Primitive Archer

yes, Tuomo, I had around 50 or so different bows from different bowmakers on the shooting machine....maybe post that in a seperate thread, its sure interesting.

How do you optimize the front profile
The longbow is self stabilizing when strung - you can make it as narrow as you like without getting into stability issiues. A recurve needs a certain width at its base. At the same spot the longbow can be made much narrower resulting in a different top profile and mass difference. Your experiment does not take in acount relevant specific characeristics of the design. Namely the lighter limbs of a longbow, and the extra mass of recurves. If we compare the experiment with reality we also must say, that you put recurves mainly on shorter bows - 68" is a bit long to make a recurve.

But this is all about fps. If we only talk about stored energy and sideprofile and leave the fps aside, this a very good experiment.

Shorter bows automatically store more energy - this we know - and also that reflex is another key factor. Now we have same length and same reflex. So the small differences we see come from the sideprofile (and tiller).

Maybe Tuomo could upload the force-draw-curves? Visualizing the stored energy? Maybe we see a nice hump in the curve of the d/r?

And Tuomo: Do these bows all have same length of string? Any Differences?

Gettin' curious again 

Do you still have the shooting machine set up? Im very interested in your experiments, please do post it, here or on another thread.

Gotta agree with Badger.

Looking good Arvin

Bjrogg

Caleb Flies recommended to me using a company called Pirate Ship to send bows to folks. I used to be shipping a bow for twenty bucks, but have been paying as high as seventy-five lately!  I was skeptical, but went to the website, registered, and created my first shipping label. You gotta be able to weigh the package accurately, AND enter the dimensions, but it's really not that hard to do.

Pirate Ship has you pay them the shipping (and in this case, insurance charges), then you print out a USPS shipping label that has all the pertinent info on it including their QR codes and bar codes. Easy peasy. What did it cost me? $23 and change, that's it.

How come this works, doesn't the Post Office have set rates for postage? Yes, they do. One set for people walking into the post office and another for businesses that negotiate lower rates for large bulk shipping. Catalog companies, online sellers, and the big sellers all get insane discounts that WE THE PEOPLE are excluded from getting. Companies like Pirate Ship open the back door to us so that we can piggy-back on their contracts. I am sure there are other start-ups doing the same, maybe some better, but I'm already impressed with this outfit.

A bunch of other folks have been telling me they have had excellent luck with Pirate Ship, so I went into this with a little confidence. Maybe you all have known about this forever, but maybe this will help others. As the great Canadian philosopher Red Green said, "We're all in this together."  And keep yer stick on the ice.

Pics

I know most guys keep there snake bows flat as possible across the limb section . I like to thin the outer parts of the curve. Here is an example of a limb section thickness.