia but my longbow is made from layers of wood and over them is ( I think it is) fiberglass. It is a great bow I shot with it almost 4 years now. I sugguest you do some search on internet there are a lot websites try "longbow" on google
Probably you can not buy it from england?
Becaus in england there is a lot of makers the old longbow in the old way of making them.
Try http://www.eagleclassicarchery.co.uk/index.htm

Miha

[Jeff Hsieh]

Hello Austin,

I have a 40 lb. bamboo/ipe flatbow from www.rudderbows.com. I had originally ordered a plainer hickory bow, but it was delayed due to a bad batch of hickory and they upgraded my bow for free. Jim Boswell is the maker and he is very pleasant and helpful to deal with, as is the lady who answers the phone sometimes (his wife maybe?). The delivery time was about 2 weeks later than the quoted delivery time, but they always kept me updated. The bow was simple, elegant and beautiful. All the joins were glued and sanded closely, so I could not find the seam with my fingernail. I am certainly no expert at archery, but to me the bow shot sweetly and consistently.

That said, my bow is in the shop right now, after cracking at archery practice. The bamboo layer broke clean through, while the ipe layer splintered about halfway through. This should not have happened to a 3 week old bow. However, Jim stands behind his product and is crafting a replacement for it. Despite the breakage, I can still recommend Rudderbows on their excellent customer service. Also, I have spoken to other Rudderbow owners and have never heard of another breakage.

Something you should know, if you are planning on ordering a bow soon, is that they are swamped with orders for the hunting season. I believe their backlog is about 9-10 weeks right now. You should clarify that before you order.

[Pamela Muir]

[Patrick Kelly]

Any experience with this one from Rudderbows?

http://rudderbows.com/ENGLISHLONGBOWEPE.html

I like the look of it. Years ago I was heavily into archery but haven't shot in years. These types of discussions make me tempted to take it up again.

[Sean Flynt]

Get this book before you buy a bow:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=4864&highlight=

It'll tell you what you want to know, inspire and humble you. Keep in mind that a "real" English warbow can have a draw in the 100lb range and best serves (only serves?) a bowman trained in it from childhood. We can dream, though, and there are several English manufacturers of traditonal longbows with lighter draw weights (ca. 70lbs).

[Pamela Muir]

Sean, thank you for the book recommendation. I'm putting it on my Christmas wish list. (If I can wait that long. )

Patrick, that is a beautiful bow and I have a confession to make... The part of the description that says

[Sean Flynt]

Dig these:

http://www.bickerstaffebows.co.uk/warbows.htm
http://www.english-longbow.co.uk/cat20.htm#Longbows

Take special note of the 150lb bow in the first link. That's a big, experienced bowman, and he's working hard!

By the way, if you're seriously interested in the English medieval warbow, you should also get a copy of Blood Red Roses.

[Chris Last]

I have a 70lb draw english bow from Thomas Boehem of Ancient Archery. I love the piece and working with Thomas was professional as well as very informative!

[Brian M]

Anyone hear anything about Bitter Root Bow Company? They have a booth at the Texas Ren Fest every year. I've been curious if they make a quality product.

Brian M

[Greg Griggs]

Sean has a point about being "humbled" on a heavier draw bow. I have pulled a 95# longbow - once......and trust me, that made a believer out of me on having to be raised from an early age to know how to handle one of those things. (I'm not a little guy either @ 6'2" and 200+lbs) I can't even imagine pulling a 150 pounder. Wouldn't mind having a usable ELB though, something about that just seems right.

[Patrick Kelly]

[Sean Flynt]

I noticed on another site that the fellow drawing the 150lb bow has been shooting since the age of six and is a champion longbowman. Can you imagine facing a few hundred just like him?

[Daniel Parry]

A friend who is also very interested in history generally was talking to me the other day about a BBC programme on TV where they were looking at the skeleton of an archer (or someone they deduced must have been an archer) from the Hundred Years War and they were saying the bones in his right arm and shoulder and back and the muscles - apparently they can tell the muscle mass from the striations left on the bone by the muscle or something (?? not sure)- was so huge that the person would have appeared almost deformed in their bodily imbalance. An indication of what a lifetime of drawing those really heavy draw-weight bows would have done perhaps. I only did archery for about a year when I was eleven - and a 25lb bow was quite enough for me at that age.

But there do seem to be a few sites around now selling older types of bows. Maybe there's a historical archery club around your way, Austin, you could join and then you can feed back to us your impressions of historical bows.

My mind is still boggling at Pamela's Sherwood Forest fantasy. I've been to Sherwood Forest, Pamela, and to be honest -lots of sharp twigs and pine needles on the ground - might want to rethink that one.

Daniel

[Jean Thibodeau]

Doing one arm dumbbell rows would be a good exercise to build up the same muscles used in drawing a heavy bow.
I did build up to doing 160 pound one arm D.B. rows at one time and can still do a dozen reps with 100 pounders, but still lifting / pulling this weight is not the same challenge as aiming smoothly a dozen times in one minute and actually hitting the target. (Maybe a little shameless bragging here ! )

But building up to around a hundred pounds over years of practice should be doable. Something around 150 pounds would only be attainable by an exceptional few naturally strong individuals ! ( In the context of using a bow not weight training. )

I would recommend exercising both arms equally to avoid having one huge shoulder and a tiny one. ( In a modern context. )

The arm holding the bow also has to be strong enough to hold the bow away from the body, so it would also become strong in an archer using huge draw weights. The muscles developed in the left arm would not be the same as those in the right.

I would also think that with that kind of strength these archers should have been very capable of powerful sword blows.

it is also hard to believe that someone with that much strength to draw such heavy bows wouldn't also be scary when using hand weapons.

[Daniel Parry]

I think you've got a very good point there, Jean, that it's not just the draw-weight it's the control too. I suppose to a degree in warfare with massed ranks of archers they would aim at the right trajectory distance wise and the target (being the mass of opposing forces) would be large enough that pinpoint control wouldn't matter and it would be draw-loose, draw-loose as fast as you could. But i would imagine these archers did have very good control if only because they presumably learnt the skill as children not primarily as a warfare technique but from hunting (at least I always assumed that was the case) and that would be quite a skill with a powerful bow.

As far as the strength of the left side goes this would depend on how locked the left arm elbow was I guess. As I said above having only done a year of archery when I was a kid I can't remember (or even know if I was doing it correctly). Is the left arm elbow locked or slightly bent ?

Daniel

[Jean Thibodeau]

Daniel;

Having only done some casual archery I could be wrong here about the arm being locked or not: But even if locked the pull on the bow string is not in perfect alignment with the " locked " arm bones so I think the left arm muscles have to work hard to keep the arm locked or almost locked.

It's possible that the effort on the part of the pulling arm is greater that the effort of the holding arm but I think the motion with a heavy bow is one of simultaneous pushing with one arm to extend the bow and the other arm to pull the bowstring in one fluid motion with loosing the arrow at full extension. The mental process of aiming being engaged from the beginning of the pull to the arrow leaving the bow and also with the follow through.

The motion is not: Left arm out, ( Pause ) right arm pulls to full draw, ( Pause ) hold and then aim.

In any case some " real archers " are needed here to confirm or contradict my guesswork.

[Daniel Parry]

I guess you're right about the alignment, Jean, (at least as far we non-archers know). Even pulling with a straight arm it would be a double sided strain. Just that with a bent arm so many more of the left arm and shoulder muscles would come into play I imagine. At any rate an impressive skill.

On the 'real archers' point - totally agree. But that's the nice thing about this site. We all have areas where we know quite a lot and can give informed opinions but we're also free to play around on the areas we know nothing or little about to our heart's content until someone who does know comes along and tells us what actually happened !

Daniel

[Eric Nower]

Hello all,

I have a 45# recurve...far from the massive size you guys are talking about, but you want to try to keep the motions of drawing, aiming, and releasing as fluid as possible. The ability to hold your aim is made alot eaiser by the invention of the compound bow. After a while of shooting in a fluid fashion, you get used to where the arrow will go at certain ranges.....I should think it'd be the same if you practiced in an open field with a ranged target. If the bow's pull was 120-150 and the archer had the ability to hold a shot until ordered to fire I'm not messin with him at a distance or up close!

[Daniel Parry]

That's interesting Eric, so what your saying (as i interpret) with the fluid motion is that the archer would sight his target and focus aim before drawing the bow ? Then draw and loose in a fluid motion ?

Daniel