Why do whip ended bows have a bad reputation?

[Tom Dulaney]

Whip ended bows seem to have a poor reputation among internet bowyer forum posters. Why is that? I have seen claims like "they store less energy" -- but I've never verified that. Even if it is true, it would seem inuitive to me that a bow which bends closer to the tips is storing energy where the bow weighs less. Whip ended bows don't have to carry a large mass above the working portion, which could compensate for the lower energy storage.

As an extreme opposite example, in many types of composite horn bows with siyahs, it's always a chore to have to get your siyah weight exactly right, so that your siyahs don't weight down the bending limbs. Many bows traditionally used composite siyahs, with a wooden core and bone plates on the sides, to maximize stiffness-to-weight ratio.

Egyptian angular horn bow


Good example from Stiliyan Stefanov, at the 11:20 mark in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-QouodSvC4

[PatM]

It's pretty hard to bend a small  narrow piece of wood  to a large degree and have much draw weight to store energy with.

 When a whip ended bow performs well, it needs the rest of the bow helping it out, it can't be the primary provider.

[bownarra]

That hornbow certainly isn't whip ended? Nor is it much of a problem to reduce outer limb weight on a hornbow? But the difference between a hornbow and a true whip ended wooden bow is vast
They certainly do store less energy and the main point is that you could've stored a lot more by simply having the bow bend correctly in the first place
If you have a bow with 20 ounces of wood and a bow of 10 ounces which can store more energy?
Or two elastic bands one 1/4"wide the other 1/2" which can store more energy?
A true whip ended bow drawn a normal distance and the bow of a normal length for the draw.........it will stack and take too much set.
The only plce for a whip ended bow is flight shooting with very light arrows. You can also use the principle on very long bows. A very long bow will have a low string angle and the 'whip' won't be so pronounced and anyway I still wouldn't call it whip tillered I'd call it highly elliptical.
Anyway the very term Whip tillered is a term that describes a bow that is bending too much outer limb.....

[RyanY]

There are multiple factors involved in this with energy storage only being one of them. For energy storage there is definitely a difference even if you haven’t personally measured it. Stiff outer limbs can also be lighter than ones that bend. Recall that doubling wood thickness increases stiffness by 8 times where doubling width increases it by 2. A bending limb will need to be wide and thin enough to store energy for the bow and accommodate the smaller radius bend. Those working limbs are likely more massive than narrow rigid limbs could be made or even bending limbs that are of a smaller diameter bend due to increased thickness. Other components that I have less understanding of are limb vibration and leverage. Ideally any given bow should be tillered to match its front view profile. If a bow is designed to be whip tillered then it will shot best when tillered that way. You can’t tiller a mollegabet profile with a whip tiller and expect good results.

[Digital Caveman]

I agree about matching the front view profile and the tiller.  If you do it right you could have a durable whip tillered bow, but it would have to have a lot more mass further out on the limb.

[Tom Dulaney]

Of course, a stiff upper limb can be made lighter than the bending inner limb. However, it still weighs something, despite not actively contributing any energy at all to the cast (it's basically just a heavy lever).

That weight is important, and there's evidence from the fossil record in Asia that the composite bows with stiff outer limbs did not really become decent bows until the development of bone side plates on extremely thin wooden cores, to make the siyahs lighter will maintaining stiffness. Without the bone plates  on the siyahs the velocity was hampered by the weight of the siyahs. These bows didn't really go places until people figured out that bone is stiffer and lighter than wood, and thus can greatly reduce the weight of the siyahs.


With a whip-ended bow, however, there's no weight on top of the limbs at all, other than the bowstring and the notch. That's an advantage. And yes, the lower sections should be made to contribute, as PatB noted. My point is that a whip ended bow more effectively maximizes the energy output to the arrow, or the net energy, which is what really matters.

The tips could be made to bend easier by decurving them, and the grip/inner limbs could be reflexed to increase energy storage. This intuitively seems like a better way to get the maximum amount of energy out of a bow in the optimal regions.


It seems this was a favored type of bow among Amerindians.



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I have also seen bows on Greek vases that could be described as "whip ended":

[RyanY]

It is true that whip tillered bows are more efficient at putting energy into the arrow but this certainly is not the end all be all as evidenced by the flight records with more stiff tipped bows. Higher energy storage, lower hysteresis, and low limb vibration seem to trump the efficiency of whip tillered bows. That’s my understanding at least. Can you provide evidence of the bone laminations? I haven’t seen that other than to enforce nocks.

[Tom Dulaney]

It is true that whip tillered bows are more efficient at putting energy into the arrow but this certainly is not the end all be all as evidenced by the flight records with more stiff tipped bows. Higher energy storage, lower hysteresis, and low limb vibration seem to trump the efficiency of whip tillered bows. That’s my understanding at least. Can you provide evidence of the bone laminations? I haven’t seen that other than to enforce nocks.

A lot of these flight bows look rather whip tillered:





As for sources on the bone plates see "Xiongnu archaeology" by Brosseder and Miller (2011) and "One bow is not equal to another" by Rumschlag (2018). The Xiongnu were the first to do it, their siyahs were a thin wooden core with two bone plates glued to the sides.

[PatM]

Bone is not lighter than wood.  Plenty of composites did not have bone plates and worked just fine.   There's also the whole fossil record thing but I'll let that slide.

   Whip ended  bows seem to make sense when compared to an actual whip or a fishing rod but bows don't quite work the same way.   

 Consider them like many other things that humans have done that seem like  a good idea but are not really.


 Don't let that  stop you from making them and convincing yourself that they are the best.

[PatM]

It is true that whip tillered bows are more efficient at putting energy into the arrow but this certainly is not the end all be all as evidenced by the flight records with more stiff tipped bows. Higher energy storage, lower hysteresis, and low limb vibration seem to trump the efficiency of whip tillered bows. That’s my understanding at least. Can you provide evidence of the bone laminations? I haven’t seen that other than to enforce nocks.

 
 Lots of siyah bone plates have been found  but many composites did not have them, including the ones thought of as the best performers.

[Tom Dulaney]

Bone is not lighter than wood.  Plenty of composites did not have bone plates and worked just fine.   There's also the whole fossil record thing but I'll let that slide.

   Whip ended  bows seem to make sense when compared to an actual whip or a fishing rod but bows don't quite work the same way.   

 Consider them like many other things that humans have done that seem like  a good idea but are not really.


 Don't let that  stop you from making them and convincing yourself that they are the best.

Bone isn't lighter than wood but it is far stiffer relative to weight. So a very thin bone plate can be added to a thin piece of wood, and produce a siyah that is stiffer and and lighter than a thicker, all-wood siyah. After the Xiongnu started putting bone plates on their siyahs, everyone started copying them and the concept spread all over the world, and endured in Mongolia for over 1,000 years.. Before that however, nobody wanted a stiff outer limbed bow.

Later composite bows skimped on the bone plates, but had different quirks -- the Korean bow was unusually lightweight owing to its bamboo core and short siyahs, and the Manchu bow was unusually large and fired massive arrows at relatively low speeds. Turkish siyah wood cores are beautifully shaped and reinforced with horn and sinew.

[RyanY]

I wouldn’t consider that bow whip tillered at all. Bends very much right up into the fade.

Your examples for your argument seem to be more outliers than what is consistent with the records, flight shooting or historical bow examples.

[PatM]

Bone is not lighter than wood.  Plenty of composites did not have bone plates and worked just fine.   There's also the whole fossil record thing but I'll let that slide.

   Whip ended  bows seem to make sense when compared to an actual whip or a fishing rod but bows don't quite work the same way.   

 Consider them like many other things that humans have done that seem like  a good idea but are not really.


 Don't let that  stop you from making them and convincing yourself that they are the best.

Bone isn't lighter than wood but it is far stiffer relative to weight. So a very thin bone plate can be added to a thin piece of wood, and produce a siyah that is stiffer and and lighter than a thicker, all-wood siyah. After the Xiongnu started putting bone plates on their siyahs, everyone started copying them and the concept spread all over the world, and endured in Mongolia for over 1,000 years.. Before that however, nobody wanted a stiff outer limbed bow.

Later composite bows skimped on the bone plates, but had different quirks -- the Korean bow was unusually lightweight owing to its bamboo core and short siyahs, and the Manchu bow was unusually large and fired massive arrows at relatively low speeds. Turkish siyah wood cores are beautifully shaped and reinforced with horn and sinew.

 The Mollegebet was stiff tipped.....   Bone plates are a good  idea on weak wood siyahs   but there's plenty of bows after your supposed dates which did not have them.  None of the three well preserved specimens recently examined had them.

 In short your theory is  not a good one.

[bownarra]

Bone is not lighter than wood.  Plenty of composites did not have bone plates and worked just fine.   There's also the whole fossil record thing but I'll let that slide.

   Whip ended  bows seem to make sense when compared to an actual whip or a fishing rod but bows don't quite work the same way.   

 Consider them like many other things that humans have done that seem like  a good idea but are not really.


 Don't let that  stop you from making them and convincing yourself that they are the best.

Bone isn't lighter than wood but it is far stiffer relative to weight. So a very thin bone plate can be added to a thin piece of wood, and produce a siyah that is stiffer and and lighter than a thicker, all-wood siyah. After the Xiongnu started putting bone plates on their siyahs, everyone started copying them and the concept spread all over the world, and endured in Mongolia for over 1,000 years.. Before that however, nobody wanted a stiff outer limbed bow.

Later composite bows skimped on the bone plates, but had different quirks -- the Korean bow was unusually lightweight owing to its bamboo core and short siyahs, and the Manchu bow was unusually large and fired massive arrows at relatively low speeds. Turkish siyah wood cores are beautifully shaped and reinforced with horn and sinew.

I'm sorry but the assumptions you make about hornbows are wrong. I KNOW for a fact that perfectly functional outer limbs can be made with just wood. The core is what gives hornbows their shape Fading the horn out on the belly will give better performance. Wood at around 0.65 sg or horn that is less stiff and 1.3sg......No need at all for bone....The outerlimbs only need a little sinew on the back and require no horn or indeed bone plates on the belly/sides at all. Wood is stiffer than both horn and sinew.
When you say 'whip tillered' I think you actually mean elliptically tillered.
Why do you think that a bamboo core is lighter than a wooden core? It isn't. The bamboo used is actually quite dense....
Is it just because they are beautifully shaped that Turkish bows do not need bone plates?
At the end of the day we don't actually know why bone plates were used extensively BUT they were not needed to lighten outer limbs.....wood alone will provide the stiffness without any 'excess' weight. No discussion needed on that point no matter what the historians say
If the historians had to make something to prove their hypothesis then there wouldn't be so many iffy at best theories around
That picture you posted is most certainly NOT whip tillered- it is elliptically tillered.  If I had a picture of a true whip tillered bow this would be a good time to post it

[Marc St Louis]

I've seen some old bows that were whip tillered and the outer limbs were severely chrysaled