American style Longbow ? Not Howard Hill Design.

[stickgunner]

Gentle Men, Can Anyone Help me with the claim that Howard Hill designed the American style longbow/HH longbow? Everything that I have read in Howards Books he does not claim to have designed this bow?

[ChrisM]

I never read where Howard said that he invented the American Longbow.  Trying to pin down who did would be like trying to pin down who invented the recurve.  I know that Hill did patten the CC/CV cross section.  Now Hill did put some of his flare into the bow and of course made it famous.  As far as Hill Syle bows they all differ according to the particular bowyer.  Basically they are a bow that is flat, backset or string follow.  No RD.  Next it is long with a short riser.  Also cut from center not to or past.  Is this clear as mud?  

[stickgunner]

Thank you. I was visiting a friend and he had an older HH and it was made in the late fiftys or sixtys and the bow had a trapezoid to the limbs.
Very narrow limbs and three lams of bamboo. It had a old HH water decal.
 Do you happen to know if the trap was due to keeping the cross section of the bow to the D style cross section of the bow?

[ChrisM]

Well a true D cross section is how an english style longbow is made.  Nowadays people say D style refering to how the bow looks braced.  Part of the American lonbow is the fact that it has trapezoid limbs in cross section.  I think that David Miller is still the only Bowyer makeing the CC/CV cross section due to the time and skill needed to do it right.  When howard started producing bows he ended up going with Trapezoid.  Now Howard himself didn't make a whole lot of the bows.  He had several bowyers that he taught that made them, John Schultz being one of the most famous.  So there are variations to the bows even though they were made the same year.  Just like the Bear bows as materail improved the designs changed.  If you want to see what a real CC/CV cross section go to  http://bamboolongbows.com/.

[Orion]

Hmmmm.  I'm thinking that leaving the bamboo in its natural shape, i.e., concave/convex might have been the expedient way to build a bow in Howard's day.  To flatten the bamboo would have required additional milling and probably reduces the overall strength of the bamboo a little.  Though they probably had the capability to do it in Howard's day, it would have added time and cost to the construction.  On the other hand, I have no idea how much hand work might have been involved in working with the natural shape of the bamboo. Using slats/laminations close to the finish size without milling would have been the easiest, I suspect.  Looking at the substantial thickness of the laminations in some of those early bows, it seems that's what was done at least some of the time.

[2treks]

In using a CC/CV cross section, you are removing the softer fibers from the inside of the culm,leaving the stronger power fibers to do the work in the bow limb. I would have to say that building the cc/cv cross section would be the most dificult of the two methods.

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