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Main Boards => The Shooters FORM Board => Topic started by: NoCams on March 04, 2007, 10:11:00 AM
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HI Guys,
Just finished watching History Channel on Egyptian composite horsebows and another bow that almost looked like a Shrew ! They claimed these bows could shoot 300FPS and were selfbows with horn nocks and leather composite limbs ? I say that is a crock, what say ye ??? By the way, the strings looked like they were about as big as ship mooring lines, haha !!! The show's host also made the statement that he was shooting a reproduction of an original and that it was not as good as an original. He was saying that we could not make a repro as good as the old bows, ( speed ). I find all this hard to believe ? :confused:
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I just watched that! AMAZING 18 Month Cure Time for a Composite/Horn/Sinew Bow!! :scared: And there was Hardly ANY Movement in that Bow when he Released that Arrow. Amazing, King Tut had a Fine Collection of the Bows Too. Not that they were doing Him any good at the Moment. :rolleyes: :goldtooth:
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Lucas Novatny (Saluki) made one that was very nice ~ really a work of art. I don't know how fast it was but he mentioned that with light arrows some of the ancient bows might have shot 300 fps. That seems incredible but I wouldn't be surprised if they went in the 220 range.
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I started laughing when I saw the title to this thread. Back in about 1996 I started a thread on the Bowsite, kinda picking on the techie-wheenies that were trying to trick their bows out to reach 300 FPS which wasn't common bak then, that 300FPS had been reached hundreds of year ago by a recurve! I recall one hot-headed techno-wheenie really getting his shorts in a bunch over this!
We know from history that some Turkish sultan shot an arrow over a thousand yards (I don't remember the exact distance at the moment). If you make an assumption of arrow mass and assume that the arrow was shot at 45% which will give maximum distance, and do the math, you will see that the velocity would have had to have EXCEEDED 300 FPS!
It took some of the more braniac guys to figure the math. So it all come down to history and math says it can be true!
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And then there was a fella caller 'Icarus' wasn't an archer but a neat tale...................
we shouldn't expect truth from media anyway-it would spoil the story!
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Keep in mind, CHRONOGRAPHS were new technology back when the Pharoahs ruled, so don't take that 300fps claim as fact . . . those arrows may well have been in the low 290s.
Mark
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Those bows could have possibly shot 300 fps with tiny flight arrows but I doubt they could with any kind of effective war arrow. I did not realize how tiny flight arrows could be until I saw some in the Fred Bear Museum. The arrow,not the point, but the entire arrow weighed 75 grains!!
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Cool...I watched a show on Indian bows they hunted game with...about 35# maybe.. :)
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He was saying that we could not make a repro as good as the old bows, ( speed ). I find all this hard to believe ?
I tend to believe that. And also that the old flight bows shot over 300 fps....Van
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Guys,
I understand that you can get lots more speed with lightweight arrows, but how did they keep the bows from blowing up ? I have been taught that you do not go below 8gr per pound even with our modern glass bows or you risk the chance of blowing up a limb ?
nocams
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what would the draw wieghts have to be to be able to shoot that fast!?!??
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Adam Karpowicz has done testing on Turkish bows in the 100+ lbs of draw weight and with flight arrows, 300fps seems reasonable to hit. You only need 2.3-3gr/lb to hit that speed.
http://atarn.org/islamic/Performance/Performance_of_Turkish_bows.htm
With a 203 gr arrow, he hit 357fps with a 125lb hornbow.
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Van,
What is a flight bow ? Is this where they shot bows at the sky and just showered the infranty with arrows, like in the movies ? What string materials did the Egyptians use ? How could they get that speed with strings that looked like ropes ? Again, if they shot light arrows to get that much speed, then how did the bows hold up ? I am from TN, but maybe my kin were from Missouri, " The show me state ", haha
nocams
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didnt use somthin like sinew for thier strings???
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Most likely linen strings.
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You can't believe everything you see on TV
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NoCams: I believe that they can't make a reproduction bow as good today as they could back then. Their bows back then meant a lot more to them than just something to do for fun like they are now. A warriors life would often depend on his bow. I think I recall hearing somehwere that if a warriors bow snapped in battle he would be beheaded. Mind you I'm in no way an expert or anything on this stuff, this is all stuff I just picked up in passing.
The workmanship that went into those bows was incredible. The 18 month curing period was to allow the hide glue and sinew to fully cure. Sienw DRIES much faster than that, but it CURES over a long amount of time. A sinew backed selfbow will continue to gain a bit of weight (just a bit mind you) over several months. Those bows were under so much pressure that regular glue lines would not hold it all together. The glued surfaces were grooved in mirror images so the glue would have a greater surfave area to attach to. The grooves looked kinda like this on one face, and the opposite on the other: /\\/\\/\\/. If I remember correctly the limbs were wrapped at several points along their length. I guess this helped hold them together.
Remember I'm just an information junkie, rather than an expert in anything.
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Wish I could have caught that show. Sounds like a good one. Yes Luke, I've also heard it was VERY important that the bows stayed together in combat. The bowyers for the Mongols would be killed if the bow broke during battle. I suppose that would give you a good incentive to take your time! It does seem hard to believe that these bows wouldn't explode from the high stress on the limbs from the low flight arrow weight, however, some of these contained horn for a belly material which may have helped. Just my own 2 cents. Grodes
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Was there any indication that the archery portion of the program was overseen by a recognized archery expert?
TV shows with a claimed historical basis may contain a statement that WWII infantrymen carried x-number of BULLETS --- not cartridges or rounds --- into battle. Now, how can you take anything seriously from such a segment?
I remember reading of Civil War sharpshooters who, it was claimed, routinely picked-off the enemy at ranges of 700-800 yards and more. (Complete and utter nonsense with weapons of that era.)
Is it hard to believe that this program included some reckless figures?
Mark
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300 fps? Not impossible at all. You can get that kind of speed from a longbow. Just depends on how much weight ya wanna pull.
Here's an old Popular Science Article stating that Howard Hill shot his 800 grain arrows at 300 fps.
Article (http://staf.trinitylongbowmen.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001361#000000)
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HOW POWERFUL WERE THE MEDIEVAL LONGBOWS?
Unfortunately, virtually no bowstaves from the medieval period have survived. So how do we know how powerful the bows would have been? Some evidence can be obtained from the arrows, which have survived. Because the 'archer's paradox' demands that a particular bow needs an arrow of suitable spine (stiffness) then by measuring the properties of a medieval arrow we can estimate the strength of the bow for which it was designed. When these calculations were done, the answers were almost unbelievable. They suggested that the force needed to draw a medieval longbow could have been in the range 110 to 180 pounds (500 to 800 Newtons). Although these figures are astonishing, they have been confirmed by calculations based on the bows found in the wreck of Henry VIII's ship Mary Rose, which sank in 1545. It seems likely that in 1415, when archery was at its peak in England as a technique of warfare, bows would have been no less powerful than in 1545, when archery was already beginning to lose ground to firearms
Reproduced from Physics Review January 1995 by kind permission of the author and publisher and republished in InSight, the Stortford Archery Club Newsletter, Issues 5 & 6, Summer and Autumn 1995
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On the same token....
I saw a show on the history channel called "Barbarian Tech". They were comparing the composite Hun bow against a longbow with a chronograph. The recurved composite shot at 107 fps and the longbow at 99fps. Both speeds are way way low.
They never mentioned draw weight or arrow weight. Nothing. They just shot them both through the chrony one time each and concluded that the recurved composite was faster. That particular recurved composite may well be faster than that particular longbow, but that was a piss poor test at best.
Then as mentioned, they claim 300fps on another show. I laughed out loud. Now we know how cops feel when they watch some dramatic shoot em up crime drama.
I don't doubt that the Hun bow design is faster in general. But I think that much more extensive, accurate tests have been done with the English longbow. Its time they put the Asiatic recurve under the same microscope.
I don't see 300fps though. Not with arrows heavy enough to do real damage against armored men.
BUT...maybe real damage wasn't the idea. Maybe psychological intimadation from very long distances was the main goal. And since they were horse mounted, maybe they used different weight arrows...some very light ones fired from extreme distances to get the enemy ducking and disoriented and wondering how they could shoot that far, while they charged in on their horses quickly to fire heavy damaging ones on the next volley. Then they run away on their horses. Who really knows?? 300fps is possible with very light arrows. And while very light arrows don't do well against armor, they would do well against the psyche. Especially when you could charge in on a horse and take advantage of the disorientation.
The tatics they used could very well have given an illusion to the real world speed of their bows.
At any rate, I think when you couple powerful short bows with horses, it can become very dazzling. Thier bows COULD have even been slower than the English longbow but their tactics COULD have made it seem otherwise.
Thier bows were made for horses. That's why they were short and recurved. I don't really think they set out to defeat the straight limbed bow in terms of power, they set out to defeat it in terms of military tactics. And they in so doing, they just might have beat the straight bow in terms of power, but not by as much as some of the tv shows would lead us to believe.
Just some other things to think about.
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Hey Todd,
I don't know how reliable that article is either. It claims Hill "has, on oc-casion, driven such an arrow entirely through the body of an infuri-ated 1,000-pound black bear as it lunged straight for him." 1000 pound black bears :scared: I've never heard of them that big. It was a good read though and thanks for sharing it. Matt
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Hey Matt...come out to PA or NJ and we'll be glad to show you some 800lb plus'rs...where I live, they are the norm,200's/300's but in those states, they kill em that big every year...several... :scared: you ain't kidding :scared:
I agree with ya on the article and with others regarding the lack of science, understanding, whatever that some of these shows use.
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Whether 300 fps is a real figure or not, who knows. I don't believe for a minute it isn't or wasn't possible. Glass backed bows have been around for about 70 years and can easily obtain speeds over 200 fps. Those folks were building bows and arrows for thousands of years and had to rely on them for their survival. You can bet they learned a little something over all that time.