Author Topic: Red Maple MH Style Board Bow  (Read 16398 times)

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Offline Jim Davis

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Re: Red Maple MH Style Board Bow
« Reply #60 on: February 01, 2016, 11:27:08 pm »
I took an archaeology  class at a local university a couple of years ago. One of the things I learned was that conclusions about the use of an artifact by its makers are always affected by some degree of conjecture (read GUESSING).

I'm not aware of evidence that the Meare Heath bow was even successfully used by its maker. That is pure conjecture mixed with assumption. Maybe the handle grain was so bad that it  broke before it could even be shot once. Maybe if it had been shot once, the violated rings in the limb would have failed. Maybe it was pitched into the bog as a failure.

I do look forward to the results of your repair. I have used red maple, but not for this design.

Jim Davis

Jim Davis

Kentucky--formerly Maine

Offline PlanB

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Re: Red Maple MH Style Board Bow
« Reply #61 on: February 02, 2016, 09:18:04 am »
Ryoon, I appreciate your comment, as it's thoughtful. and thought provoking.

The length of the limbs doesn't affect the force on the handle, even though it would seem intuitively that a longer lever will produce a stronger force. That can be true of a lever in an unlimited mechanical sense.

But in the case of a bow, the force at the handle is actually always limited by the bowyer during construction to the draw weight he/she intends. The force applied by the bowyer's hand to the handle of a 50 lb draw bow is 50 lbs.

That is true whether the bow is 48" or 76" in length. What varies is the force applied at the tips of different length bows of the same draw weight. That compensates through tillering to yield 50 lbs at the handle on a 50 lb bow.

re. handle shape. : I agree with you that the shape of the bend in the handle of this bow is not quite the same as some illustrators have drawn of the original. But most of the handle is missing on the real bow, so those are necessarily guesses as well. The bottom of the original is completely gone. And that's probably why it broke.

The bottom of the handle I decided on is, I'm guessing, deeper than the original. I did that intentionally. This isn't  a strict reconstruction, but it's closer than the straight handles usually seen on reproductions.

re. wood: I don't know what the quality of yew used in the original was, but references say it was all heartwood and in photos, highly violated.  I wanted to try this bow in red maple to see if lighter limbs would yield somewhat better performance than one other reconstruction I read about. And because I've grown and cut it myself. here That was also a personal choice.

Asharrow, I agree with you totally. I didn't intend this to try to prove anything in archaeology. But just to do some things I'm curious about and have fun while doing it.

I love it when a plan B comes together....