How to make a lower poundage, yet full size English longbow?

[willie]

Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and  finished the bow out to best suit the owner.

Interesting that the skilled bowyer used piking as he presumably tillered initially, rather than an afterthought.

[Gimlis Ghost]

Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and  finished the bow out to best suit the owner.

Interesting that the skilled bowyer used piking as he presumably tillered initially, rather than an afterthought.

Before Pope was through with this stave he shortened it further to 5' 8" resulting in a draw weight of 70 lb, I suspect he adjusted the tillering at each step. He tapered the shortened limbs to best distribute the stress.
At each step the maximum range increased, in final form the max range was 245 yards, 60 yards further than at the first stage of 52 lbs pull. That was when using a "flight arrow".
This was more in line with the expected performance of the average long bow fitted out for the average English bowman of the era.
Pope pointed out that quality of the wood chosen made a great difference in performance.
Not all bowmen could draw a 120-160 lb bow and not all staves could handle being drawn far enough to allow use of the clothyard shaft. In fact the average 6' bow would likely break or be damaged at every shot if drawn much more than 30" while a bow 6' 6" in length handled the longer draw easily.

[WillS]

Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and  finished the bow out to best suit the owner.

You're mixing up Roger Ascham's advice for a personal bow written in Toxophilus with a livery issued military bow.  There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any of the MR bows were unfinished and waiting to be retillered to suit a particular archer.  Ascham recommends that when buying your own bow for personal use, to  shoot it in with heavy arrows then having a bowyer pike it to bring it into it's final, consistent and reliable form.

The MR bows were complete bows, with horn nocks glued in place and stored in chests ready for action.  There's no point sending a warship out into an immediate naval battle full of bows that aren't ready for use, and the archers onboard weren't using personal bows but simply picking up bows from the assemblage and shooting them.  The Mary Rose wasn't a snapshot of all archery equipment at the time, it was a snapshot of what was being sent into naval combat.

As an aside, the comment that not all bowmen could shoot 120lb is probably slightly unlikely - most healthy men today can shoot 100lb-120lb with a couple of years training, and that's without a culture of heavy military bow training from the age of 7 by law, an endless supply of bows to move up in weight and the undeniable fact that men who have been shooting regularly since a young age today are touching the 170lb, 190lb and 200lb drawweight ranges.  I would imagine that the well paid, trained and fully equipped archers onboard Henry VIII's flagship would have been booted overboard if they couldn't shoot 120lb 

[Gimlis Ghost]

Apparently all roughed out bows of this type were fired using very heavy arrows to break them in and uncover any problems then the bow was sent to a skilled craftsman who shortened the stave and  finished the bow out to best suit the owner.

You're mixing up Roger Ascham's advice for a personal bow written in Toxophilus with a livery issued military bow.  There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any of the MR bows were unfinished and waiting to be retillered to suit a particular archer.  Ascham recommends that when buying your own bow for personal use, to  shoot it in with heavy arrows then having a bowyer pike it to bring it into it's final, consistent and reliable form.

I went by Saxton Pope's analysis, he examining the only two bows that were recovered up to that point. The first two bows, more properly bow staves, were raised by hard hat divers just after the ship was located in 1836. The chests of completed bows were found till more than a century later.
Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches each, which proved to be too long to be efficient resulting in a low draw weight and sluggish performance. If used as they were they would have been practically useless.
Since by law every man between 16 and 60 , with few exceptions, were required to obtain and keep a long bow and at minimum 12 arrows ready to go its not likely that professional archers would leave the bows they had paid good money for behind to use whatever happened to be handy.

The MR bows were complete bows,

Those raised in the 20th century were, as near as they can tell. Not all have been fully examined even now.

There's no point sending a warship out into an immediate naval battle full of bows that aren't ready for use,

No one said they did, the two unfinished staves were the exceptions. It would be unusual for such a vessel to have no armorers aboard ready to repair or replace damaged arms.
All the bows not found in the wreckage itself rotted away centuries ago, so there's no way of knowing if any of the bows in the chests had been issued to bowmen aboard the ship or if they were cargo.
The Mary Rose went down in the heat of battle. The bowmen aboard would have had plenty of time before battle was joined to claim their bows and be standing at the ready.

As an aside, the comment that not all bowmen could shoot 120lb is probably slightly unlikely - most healthy men today can shoot 100lb-120lb with a couple of years training,

I rather doubt that. Perhaps most athletes could. Most men of that time period would not have had arms long enough to bring a 120 lb bow back to full draw without losing the leverage necessary to do so.

Last I heard the recovered completed MR bows that have been closely examined would have varied in weight from 80-120 lb and apparently one replica was constructed that has a 160 lb draw.
If every man could handle the 120+ lb bows then all the bows found aboard would have been of 120 lbs and up.

Long bows stored in arms chests in the hold of a ship aren't at the ready to be handed out. They didn't just toss a pile of bows on the deck and say grab one and go to it. Closing speeds of ships in those days meant it could take hours or even days before ships came into range. Plenty of time to form up and choose your weaponry. Not every soldier  much less every crewman aboard could effectively use a bow at all despite having trained since youth. Some were armed with pole arms, some were gunners, some were sail makers etc.

Another thing to consider is that not only would an archer have to draw a bow once , during a battle he would be expected to fire volley after volley. What a modern archer may do under ideal conditions is no gauge of what a bowman in battle must be able to do several times per minute perhaps dozens of times  per hour, hour after hour.

Nope, I figure most bowmen of the day could handle a LB with 80 lb pull all day long, but only the biggest and strongest could effectively use bows of 100-120 pounds and a rare few could handle the very rare bows of over 120 to 160 pounds.
Bows of 80-100 lb were suited to the common levies while anything heavier were for use of the fittest and most experienced professionals.

[WillS]

I'm afraid your information is quite dramatically out of date.   Current research and experiments puts the AVERAGE MR bow weight at 150lb.  Many replicas (and I mean identical replicas down to the perfect dimension) have been made of specific MR bows that are well over that, some going into the 190lb ranges.   I've personally made a number of copies of some of the bows I've actually handled and measured myself that are in the 160lb, 175lb range, and that's using medium quality English yew, not the dense, tight grained stuff.

I've examined the MR bows a number of times now,  and I've yet to find one in the archives that would have been less than 100lb in my opinion. 

I'm surprised you think 120lb was heavy.   Its light today by serious warbow standards and again that's without a lifetime and culture of heavy bow training.  I'll re-emphasise that people today are shooting over 200lb and they're not bizarre superhumans, they just shoot regularly and started young.

The other huge factor is the arrow - the vast majority of the MR arrows found would have been useless shot from bows less than 140lb.

[Gimlis Ghost]

Well you provide food for thought.
The bow staves Pope examined could not have been stored where the arms chests the recovered finished bows were found. The lower decks were not accessible in 1836 only the stern castle.

I'd be interested in why you believe

The other huge factor is the arrow - the vast majority of the MR arrows found would have been useless shot from bows less than 140lb.

Since Pope managed 245-250 yard shots with his MR LB replica at 75 lb draw weight.


Do you ever use the 36-37 inch arrow with length of draw at 32" or more?
By Law each able bodied man had to keep a minimum of twelve 3/4 length arrows (compared to the "English Standard arrows" with his bow.
Some arrows were intended for close to medium range accuracy and penetration, others were specifically for maximum range.
Last I read on the subject it was believed Long Bows of 80-100 pound pull were for medium range shots at individual targets.

Its also accepted that the Bowmen on board the Mary Rose were the exception rather than the rule, hand picked highly trained well paid professionals who did nothing else, they did not represent the average bowman of that era or any other.
Its not unlikely that such men would have more than one bow each specialized for an intended role in battle.

When Mary rose went down almost all the men on deck were trapped under the anti boarding nets, any who were armed rotted away with their weapons while the arms chests below decks were preserved.

Since there was quite a long period between call to arms and closing with the enemy why were the arms chests not opened? Could it be that the designated bowmen already had their personal picked bows in hand when the ship heeled over and sank?

Are there any sources that describe the deployment of bowmen during a sea battle or that era?
Before heavy cannon became available archers and the occasional ballista were the only ranged weapons available. There was no competition for deck space with teams of gunners and lines of powder monkeys.

IIRC Seamen were exempt from bow training. Bowmen would be more like Marines than regular crew.
In a boarding melee bowmen would be employed picking off individuals at close range while the rest of the crew held the enemy back with pole arms and hand weapons.

Spaces on deck or in the rigging where a bowman could use the longest and heaviest bows was very limited even on the largest vessels of the day. The stern castle provided the best platform for raking the enemy decks with medium to long range volley fire .
No doubt the heaviest bows were best suited for fire arrows to set the enemy's sails and rigging alight.

[WillS]

I'd be interested in why you believe

The other huge factor is the arrow - the vast majority of the MR arrows found would have been useless shot from bows less than 140lb.

Since Pope managed 245-250 yard shots with his MR LB replica at 75 lb draw weight.

Because the current distance record is just 40 yards further than that with a 170lb bow and a full weight Mary Rose approximation arrow.  What Pope was doing and using I have no idea but his information and research is so far behind the current experimental archaeology and data that it's not hugely useful or pertinent any more.  Even books published recently are full of misinformation and out of date opinions such as natural fibre bowstrings only being able to support 100lb bows.

For example, you claim Pope states "Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches (76") each, which proved to be too long to be efficient resulting in a low draw weight and sluggish performance. If used as they were they would have been practically useless." and yet that's an inch shorter than the AVERAGE Mary Rose bow at 77" which perform beautifully, as do bows made quite a bit longer.  I've made a couple that are close to 7 feet in length which shoot beautifully when paired with a good arrow.  The information is out there, I think you just haven't found it yet! 

If you take a fairly average Mary Rose arrow as an example - let's say MR82A1892/9 as that's one I've measured and copied myself a number of times - you're talking about a 30" long Populus nigra shaft with a 12mm head, a heavy taper down to 10mm a few inches from the head and then a gradual taper to around 8mm at the nock.  Shoot that from any bow under 120lb say, and it'll fly like a brick wall.  You need at least 120lb to push it far enough to do any sort of damage at the other end, and around 140lb to really get the best from it.  There were much, much bigger arrows than 1892/9 on the ship, some even thicker than 1/2" in diameter.

One thing I highly recommend if this stuff is of interest to you is to get yourself a copy of Weapons Of Warre and you'll be able to find up-to-date answers to the rest of your questions - including accurate measurements of each bow, the arrows and some reasonably current data on replicas and the testing thereof.  You'll also be able to see the information on the bows that were actually fully braced when the ship sank, and compare those with the unbraced bows ready for use - spoiler alert, they're exactly the same   

[Gimlis Ghost]

For example, you claim Pope states

"Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches (76") each,

which proved to be too long to be efficient resulting in a low draw weight and sluggish performance. If used as they were they would have been practically useless." and yet that's an inch shorter than the AVERAGE Mary Rose bow at 77" which perform beautifully, as do bows made quite a bit longer.  I've made a couple that are close to 7 feet in length which shoot beautifully when paired with a good arrow.  The information is out there, I think you just haven't found it yet!

That proves the point of the Mary Rose bow staves recovered from the stern castle in 1836 being unfinished as Pope stated they had to be. His experiment followed exactly the stages described by Toxophilus with the bow vastly improved in draw weight and range at every step.
Your calculations are off a bit.

"Those staves were 6 feet 4 3/4 inches (76") each,

You should have written 76 3/4 inches which would be only 1/4 in shorter than the 77 inches you state as the average length.

Of course a properly finished bow will shoot well, that was not in question, it was whether a unfinished rough stave could shoot worth a darn, which they won't. Heck the unfinished staves were three and a half inches around a foot from the tips. They were obviously a work in progress.
(Edited to add. It turns out eight of these staves were recovered by 1841.)

You seem to believe that every bowman could draw a 120 pound bow. My nephew when a high school football player routinely bench pressed 380 pounds, not everyone who ever played high school football could bench press 380 pounds.
In medieval times few of those called to the king's banners was in great physical condition to begin with. They certainly weren't a race of giants. England in fact has few natural sources of vitamins , it's food crops have always been limited. This was one of the most serious problems for the civilian population during WW2 when imported foods were often in short supply due to the U-boat campaign. Not to mention scurvy which haunted the Royal Navy for centuries.
I don't doubt that among a company of the King's own hand picked professional archers that at least a few could draw a bow no other bowmen aboard could even begin to draw.
I don't know if they used the foot bow method or not, but every other military that depended on bows did so in certain circumstances. Pope tried his MR LB as a foot bow drawing with both hands and found the range was the same as when firing in the normal manner. He wasn't expecting any increase in range he was just testing the method.

A 200 pound bow would be courting diminishing returns. It would work best with a heavy projectile such as an incendiary or broad rigging cutter than with the standard sheath arrow. More of an anti material weapon than anti personnel, A good horse killer as well on land. The physical exertion of trying to fire ten to 12 arrows per minute for hours at a time with such a bow would put most athletes in a cardiac care ward.
I'll have to do some digging to find the details but IIRC Henry the 8th made a bet with his best bowman about besting a record shot at a match. The bowman won and received lands and a title as his reward. The range stated was far less than the 280 yard modern record you mention so apparently such shots were not at all common if even obtainable in those days.

PS
The Guardsman's name was Barlow. King Henry told him "beat them all and you shall be the Duke of Archers", Barlow beat the best shot of the day and was given the title of Duke of Shoreditch.
That is not all there is to the story but all I can find at the moment. Barlow was also given some sort of government post which he served at till his death of old age.
The source I originally found on this gave the range and more details of his rewards.
King Henry himself impressed many nobles by hitting targets repeatedly at 240 yards.

[meanewood]

Hi Will

Welcome back to activity on this forum.

Bet you missed this type of discussion?

[WillS]

Hi Will

Welcome back to activity on this forum.

Bet you missed this type of discussion?

  I don't know why I bother sometimes!  Hope you're well mate.

[WillS]

Heck the unfinished staves were three and a half inches around a foot from the tips. They were obviously a work in progress.

I'm not gonna bother addressing all the rest of the nonsense, but this sort of thing is exactly what gives new bowyers a misleading time when making heavy bows and is therefore relevant to the forum - 3.5" in circumference is 1.1" in diameter, or 27mm.  You say that's a foot (12") from the tip and is "obviously" therefore an unfinished bow stave.   

Three of the Mary Rose copies I've just measured in my collection are 26mm, 28mm and 25.5mm at this point along the limb.   They are 140lb, 145lb and 130lb in draw weight, made of English yew and all shoot very nicely.  They are not unfinished staves.

You are using one person's opinion from the 1800s to base your entire theory on, and completely ignoring the reams of current,  tested data and information that says otherwise. 

Just because nobody was around in Pope's time who could shoot 150lb bows doesn't mean that's it.  It's not surprising that he looked at those bows and assumed they were unfinished but we know far more now.

[Gimlis Ghost]

Well the only way to learn is to discuss things in depth.

We do know that quality of Yew available at any point in time varied greatly. Henry contracted for Italian Yew during that time period but other sources of quality Yew were drying up due to over harvesting.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the Italian Yew used for some of the MR reconstructions. Where sourced and how seasoned etc. Imported Yew staves cost three times as much as English Yew at the time.

What is your opinion of "Piking" the limbs to obtain a stronger more even draw?

What is your opinion of American Yew?

I'll allow that the staves recovered from the stern castle (8 in all, Pope having access to only two) were more exposed to the elements and unlikely to have been as well treated after being found to preserve their original dimensions.


All other historical sources state the Long Bow was to be the length of the owners height. I can see an elite company of the King's hand picked men being far taller on average than the vast majority of bowmen of the period. The Prussians had entire companies of men close to 7 foot tall, but they were not the average soldiers of that army.
During most of the Middle Ages periods of famine among the commoners were the rule. Bones recovered from people of the time show evidence of stunted growth.
I figure that far from being typical of long bows of any period, and the Long Bow was in use for centuries, the Mary Rose bows were exceptional examples as were the bowmen themselves.

[Del the cat]

"The only way to learn things is to discus things in depth"
But it's not much good if discussing stuff that is poorly documented/hearsay/cherry picked from dubious sources.
The problem with trying to discus that sort of thing is that one gets drawn into the realms of
"... Yes but I read of a X1-3 replica that performed blah blah blah...." it degenerates to a load of unsubstantiated nonsense.
Much like all the magical properties of "Italian Yew".
https://bowyersdiary.blogspot.com/2016/07/old-wives-tales-and-yew.html
Personally I'd rather go by what physical evidence we have and by actual practical experience. Discussing that is fine...
Del

[Gimlis Ghost]

poorly documented/hearsay/cherry picked from dubious sources.

And what "dubious" sources would those be?

The post that was objected to as merely quoting Saxton Pope on his recreation of a Mary Rose bow, the information was easily found in his book.

What we have in the Mary Rose bows are exceptional bows once used by exceptional bowmen. The remains of at least one of these men found in the hull were of a man well over 6' tall.
I'm sure much of what Wills has stated is true enough but I'm also sure that what Saxton Pope wrote was true as well.

Pope examined the 1836-41 recovered staves and found no sign of a nock of any kind on either. Perhaps the more exposed staves from the sterncastle simply had surface details destroyed by the elements.
An article on examining the best preserved Mary Rose bows in recent times noted the odd absence of any signs of these having been used at all. There being no rub marks of an arrows passage. That might have been due to the archer's using the right side thumb rest confirmed as the most likely method by the preponderance of historical evidence in the form of artwork and manuscripts.


The recreations Wills speaks of were copied in high quality high altitude Italian Yew. Not all Long Bows were made of Italian Yew much less the highest quality. At that stage much of Europe's Quality Yew had been over harvested.
Wills seems to believe no archer of Pope's day was capable of drawing a 150 pound bow, yet one of Pope's associates involved in his studies was an exceptionally large and powerful man with thirty years of experience in use of every type of heavy bow.
Perhaps if Wills attitude were a bit less strident I'd give his words more weight.
I found this post from 2019 that may sound familiar

Ash is very hygrophobic so is pretty useless when it gets wet or is kept in damp conditions. This is one of the reasons the Mary Rose assemblage should potentially be seen as quite a different set of equipment to the more well-known period of the military bow such as the 100 years war.  The danger we can get into today is assuming that once the bow and arrow had been figured out, it stayed that way until gunpowder but it was evolving and changing in response to all sorts of reasons - we only have equipment that was used and stored in a naval capacity and it would be somewhat naive to assume that bows and arrows were the same when used on land in pitched battles!

Denigrating historical sources and 20th century authorities out of hand doesn't add weight to any modern claims.
As for Pope's MR bow replica I gave the facts as he recorded them , this is not my claim it is his. Rather than make any effort to understand why Pope got the results he did using Pacific Yew Wills pontificates using the best quality italian Yew as the only possible wood. Pope himself stated not all wood is the same and a different stave might have made a stronger bow.
As it was Pope's 70-75 pound bow (being only ten pounds lighter than the minimum estimates of the strength of the unfinished staves before the experiment began} performed quite well and he also used replicas of English war bow arrows of the known dimensions for parts of his testing.

If any one wishes to read Pope's work on the study of historical bows done by close examination of bows preserved in various museums and private collections it can be found on the Internet Archive. Well worth reading.

[Del the cat]

@ Gimli...
I'll just point out that I, as a modern day man of average build who spent his working life at sedentary jobs, doing only little exercise or sport managed, at the age of 60, to train up to shooting 100# in a couple of months.
Any claim that warbows were of lower weights is pretty facile.
I am willing to discus what I or you have done, or about the artifacts we have at our disposal. The accuracy and validity of claims by people long dead is a moot point, as one can't question them about their sources or methods etc. Just because something is written down doesn't mean it is correct or accurate.
Del