I'm a long way from an expert on the subject, but I thought one of the distinguishing features was the length of the draw? That is to say, the long bow was designed to be drawn back to the ear, while most bows had been made to draw to the cheek. The advantage of the short draw was that you sighted right down the arrow (handy for hunting), but the longer draw lets you fire a heavier arrow, which allows it to punch through armor better and which also holds its momentum better over long flights. (If I'm recalling my basic physics properly, for the same draw you don't get any higher arrow velocity, aside from issues of portion of the energy into the arrow rather than the bow, and I think the long bow actually comes out ahead of a short one that arcs back more when drawn in this regard, even assuming a short simple bow could arc enough for the ear draw)
I'd assume it takes more practice to shoot accurately from the ear draw position, but when you are firing en masse at a couple of thousand attackers you don't need pin point accuracy anyway.
Anyway, I don't think Odaylans would use a long bow--not practical in the bush! Also you don't need that heavy fire power for most things that you are hunting.
he
> height of the archer plus a fistmele was traditional (the fistmele
is
> the distange from thumb-tip to the heel of the hand when making a
> 'thumbs up' gesture - it's also the ideal distance from bow to
string
> when strung).
>
> But I like and agree with the rest of what you say I'll let it go
at
> that :-)
>
> Wulf (I really must get my 60-pound yew longbow back out again
> sometime...)
Powered by hypermail