I took a couple minutes to try and catch an arrow from my bow. With hand made bows you have to make your own arrows...this is because store bought arrows don't "bend" very well. With a longbow the arrows have to bend over the stave. If they're too stiff, the arrows will fly to the left. If they're too soft, they'll fly to the right. With some bows, like the victorian flatbow that I'm shooting here, have a wide stave to cross so the arrows have to flex a great deal to clear it propperly.  I had Diego, one of our yard hands, stand by some bales of hay and try and shoot the pictures as I shot over him.  It took several attempts for him to finally stand still long enough to snap a pic...I swear, some people are such wusses.  He couldn't quite get the flex in the pictures...well he got one but it was real fuzzy...but he did manage to catch a couple decent in-flight shots.



You can see just a little bit of flex in this picture, but it's already straightening out. It's enough for demonstration, though; that shaft, when still, is perfectly straight from tip to nock. The shaft has already crossed about half the distance to the camera (the shafts were flying about 6" the the camera's left).



In this pic the shaft is already realigned and flying true...though a little nose-heavy. I added this one mostly, though, because of the look on my face. This is what an archer looks like when one of his fletchings gouges a trench down the length of his left index finger. How archers of old managed to fletch arrows that didn't cut your hands to hell is beyond me.

Maybe they just wore finger guards. 

leather is the archers best friend

yeah I've usually got a glove on haha...finger's pretty stiff today lol.

Most of the time there's only a bracer...a leather gadget that protects your forearm from string.

Mak, get a high speed camera I want to see what kind of trouble you could get yourself in with one.

Yeah the arrow bending correctly is pretty much the whole thing.

Hey what's the draw weight on your bow? (I'm a wuss I shoot a 30 pounder. But I could probably shoot a 50 fairly decently, but have a lot less fun.)

I love the look of your bow Mak. I just have a pretty simple recurve bow with a milled aluminum grip and shelf, and I shoot carbon fiber arrows. (The aluminum makes it so I have a perfectly straight line for the arrow, so the carbon fiber critters I've got just pile drive into the target. It's kinda cheating...)

More shots please, especially of your arrows!

I'll put some more pics up after I get home.

The draw weight of the bow in the pics here is 50~55lbs.  It's a hand-carved red oak victorian flat bow.  It doesn't have much of a riser, though.  I don't like how the grip takes away from the bow's tiller so I kept it short and thin.

My other bow is another hand-made red oak piece, but it's an American longbow (the front and back of the bow is flat, where as an English longbow has a curved front) and it pulls just under 70lbs.

The arrow I'm using above...likely my BEST arrow...is a 3/8" poplar shaft 32" long.  I fletched it using a hawk's tail feather and sinew.  This particular arrow I shoot the most with my vistorian bow...no matter what I'm shooting at or the range, she hits where I want.  I shoot 7/16" poplar shafts 33" long with my longbow.  All the rest of my arrows are flethed with turkey feathers...none of them work as well, though.  I can't shoot storebought aluminum arrows because they fly pretty wild...not enough spine.  I can shoot most carbon fiber and fiberglass arrows, though.

Quote from: CirclesCenter on February 28, 2007, 10:48:22 PM
Mak, get a high speed camera I want to see what kind of trouble you could get yourself in with one.

Prolly stuff like this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wqhmeGikcno

^that was nutty cool

More: http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/high_speed_video/

That banana in the first one was annihilated.

The two feathered arrows are 30".  The vinyl feathered shaft is 28".  The one with vinyl I decided was flawed but I can't figure out how I came to that conclusion.  I think there's a bad runoff on the palm-side of the shaft...nothin says lovin like running a giant spliter through your wrist with 55lbs of force behind it.



This is my best 30" shaft.  This is the one IW as saying flies wherever I want it to go.  Hasn't let me down yet.  It's almost completely straight and it has a nice fired tip that'll punch through anything but steel.  Poplar has been a great material for this type stuff.



The other 30" shaft.  This one's spine is too light for the 55lb bow...I'm afraid to even try it with the 70lb bow.  Shows a bit of difference in the length.  This one, for some reason, also seems to be much much more effected by crosswind.  Dunno why...



The fletchings on my clothyard shafts (33" shafts...celtic yards).  I was really enthused about the blue and yellow one because I thought that it'd be really easy to find (I've lost over a dozen arrows).  The fletchings keep lifting off the shaft, though, and I can't quite figure it out.  I'm trying not to do the middle-wrap thing like with the hawk feathers because these turkey feathers are treated and a lot stiffer.  It'd stand out a lot more and twist the feathers.



This one worked really well, though...very happy with it.  It's a nice heavy, strong shaft and it flies consistant.  Shooting dense haybales with the 70lb bow, at 75yds this shaft drives through almost up to the fletching.  For reference, my 70lb compound bow using 750g carbon arrows, at 75yds I can only get about 20" of penetration.  Either one is enough to pierce bone.  A good fire-hardened tip and these would go through a shoulderblade without any problem (deer, for you wierdos).



I tried to draw it back full lol but couldn't get it before my batteries died.  I still got about 4" of draw to go but oh well.  33" shafts = pretty difficult to draw with a 70lb bow.  I'll never understand how it's even biomechanically possible that English archers could manage 36" full draw lengths.

If you are talking about English archers od old, battle of Agincourt and all that the answers is ten years training and practice which is why they were so highly valued as a military instrument. It also accounts for why the French used to cut off the two "bowfingers" from English and Welsh prisoners and the consequent "two finger salute"

There is still a law here requiring all fit men to practice Archery on Sundays. My Bro-in-law is lucky enough to live in a village with a central village green and they still do that on Sunday mornings. Might be a bit difficult in town though.........

training is something that cn allow you to pull a 180lb pound.  Training is not something that makes you the size necessary to have the draw length they did.  They had to be giant, giant men.

Quote from: Cal Price on March 01, 2007, 05:15:16 AM
If you are talking about English archers od old, battle of Agincourt and all that the answers is ten years training and practice which is why they were so highly valued as a military instrument. It also accounts for why the French used to cut off the two "bowfingers" from English and Welsh prisoners and the consequent "two finger salute"

There is still a law here requiring all fit men to practice Archery on Sundays. My Bro-in-law is lucky enough to live in a village with a central village green and they still do that on Sunday mornings. Might be a bit difficult in town though.........

There was a PBS special on this not too long ago, they found after examining the remains of archers from those days they almost all had deformity of the spine because of the tremendous torque from pulling those things. Pretty crazy. Also explains where the saying "a bolt from the blue" came from... a bolt being a steel-tipped shaft who knows how thick but pretty devastating, and also arriving with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

http://www.addictinggames.com/bowman2.html

There was a good play-by-play of a crucial battle too where the enemy made the mistake of bottling up and the outnumbered archers pretty much pwned them all.