@Abu Troll al cockroachistan I imagine that if you could plot out a load of data you'd see there'd be a sweet spot as far as weight of projectile is concerned. And at some point the bow itself would need to be changed to be able to deal with higher projectile weight. I'd imagine that the historical upper limit for warbow arrows is the tip of the sweet spot - or at least near it. It should also be said that heavier projectiles retain energy better than lighter projectiles, so that's a good reason to go heavier.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan It could be that you would get more Joule from a 200g arrow at a loss of velocity, but remember the meassuring is done at only like 1m. And you will need velocity to get to the target.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan I just did a quick bit of reading because you caught my interest and I didn't see anything mentioned above 122g for the Manchu arrows, which is still big, don't get me wrong lol. I imagine there's a ratio of optimum draw weight to arrow weight that you have to approximately follow to be efficient, but dropping below and above that line might be worthwhile for certain tasks - but I'm sort of scraping at my knowledge of practical physics here lol
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan " 200g arrow [...], I'm sure it'll go slower but will it give more Joule" It still should give more energy. The energy is wasted in a shot on accelerating bow limbs and string. The slower the arrow, the slower the limb and string top speed, which requires less energy. But of course even with superheavy arrows, it will never go above energy stored value, it could only approach it.
Excellent. Good solid testing, no excess chat. Certainly dispels some of the bonkers ideas that get bandied about. "It doesn't matter where the Yew comes from as long as its decent Yew"... Hallelujah! I've been banging that drum for the last 20 years :-)
The majority of English warbows weren't even made of yew. There were laws limiting the ratio of yew bows bowyers were allowed to make so as not to exhaust the yew wood supplies. Only 1 out of every 10 if I recall correctly.
@@AcidAdventurer Ash, oak, beech, or pretty much any hardwood with good grain can be used. Yew isn't magically unique in being able to make selfbows at high poundage.
@colbunkmust Ash , oak and beech cannot make verry high poundage bows. Their tension/compression resistance is not enough , therefore, you would need to make a thicker , longer, and deeper bow to achieve normal results with a much smaller piece of yew. That extra mass you need to add will destroy the performance of the bow. Yew Is one of the best bow woods and it is what most warbows were made of , including ALL the bows from the Mary Rose ship.
Just stumbled across your video's and I'm glad I did. I've been trying to complete a longbow that my family bought me for my sixtieth birthday and I got stuck at the tillering stage as I didn't know exactly what I was trying to achieve. Your comment about arrow length and pull made it all make sense and now I can finish it. Thank you and you've gained a new subscriber
great demo & I think the bows/ your shooting really capture the classic English LB’s, shooting form & style .. it’s really a fantastic living history video. TY !
I just finished my first yew longbow. 80# at 29". Going to take it to the fields this week and see how far it shoots. I'm hoping for 190 meters. Great video. I love seeing this information.
great video Joe that not many people could have made. I was surprised how similarly thd bows were speed wise considering the great difference in poundage. more videos please.
So I subscribed to this channel due to the videos with Tod's ws and so far I'm not disappointing at all, all this channels are so damn good, better than TV
With draw strength like that you can rip someone limb from limb impressive man i’ve always considered myself really strong and I don’t even like pulling back an 80 lb bow props for sure. Take care and thanks for sharing
The whole formula is ASMR for me ears and eyes, ,your calm voice, your backyard natural sounds and of course the magnificent bows and their sounds. Cheers Joe.
Beautiful bows and nice shooting! What I like most about the ELB's is that they seem like trucks in that you can keep loading up the arrow weight and it hardly slows them down at all. Whats really interesting is that fact that there have been no flatbows found in the region around the time of the ELB's reign.
Well it might be because A. It’s damn hard for bows to be preserved. In fact the only Medieval English longbows that survived were the Mary Rose bows, B. The Mary Rose bows were probably ordered by the crown specifically for supplying the military so we actually don’t really know what someone’s private purchase would be like and C. Because of the D shaped design, more bows can be made from the same diameter of log, which is really important in supplying a large body of archer/people who don’t necessarily have the means to afford something like a horn bow
Many years ago when I was a member of the TBS. I had the opportunity to try the Mary Rose 2 approximation bow when a guy from Barnsley had it. It was a beast, like trying to bend a piece of steel. Nearly gave myself a hernia.
Holy hell - these crappy old bits of wood, which need an elephant to pull them back, are much faster than my modern glass recurve. Great respect coming from here!!
Wow! That’s a good workout for you,thanks for the information very interesting.I have an Italian yew bow I made with Ben Perkins and boy is it fast.it was a beautiful clean stave and would have made a 150+lb war bow,unlike you I cannot draw those type of weights anymore (I am 73) I have slimmed it down even further now to 55lb which I can manage and it is still a v fast bow..Thanks a lot for making this video it good to see the differences in different draw weight bows.
I’m only just learning about traditional archery, been shooting modern compound bows for a few years now. I have to say that I’m impressed by the speeds you managed to get out of these, but I’m equally surprised that there was such a small variance in the arrow speed given the difference in draw weights between the bows.
Hi thanks for the comments 👍👍. The thing is if you had 10 bows of 150lbs the all would perform differently. Some would be slower and some faster. It more then draw weight that varies the speed. Thanks joe
Hey man . Really interesting video. Can you please also do a video on keeping your strength up for shooting the big weight and how long you should rest and what not . Hello from Canada by the way , have a good one , stay safe . Cheers
Hemp, as you probably know already, has fibers that can vary in size, depending on its origin/growth/treatment. The longer, the stronger. Much hemp fiber research has been done around sailing archeology. It is actually quite predictable if you know its characteristics and potentially historical performance, but these are data that we dont usually have access to nowadays. Ps. superb to see this demonstration and I particularly liked your explanation on the hemp string, thank you!
It's not exactly the longer the stronger. If the fibres are short (less than a foot perhaps) then some of the fibres may slip past each other and not come under tension, exposing the remaining fibres to concentrated load and this is how it fails. As long as the fibres are long enough that slip doesn't happen meaningfully, the fibres will be fairly evenly loaded and past that point increasing fibre length should have no effect on strength of the string.
I've hunted deer for many years here in the states with a compound bow. The white tail deer is one of the most skitish and nervous animals on the planet. My bow shot a 29 inch arrow at 290fps. Even at this speed with modern silencing technology, deer can "jump the string". They can drop instinctively 18 inches at 30 yards on release. I've had it happen several times. Sometimes I've seen the drop and others It happens so fast it left me wondering where the deer went and how did I miss. Just imagine having that reflexive response and you were not even expecting anything.
@@Joegibbs-archery Not a lot of them but those who are interested in medieval history, war ammunition and weapon, usually make replicas of the most famous artifacts (as medieval knight armor, weapons and bows etc.) Ukraine has a couple of teams for the international knight tournaments\festivals. Some of those tournaments require archers' presence in a team. People who are interested in medieval bows and spotr\hobbie bow shooting prefer to buy replicas mostly manufactured abroad. But there are also people who are real masters in the bow-making and they do replicas with their own hands and in their own workshops. Unfortunately, most of them didn't reach the international level because there are many workshops abroad who are way more famous and popular enough to make competition with them not possible. But still, there are enough enthusiasts in Ukraine who have their workshops where they do a lot of medieval armor&weapon, English longbows included. If to google "buy Egnlish longbow replica in Ukraine" on Russian of Ukrainian language you'll find offers from industry manufactures (local and international) and offers from local workshops (some of them are knight-clubs, some are one-person-workshops). The price starts from 60$ to 150$. Arrows (Feathering of an arrow of 9 cm, the material of an arrow is pine, 8 mm in a base) 2-3$. I would share more info with details but all of it is in Ukrainian or Russian language. Feel free to ask any questions, will be glad to answer.
Those are screaming fast! My target recurve at about 49 pounds, 29 inch draw and 420 grain (27 gram) arrows are doing about 210 fps. I would have expected somewhat less speed for a selfbow but I guess those extra pounds of draw make up for a lot.
This guy is a damn beast to pull back 160lb to 200lb. shit I though my 80lb compound bow and 55lb recurve bow. make me feel like a 😿 🐈 LMFAO. Great job 👍 for accomplishing such a thing.
Yes, When they pulled up the bows from the Mary Rose at first they thought they must be unfinished bows as they could not imagine there could be so many men strong enough to pull a 160lb bow......until they realized these lads had been practicing at the butts a couple of hours a day since early childhood. The skeletons of the archers revealed they wee deformed through that exercise. See 'Longbow' by Robert Hardy. Longbow: A social and military history: Hardy, Robert
Yes, there’s nothing out there that does this in any depth, which is surprising bearing in mind how popular warbow shooting has become in the last 10 years.
Shane Emery Check out Justin Ma's channel, especially the video on bow shoulder setup. It's oriented towards a different type of bow, but the overall principles are the same.
Makes me think about my yew wood i have aging dont think I'll get half of what these war bows are! , but 80 I believe is the started for war bows . wish to have a collection like that someday Haha Thanks good video
I think it was Robert Hardy who on examining the Mary Rose longbows and getting estimates for draw weights wanted replicas made for this very test. If I remember correctly at the time nobody was found capable of drawing the heaviest ones.I think that was about 1990.
I used to shoot a longbow, snapped bicep tendon from boxing has me using a lighter horse bow at the moment, a type of bow we never had back when I was shooting in the past. I am sure many would be interested in comparing Eastern War bows with English Longbows, at proper poundages, not a decent comparison on CZcams, using traditional and modern arrows.
Hi joe Great vid as usual mate. Con you do a video of the technique of how to pull a warbow. Iv shot longbows for 11 years and wish to get into warbows
Impressive arrow speed Joe Crossbows of the time were maxing maybe 170 (sorry Tod) but then again different application i guess. thanks for sharing mate
Interesting that the FPS of these arrows are similar to modern recurve bows (300grain arrows out of a 45lb recurve at around 200 fps). Curious how Turkish bows performed with small diameter arrows, designed to go into small gaps of armour
About those Turkish bows, the size and the fact that they were composite bows might have played a big part in the weight of the arrows. They were speed monsters. Have you shot a composite warbow before? I'm not an expert 😁
Amazing research! Thank you. The 145# outperformed the 150# with all arrows. The 28in 60 gram did best of the arrows shot with the 125# bow in terms of kinetic energy. However, the 160# with the 75 gram hit hardest with 138.65 Joule. Keep it up!
A faster projectile will do more damage and will have more range. KE isn't that important assuming there's a difference in velocity between projectiles. If two different weighted projectiles travel at the same velocity then the heavier one will outperform the lighter one, but that's not possible with the same draw weight.
@@Turgz A faster projectile will not necessarily do more damage. It depends on the weight of the arrow and the shape of the arrowhead. Kinetic energy and secondary the momentum, determines how hard they hit. Fast arrows will, however, have more range and a flatter trajectory, so if you are shooting at lightly armoured targets, they will do the job. A heavy bow will shoot a heavy arrow slightly slower than a light arrow, but the kinetic energy and momentum will be higher, as demonstrated in the film. Thus it will do more damage to a person, especially someone wearing armour. There is a diminishing return in the transfer of the potential energy of the bow to the arrow when the weight of the arrow decreases. This is a well known fact, and this film demonstrate this very well. That's why Mark Stretton have shot 102 and 110 gram arrows at around 54.7 m/s with 140lb and 160lb bows. The kinetic energy on those were around 152 and 165 Joule. I depends on the purpose. Are you shooting at enemy archers 150 yards away or heavy armoured men-at-arms 80 yards away?
The 211.4 fps velocity Joe recorded shooting the 63 gram arrow from the 145# bow is a bit of a head-scratcher. If you look at the velocity results Joe got for all of his 30" draw length bows when shooting 30" arrows, and plot them according to velocity and arrow mass in grains per pound, it's a huge outlier. Based on the performance of the other bows, the predicted velocity I get for that arrow is 203.7 fps. That might seek to suggest that the 145# bow is just a better performer than all the other bows, but when it shot the 75 gram arrow, the 194.6 fps velocity Joe recorded was only slightly higher than the predicted velocity of 192.9 fps. The 1.7 fps difference between the predicted and the measured velocities puts the velocity of the 75 gram arrow well within the expected range of statistical noise around the predicted value, whereas the 7.7 fps difference between the predicted and measured velocities for the 63 gram arrow put that measurement several standard deviations above the predicted value. At least one anomalous thing must have happened to give that arrow a velocity that high (perhaps it just happened to have been particularly well tuned to that bow, for example).
@@Marmocet Yes, it might be spine, better release, incorrect weight or length measurement i.e. draw. But it might also be that this bow have a higher elastic modulus. It is after all made from a Swiss high Alpine yew stave. Or a combination of everything. One question. In the thread when you exchange information with Dragos Coco you gave this formula: f = F*(1.24*((d-B)/(D-B))-0.66((d-B)/(D-B))^2+0.42*((d-B)/(D-B))^3) Where: f = draw force at draw length reached F = draw force at maximum draw length d = draw length reached, where d>=0 D = Maximum draw length B = Brace height, where B>=0 What is 0.66 here? Is this the density? I know that 0.66 is the average density of European yew (Taxus baccata), but this number can be a lot higher. Oregon yew (Taxus brevifolia) have an average density of 0.63. Some of the Mary Rose bows had a density of 0.76 with a range from 0.53-0.76. Density is a calculation of weight in gram divided on volume. Volume is measured by displacement in a tube. Bow 81A1599 had a weight of 1091.5 gram and a volume of 1423 cc. That's a density of 0.76704. The problem with some of these calculations though, is that some of the bows had deteriorated badly so the weight is off by a large margin, so I would take the lower numbers in Weapons of Warre on page 626 with a grain of salt if you take a look. How does 140# at 32" and a 102 gram arrow at a 54.7 m/s turn out in your calculations? Also, how does a 160# at 32 and a 110.29 gram arrow at 54.864 m/s turn out? Those are recorded velocities and weights.
@@Marmocet Also, is 0.42 the density of the wood of the arrow? The average density of different arrow woods are: Poplar, grey 0.43 Alder 0.45 Ash 0.6 Birch 0.6 Oak 0.61 Hornbeam 0.65 (Page 626 in Weapons of Warre) The 75 gram arrow is oak: 03:20 Don't know about the rest.
Hi Joe :D first of all i wanna say, your videos are awesome! keep it up :D but i have a question. where can i get one of those hemp strings? or can you or someone else give me a little hint, how thick strings do i need to make one? thanks a lot already
I’d love to have enough ELB’s to have them laying about,I see fairly good form in your shooting. A wood bow is most powerful when you loose at the same moment it comes to full draw I’d bet they have a little more speed in them!
Nice comparsion! On a different topic, I don't know if you noticed but there have been some hubbub about using the med draw with the arrow on the outside of the bow and cradling the arrow with the thumb on the bow-stave. It would be interesting to hear your opinions about it, though with all the drama around it I understand if you are not interested.
@Socucius Ergalla potentially harmful? Yeah so is everything. There's nothing more inherently harmful in drawing a bow with a medi grip on the right at all. It's just different to modern convention, which some people seem to lose their minds over, which is both hilarious and sad.
It really looks like child play when you're shooting the heavy bows. Amazing! Thanks for the upload, very interesting👍. Just a question-how does the bows coop with the moister on the ship?
This is so cool! I'd love to start training warbow like this. Anyone know if those blunt heads are rubberized or metal? Or where to get the arrows/target setup?
The hemp strings are a bit of a revelation for me. I'm interested in primitive archery using all natural materials and I've had no success at all making strings from plant fibres, so I mostly use sinew, which can be hard to obtain. Any more information about them? Sources for materials etc?
Have you ever had to worry about damaging one of those bows upon string failure? I'd like to try making some hemp strings, but I'd hate to ruin any nice bows.
The arrow he used in the armour tests in the other video were 80 grams and he shot a 160 pound so about 9 gpp and they were going about 187 fps which is quite good.
Hello Joe, my apologies if this has been discussed in the past, but may I please ask who made your pacific Yew bow from the states ? Love the content. Thanks for all the stellar information.
11:15 Oh this is very interesting: 160 # bow with a 60 g arrow, works out to about 5.775 grains/pound. And I assume this is safely repeatable (+100s -- 1000s of shots) instead of a one-off? That ratio is well below the recommended minimums for many eurasian bows known for being able to shoot light & fast (8-12 gr/lb), not to mention longbows. So maybe HistoricalArchery shooting 282 fps w/ a 95 # Korean bow (Daylite Monarch) and a 31 g arrow is closer to what we ought to expect from premium fast bows; i.e. maybe the 170-190 fps we typically see on reviews of Eurasian bows are the result of shooting much heavier arrows than necessary. Because longbows aren't known for being fast, but these numbers hold their own with reviews of Simsek Turkish and Tatar bows.
Hi Joe. Do you ever steam bows into reflex? I've only ever seen pictured of MR bows, but many look to have lots of reflex. What do you think this would do to arrows speed? Have you tested that?
Can you publish the results as an excel sheet? You might also benefit from getting two cameras: one to film the instrument and one to film you. That way you don't have to break your rhythm to grab the camera between every shot.
Great stuff Joe; good solid hard information that we can all use delivered in a straightforward and clear way with no fluff - fantastic
did the energy calculations.
Bow 1. English yew 125lb at 28": 1; 113J 2; 111J 3; 112J
Bow 2. Pacific yew 110lb at 30": 1; 98J 2; 101J 3; 107J
Bow 3. Swiss yew 145lb at 30": 1; 127J 2; 131J 3; 132J
Bow 4. Pacific yew 150lb at 30": 1; 120J 2; 125J 3; 130J
Bow 5. Swiss yew 160lb at 30": 1; 128J 2; 129J 3; 139J
Arrow 1: 28" 60g
Arrow 2: 30" 63g
Arrow 3: 30" 75g
Nice good to have the data.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan I imagine that if you could plot out a load of data you'd see there'd be a sweet spot as far as weight of projectile is concerned. And at some point the bow itself would need to be changed to be able to deal with higher projectile weight. I'd imagine that the historical upper limit for warbow arrows is the tip of the sweet spot - or at least near it. It should also be said that heavier projectiles retain energy better than lighter projectiles, so that's a good reason to go heavier.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan It could be that you would get more Joule from a 200g arrow at a loss of velocity, but remember the meassuring is done at only like 1m.
And you will need velocity to get to the target.
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan I just did a quick bit of reading because you caught my interest and I didn't see anything mentioned above 122g for the Manchu arrows, which is still big, don't get me wrong lol. I imagine there's a ratio of optimum draw weight to arrow weight that you have to approximately follow to be efficient, but dropping below and above that line might be worthwhile for certain tasks - but I'm sort of scraping at my knowledge of practical physics here lol
@Abu Troll al cockroachistan " 200g arrow [...], I'm sure it'll go slower but will it give more Joule"
It still should give more energy. The energy is wasted in a shot on accelerating bow limbs and string. The slower the arrow, the slower the limb and string top speed, which requires less energy.
But of course even with superheavy arrows, it will never go above energy stored value, it could only approach it.
There's something so satisfying about seeing you shoot those heavy ass bows. I can feel the power that thing has.
This is Thrand! excellent video!
Excellent. Good solid testing, no excess chat. Certainly dispels some of the bonkers ideas that get bandied about.
"It doesn't matter where the Yew comes from as long as its decent Yew"... Hallelujah! I've been banging that drum for the last 20 years :-)
Well it appears 'Swish' yew is pretty swish 😁
The majority of English warbows weren't even made of yew. There were laws limiting the ratio of yew bows bowyers were allowed to make so as not to exhaust the yew wood supplies. Only 1 out of every 10 if I recall correctly.
@@colbunkmust what other wood reliably makes a selfbow in warbow draw weights?
@@AcidAdventurer Ash, oak, beech, or pretty much any hardwood with good grain can be used. Yew isn't magically unique in being able to make selfbows at high poundage.
@colbunkmust Ash , oak and beech cannot make verry high poundage bows. Their tension/compression resistance is not enough , therefore, you would need to make a thicker , longer, and deeper bow to achieve normal results with a much smaller piece of yew. That extra mass you need to add will destroy the performance of the bow.
Yew Is one of the best bow woods and it is what most warbows were made of , including ALL the bows from the Mary Rose ship.
Just stumbled across your video's and I'm glad I did. I've been trying to complete a longbow that my family bought me for my sixtieth birthday and I got stuck at the tillering stage as I didn't know exactly what I was trying to achieve. Your comment about arrow length and pull made it all make sense and now I can finish it. Thank you and you've gained a new subscriber
Beautiful bows
Loved watching them being loosed 👍🏻
Thanks the hard work 🙏🏻
great demo & I think the bows/ your shooting really capture the classic English LB’s, shooting form & style .. it’s really a fantastic living history video. TY !
I just finished my first yew longbow. 80# at 29". Going to take it to the fields this week and see how far it shoots. I'm hoping for 190 meters. Great video. I love seeing this information.
Great demonstration Joe, looking forward to the next one you mentioned at the end
great video Joe that not many people could have made. I was surprised how similarly thd bows were speed wise considering the great difference in poundage. more videos please.
Joe, you are a master at your craft.
Well, I don't know how I've landed on your site Joe but I'm glad I have. I'm hooked! I dont even shoot or have a bow.
So I subscribed to this channel due to the videos with Tod's ws and so far I'm not disappointing at all, all this channels are so damn good, better than TV
With draw strength like that you can rip someone limb from limb impressive man i’ve always considered myself really strong and I don’t even like pulling back an 80 lb bow props for sure. Take care and thanks for sharing
impressiv speed and beautiful bows!
you are one of the best pulling those strong bows...
Greetings from Germany to all of you who understand king Edward's wish and message.....
Wow, the strength needed to fire those bows must be incredible. fair play
he is english tho
Great work, lots of data from a range of bows, very good thank you.
The whole formula is ASMR for me ears and eyes, ,your calm voice, your backyard natural sounds and of course the magnificent bows and their sounds. Cheers Joe.
Beautiful bows and nice shooting! What I like most about the ELB's is that they seem like trucks in that you can keep loading up the arrow weight and it hardly slows them down at all. Whats really interesting is that fact that there have been no flatbows found in the region around the time of the ELB's reign.
Well it might be because A. It’s damn hard for bows to be preserved. In fact the only Medieval English longbows that survived were the Mary Rose bows, B. The Mary Rose bows were probably ordered by the crown specifically for supplying the military so we actually don’t really know what someone’s private purchase would be like and C. Because of the D shaped design, more bows can be made from the same diameter of log, which is really important in supplying a large body of archer/people who don’t necessarily have the means to afford something like a horn bow
Many years ago when I was a member of the TBS. I had the opportunity to try the Mary Rose 2 approximation bow when a guy from Barnsley had it. It was a beast, like trying to bend a piece of steel. Nearly gave myself a hernia.
Best description I ever seen for drawing a heavy bow... "nearly gave myself a hernia" 🤣 🤣 🤣
Great tests , love that first bow
Holy hell - these crappy old bits of wood, which need an elephant to pull them back, are much faster than my modern glass recurve. Great respect coming from here!!
Philip Sutton they were the 50 cal of their day.
Glass recurves are not very high performing.
@@Lost_Hwasal regarding longbows but horsebows which are laminated are faster but that's their design more than the material
@@Daylon91 Yeah, in my definite opinion, horsebows perform better than a longbow with the same draw weight or less.
@@Daylon91 "B-But muh 200lbs Welsh Longbow-"
Excellent. Really enjoy testing vids
Great job joe! Nice video
Wow! That’s a good workout for you,thanks for the information very interesting.I have an Italian yew bow I made with Ben Perkins and boy is it fast.it was a beautiful clean stave and would have made a 150+lb war bow,unlike you I cannot draw those type of weights anymore (I am 73) I have slimmed it down even further now to 55lb which I can manage and it is still a v fast bow..Thanks a lot for making this video it good to see the differences in different draw weight bows.
Great videos Joe! Thank you!
Wow. It looks like you put a string on a log and shot arrows off it. Man those are BIG bows! You make it look easy.
Goodness me, I thought this subject looked interesting but had no idea what a can of worms this subject is; so interesting.
This guy is straight up beast. What a lad.
Always an interesting watch
Great bows, and nice leg vise in the beginning
I’m only just learning about traditional archery, been shooting modern compound bows for a few years now.
I have to say that I’m impressed by the speeds you managed to get out of these, but I’m equally surprised that there was such a small variance in the arrow speed given the difference in draw weights between the bows.
Hi thanks for the comments 👍👍.
The thing is if you had 10 bows of 150lbs the all would perform differently. Some would be slower and some faster. It more then draw weight that varies the speed.
Thanks joe
Hey man . Really interesting video. Can you please also do a video on keeping your strength up for shooting the big weight and how long you should rest and what not . Hello from Canada by the way , have a good one , stay safe . Cheers
Hemp, as you probably know already, has fibers that can vary in size, depending on its origin/growth/treatment. The longer, the stronger. Much hemp fiber research has been done around sailing archeology. It is actually quite predictable if you know its characteristics and potentially historical performance, but these are data that we dont usually have access to nowadays.
Ps. superb to see this demonstration and I particularly liked your explanation on the hemp string, thank you!
It's not exactly the longer the stronger. If the fibres are short (less than a foot perhaps) then some of the fibres may slip past each other and not come under tension, exposing the remaining fibres to concentrated load and this is how it fails. As long as the fibres are long enough that slip doesn't happen meaningfully, the fibres will be fairly evenly loaded and past that point increasing fibre length should have no effect on strength of the string.
@@appa609 Thanks for the extra info. May I ask how have you come across it? What I know is from rope making for ships, but it isnt advanced.
Joe is an absolute beast!!
Really nice video. Congrats!
I've hunted deer for many years here in the states with a compound bow. The white tail deer is one of the most skitish and nervous animals on the planet. My bow shot a 29 inch arrow at 290fps. Even at this speed with modern silencing technology, deer can "jump the string". They can drop instinctively 18 inches at 30 yards on release. I've had it happen several times. Sometimes I've seen the drop and others It happens so fast it left me wondering where the deer went and how did I miss. Just imagine having that reflexive response and you were not even expecting anything.
Great video, Joe. Thanks for sharing your results.
Thank you for the video. Hello from Ukraine, where are a lot of people who are fond of English longbow.
Hello!!. Is there plenty of bow makers in the Ukraine?
@@Joegibbs-archery Not a lot of them but those who are interested in medieval history, war ammunition and weapon, usually make replicas of the most famous artifacts (as medieval knight armor, weapons and bows etc.) Ukraine has a couple of teams for the international knight tournaments\festivals. Some of those tournaments require archers' presence in a team.
People who are interested in medieval bows and spotr\hobbie bow shooting prefer to buy replicas mostly manufactured abroad. But there are also people who are real masters in the bow-making and they do replicas with their own hands and in their own workshops. Unfortunately, most of them didn't reach the international level because there are many workshops abroad who are way more famous and popular enough to make competition with them not possible.
But still, there are enough enthusiasts in Ukraine who have their workshops where they do a lot of medieval armor&weapon, English longbows included.
If to google "buy Egnlish longbow replica in Ukraine" on Russian of Ukrainian language you'll find offers from industry manufactures (local and international) and offers from local workshops (some of them are knight-clubs, some are one-person-workshops). The price starts from 60$ to 150$. Arrows (Feathering of an arrow of 9 cm, the material of an arrow is pine, 8 mm in a base) 2-3$.
I would share more info with details but all of it is in Ukrainian or Russian language.
Feel free to ask any questions, will be glad to answer.
If give a home to the little English yew. It's not all about poundage. Interesting. Thanks for taking the time to do the work.
Thanks for the video Joe Gibbs!
Another interesting video. Can you do an in-depth video on your technique on drawing heavy bows.
Nice video mate.
Those are screaming fast! My target recurve at about 49 pounds, 29 inch draw and 420 grain (27 gram) arrows are doing about 210 fps. I would have expected somewhat less speed for a selfbow but I guess those extra pounds of draw make up for a lot.
This guy is a damn beast to pull back 160lb to 200lb. shit I though my 80lb compound bow and 55lb recurve bow. make me feel like a 😿 🐈 LMFAO. Great job 👍 for accomplishing such a thing.
Yes, When they pulled up the bows from the Mary Rose at first they thought they must be unfinished bows as they could not imagine there could be so many men strong enough to pull a 160lb bow......until they realized these lads had been practicing at the butts a couple of hours a day since early childhood. The skeletons of the archers revealed they wee deformed through that exercise. See 'Longbow' by Robert Hardy. Longbow: A social and military history: Hardy, Robert
@@erepsekahs Adapted* not deformed. ;)
@@Hirdsmand
Tak skal du have. Et langt mere passende ord.
Great video Joe, can you mention the lengths of the bows as well. Cheers
Really good looking bows, have you put any thought into a tutorial on how to properly shoot?
Yes! Please! There's very little in the way of tutorials in proper form for shooting the heavy warbow.
Yes, please!
Yes, there’s nothing out there that does this in any depth, which is surprising bearing in mind how popular warbow shooting has become in the last 10 years.
Shane Emery Check out Justin Ma's channel, especially the video on bow shoulder setup. It's oriented towards a different type of bow, but the overall principles are the same.
ryddragyn Thanks.
Makes me think about my yew wood i have aging dont think I'll get half of what these war bows are! , but 80 I believe is the started for war bows . wish to have a collection like that someday Haha Thanks good video
I think it was Robert Hardy who on examining the Mary Rose longbows and getting estimates for draw weights wanted replicas made for this very test. If I remember correctly at the time nobody was found capable of drawing the heaviest ones.I think that was about 1990.
love your videos dude, really liked the armor piercing video with tod.
just out of interest do you have a physical job?
Awesome video, awesome bows... 👌🏼✌🏼
👍👍 cheers mate
@@Joegibbs-archery why don't you use silk for the strings would it not be stronger and less likely to stretch when wet
I used to shoot a longbow, snapped bicep tendon from boxing has me using a lighter horse bow at the moment, a type of bow we never had back when I was shooting in the past. I am sure many would be interested in comparing Eastern War bows with English Longbows, at proper poundages, not a decent comparison on CZcams, using traditional and modern arrows.
Incredible
Excellent
pulling a 100# plus bow back in no small feat ... amazing
Important video, nicely done.
Can you post the overall length, grip width and grip thickness of each Joe?
you are a legend.
Very interesting 👍
i am really f**king impressed.
Love it.
Interesting finger tab.
Hi joe
Great vid as usual mate. Con you do a video of the technique of how to pull a warbow. Iv shot longbows for 11 years and wish to get into warbows
awesome!
yiha thanks for sharing my friend!
greets from germany!
Beauty bows
Do you recommend anywhere I can find specific measurements for if I want to try and build my own English longbow?
I would be interested in seeing velocity readings from before and after a bow has been properly 'warmed up'.
Impressive arrow speed Joe Crossbows of the time were maxing maybe 170 (sorry Tod) but then again different application i guess. thanks for sharing mate
Interesting that the FPS of these arrows are similar to modern recurve bows (300grain arrows out of a 45lb recurve at around 200 fps). Curious how Turkish bows performed with small diameter arrows, designed to go into small gaps of armour
About those Turkish bows, the size and the fact that they were composite bows might have played a big part in the weight of the arrows. They were speed monsters. Have you shot a composite warbow before? I'm not an expert 😁
138J on last arrow. very nice bowstring
Amazing research! Thank you. The 145# outperformed the 150# with all arrows. The 28in 60 gram did best of the arrows shot with the 125# bow in terms of kinetic energy. However, the 160# with the 75 gram hit hardest with 138.65 Joule. Keep it up!
A faster projectile will do more damage and will have more range. KE isn't that important assuming there's a difference in velocity between projectiles. If two different weighted projectiles travel at the same velocity then the heavier one will outperform the lighter one, but that's not possible with the same draw weight.
@@Turgz A faster projectile will not necessarily do more damage. It depends on the weight of the arrow and the shape of the arrowhead. Kinetic energy and secondary the momentum, determines how hard they hit. Fast arrows will, however, have more range and a flatter trajectory, so if you are shooting at lightly armoured targets, they will do the job. A heavy bow will shoot a heavy arrow slightly slower than a light arrow, but the kinetic energy and momentum will be higher, as demonstrated in the film. Thus it will do more damage to a person, especially someone wearing armour. There is a diminishing return in the transfer of the potential energy of the bow to the arrow when the weight of the arrow decreases. This is a well known fact, and this film demonstrate this very well. That's why Mark Stretton have shot 102 and 110 gram arrows at around 54.7 m/s with 140lb and 160lb bows. The kinetic energy on those were around 152 and 165 Joule. I depends on the purpose. Are you shooting at enemy archers 150 yards away or heavy armoured men-at-arms 80 yards away?
The 211.4 fps velocity Joe recorded shooting the 63 gram arrow from the 145# bow is a bit of a head-scratcher. If you look at the velocity results Joe got for all of his 30" draw length bows when shooting 30" arrows, and plot them according to velocity and arrow mass in grains per pound, it's a huge outlier. Based on the performance of the other bows, the predicted velocity I get for that arrow is 203.7 fps. That might seek to suggest that the 145# bow is just a better performer than all the other bows, but when it shot the 75 gram arrow, the 194.6 fps velocity Joe recorded was only slightly higher than the predicted velocity of 192.9 fps. The 1.7 fps difference between the predicted and the measured velocities puts the velocity of the 75 gram arrow well within the expected range of statistical noise around the predicted value, whereas the 7.7 fps difference between the predicted and measured velocities for the 63 gram arrow put that measurement several standard deviations above the predicted value. At least one anomalous thing must have happened to give that arrow a velocity that high (perhaps it just happened to have been particularly well tuned to that bow, for example).
@@Marmocet Yes, it might be spine, better release, incorrect weight or length measurement i.e. draw. But it might also be that this bow have a higher elastic modulus. It is after all made from a Swiss high Alpine yew stave. Or a combination of everything.
One question. In the thread when you exchange information with Dragos Coco you gave this formula:
f = F*(1.24*((d-B)/(D-B))-0.66((d-B)/(D-B))^2+0.42*((d-B)/(D-B))^3)
Where:
f = draw force at draw length reached
F = draw force at maximum draw length
d = draw length reached, where d>=0
D = Maximum draw length
B = Brace height, where B>=0
What is 0.66 here? Is this the density? I know that 0.66 is the average density of European yew (Taxus baccata), but this number can be a lot higher. Oregon yew (Taxus brevifolia) have an average density of 0.63. Some of the Mary Rose bows had a density of 0.76 with a range from 0.53-0.76. Density is a calculation of weight in gram divided on volume. Volume is measured by displacement in a tube. Bow 81A1599 had a weight of 1091.5 gram and a volume of 1423 cc. That's a density of 0.76704. The problem with some of these calculations though, is that some of the bows had deteriorated badly so the weight is off by a large margin, so I would take the lower numbers in Weapons of Warre on page 626 with a grain of salt if you take a look.
How does 140# at 32" and a 102 gram arrow at a 54.7 m/s turn out in your calculations? Also, how does a 160# at 32 and a 110.29 gram arrow at 54.864 m/s turn out? Those are recorded velocities and weights.
@@Marmocet Also, is 0.42 the density of the wood of the arrow? The average density of different arrow woods are:
Poplar, grey 0.43
Alder 0.45
Ash 0.6
Birch 0.6
Oak 0.61
Hornbeam 0.65
(Page 626 in Weapons of Warre)
The 75 gram arrow is oak: 03:20
Don't know about the rest.
Great demonstration. Ever tried Nettle fiber for bowstrings?
Hi Joe :D first of all i wanna say, your videos are awesome! keep it up :D but i have a question. where can i get one of those hemp strings? or can you or someone else give me a little hint, how thick strings do i need to make one? thanks a lot already
I’d love to have enough ELB’s to have them laying about,I see fairly good form in your shooting. A wood bow is most powerful when you loose at the same moment it comes to full draw I’d bet they have a little more speed in them!
I have an unstrung bamboo bow I got from a friend, how would I know what the ideal string length is, in order to string it?
Well I see where all the yew has gone to.
Very interesting tests Joe, thanks for sharing!
What's the feeling when a natural string snaps on such heavy warbows?
Bit risky as there's a shortage of toilet roll at the moment!
@@mickleblade brilliant lol
Nice comparsion!
On a different topic, I don't know if you noticed but there have been some hubbub about using the med draw with the arrow on the outside of the bow and cradling the arrow with the thumb on the bow-stave. It would be interesting to hear your opinions about it, though with all the drama around it I understand if you are not interested.
The drama around this has been hilarious, sad and ridiculous all at once. It's just another way to use a bow, one of dozens!
Yes, would be interested to hear Joe’s views on whether this makes the slightest difference in the ease of drawing the bow. I suspect not.
@Socucius Ergalla potentially harmful? Yeah so is everything. There's nothing more inherently harmful in drawing a bow with a medi grip on the right at all. It's just different to modern convention, which some people seem to lose their minds over, which is both hilarious and sad.
Hi, like this one :) 10:13 sounds good
It really looks like child play when you're shooting the heavy bows. Amazing! Thanks for the upload, very interesting👍.
Just a question-how does the bows coop with the moister on the ship?
This is so cool! I'd love to start training warbow like this. Anyone know if those blunt heads are rubberized or metal? Or where to get the arrows/target setup?
The hemp strings are a bit of a revelation for me. I'm interested in primitive archery using all natural materials and I've had no success at all making strings from plant fibres, so I mostly use sinew, which can be hard to obtain. Any more information about them? Sources for materials etc?
Joe, where did you get the material for that backstop?
A voley of those would thin out a pack of pike men I'm sure. Down through the shoulder and out by the liver. Nasty stuff
Have you ever had to worry about damaging one of those bows upon string failure? I'd like to try making some hemp strings, but I'd hate to ruin any nice bows.
Are those the normal arrow weights you shoot from those bows? They seem a bit light, I've always aimed for around 10 grains per pound. Nice video!
The arrow he used in the armour tests in the other video were 80 grams and he shot a 160 pound so about 9 gpp and they were going about 187 fps which is quite good.
Yeah those are normal weights anything fro 63 grams up to 80 ish grams.
Do you ever shoot with the arrow on the right of the bow?
Great video! You don’t need to bring the camera in each time if people won’t take you at your word then that’s on them
Most of those archers had deformed and jacked up shoulders from shooting these bows.
There was a very interesting documentary on this where the carried out tests on recovered bows.
Hello Joe, my apologies if this has been discussed in the past, but may I please ask who made your pacific Yew bow from the states ? Love the content. Thanks for all the stellar information.
Hi all the bows are made by myself 👍
11:15 Oh this is very interesting: 160 # bow with a 60 g arrow, works out to about 5.775 grains/pound. And I assume this is safely repeatable (+100s -- 1000s of shots) instead of a one-off? That ratio is well below the recommended minimums for many eurasian bows known for being able to shoot light & fast (8-12 gr/lb), not to mention longbows. So maybe HistoricalArchery shooting 282 fps w/ a 95 # Korean bow (Daylite Monarch) and a 31 g arrow is closer to what we ought to expect from premium fast bows; i.e. maybe the 170-190 fps we typically see on reviews of Eurasian bows are the result of shooting much heavier arrows than necessary. Because longbows aren't known for being fast, but these numbers hold their own with reviews of Simsek Turkish and Tatar bows.
Hi Joe. Do you ever steam bows into reflex? I've only ever seen pictured of MR bows, but many look to have lots of reflex. What do you think this would do to arrows speed? Have you tested that?
the proof is in the pudding. thank yew
I really respect the work and research that lars does… but with joe; it’s just not speculation. This is the real deal
this just goes to show how important arrow tuning is to speed
hi Joe, i was wondering what is the length of your short english yew bow ?
How do these bows compare in speed and armour piecing, with other bows like Middle East bow??
Can you publish the results as an excel sheet?
You might also benefit from getting two cameras: one to film the instrument and one to film you. That way you don't have to break your rhythm to grab the camera between every shot.