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

[Gimlis Ghost]

@ Gimli...
Any claim that warbows were of lower weights is pretty facile

Did you get the impression that I or Pope had stated that no warbows were stronger than the 75 lb bow Saxton pope made or than none were heavier than 100 pounds?

Just because something is written down doesn't mean it is correct or accurate.
Del

I noticed that in grade school over 60 years ago and it remains true.
Rather than looking for points of disagreement why not look for points of agreement?
I didn't enter this thread as an authority figure I simply posted the results of Saxton Pope's experiments, he being a recognized authority on most all aspects of ancient archery and bow making.
The question was how to make a English Longbow of lesser draw weight , and Pope's experiments point the way to doing so while maintaining a high level of efficiency.
BTW
Do you disagree with this statement?

Not all bowmen could draw a 120-160 lb bow

If you disregard the fact of many bowmen being from the poorest classes and as long standing  study of skeletal remains from the era prove that many of them were malnourished for much of their formative years and only go by those remains of professional soldiers of much greater than average stature you might be right.

During WW1 by 1916 casualties were so high that the British Army lowered its standards and allowed men of shorter stature to enlist. They created the "Bantam Rifle Companies". Most of the volunteers were from the poorest regions of the UK and showed the effects of long term malnutrition during their formative years just as the commoners of Merry Olde England often did. A major perk for professional soldiers was regular meals when not in the field yet often garrison troops found themselves on short rations for months at a time. During the siege of Acre some resorted to digging up long dead corpses and boiling the skin and bones to make soup. Not an unverified rumor since when caught they received a special dispensation to avoid summary execution ordered by the commander Tancred.
During the 100 years war when supplies ran low in winter they executed the French Prisoners. They only spared those prisoners who could give them the rules of card games they had not yet heard of, which were very few.
Not all Englishmen of any rank were all that healthy and well fed during the middle ages.

[WillS]

The recreations Wills speaks of were copied in high quality high altitude Italian Yew.

I haven't mentioned any recreations other than my own which have always been in English yew,  and the Weapons of Warre copies which were American yew.

Wills pontificates using the best quality italian Yew as the only possible wood.

You're putting an awful lot of words into my mouth,  especially considering I think Italian yew is just an overhyped brand name attempting to lure beginner bowyers into spending hundreds of pounds on a piece of wood. 

Not many serious bowyers today think much of "Italian" yew, and by using that term along with the mention of "foot bows", shorter skeletons, 75lb "war" bows, disbelief that trained archers were shooting well over 120lb and quite frankly anything by Saxton Pope its abundantly clear that you're many years behind the curve of research into the MR bows.

[Gimlis Ghost]

disbelief that trained archers were shooting well over 120lb

Which is not what I said at all. I wrote "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."
You had no problem with at least partly understanding what I wrote when you posted
 

the comment that not all bowmen could shoot 120lb is probably slightly unlikely

You wrote

I haven't mentioned any recreations other than my own which have always been in English yew,  and the Weapons of Warre copies which were American yew.

Yet earlier you wrote.

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.

In August of 2019 you claimed the Weapons of Warre measurements were not correct.

especially considering I think Italian yew is just an overhyped brand name attempting to lure beginner bowyers into spending hundreds of pounds on a piece of wood.

Yet Henry 8th contracted at great expense for Italian Yew and such staves fetched nearly three times the price of English Yew staves. English yew of the day was stated to be inferior.
Yew was also imported from Austria, Poland, and Spain among other sources. Careless over Harvesting resulted in dying off of some forests.

shorter skeletons,

Well perhaps O'Swami you can tell us exactly how many of the Lancastrian troops found in mass graves at Towton were no more than five feet tall? Were any over six feet tall?

Since by law no one under 16 was required to own and practice with the bow and some of the skeletons found were of short slightly built young men estimated to be 17 years old then the decades of practice bit has a flaw.

PS

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.

Pope tested a reconstruction of a English war arrow built by another bowter who had studied all information on these available at the time.
His arrow was practically Identical to the majority of recovered MR arrows and modern reconstructions and weighed 2 1/5 ounces with bodkin head.
Pope made some impressive penetration tests with this arrow and 75 lb bow, penetrating the front side of a Syrian made welded ring mail shirt and passing through a torso substitute packed with beef liver.
The arrow struck with sufficient force to cause a shower of sparks.

Since no one seemed to be at all interested in why Pope's Oregon yew stave acted as it did I reread the little he wrote on it.
Apparently due to the proportions and a possible flaw at mid point the bow could not bend into a proper arch, the limbs being too stiff and heavy compared to the grip area. This resulted in the stiff limbs acting like levers.
At least that  is how I interpret it.