About bows

1. Olympic Round:

Discipline being performed while shooting at stationary paper target faces from distance of 70 meters on a flat archery range. In Olympic Games only recurve bows with sights and other additional equipment (Olympic bows) are allowed.

2 .Qualification Round:

Discipline being performed while shooting at stationary paper target faces from 4 distances:

Men: 90, 70, 50 and 30m
Women: 70, 60, 50 and 30m

Targets are of descending size for shorter distance respectively. For compound bows distances are the same.

The bow is one of the most ancient weapons, which is beleaved did appear at the junction of Mesolithic and Neolithic era, somewhere about 10 -12 thousand years ago. The bow shortly could be described as a mechanism, which operates by a spring and string principle. By pulling the string (bow string), potential energy is stored in the spring (bow limbs). While released, this energy turns into a kinetic energy (with some inevitable energy loss). Released energy of the spring, when it tries to come back to its rest position, is transfered to the arrow to be lounched. The more power you need to apply for string bending (spring is harder) and the longer is the way (the draw length of  a bow is bigger) when this force is applied, the greater velocity will be corresponded to the arrow while it leaves the bow. There is a question: what is a top material for such a spring to make? This material must be tough and, so this means that its density mustn’t be too great and it must withstand as much as possible bending cycles. The best modern material is fiberglass and carbon-fiber combination, while in ancient times the material of choise was only a natural one. Wood was mostly befited material for simple bows. Later and more sofisticated bows were reinforced: the internal side (belly) with glued on bone, antler, later – horn laminations, and back was reinforced with layers of sinue. The sort of wood depended on trees available in a given region. In some regions the material of choise was bamboo which is not wood but grass, or in some special cases – Damascus steel.

Historical shapes of bows:

a) straight

b) straight with horn tips

c) with two bends

d) asymmetric

e) with double tip bend

f) with four bends

g) triangular

h) triangular with the grip

Historical bows:

Primitive bows:

Early Egyptian bow

English longbow

Danish bow (Holmegaard bow)

North Native American short bow

Amazon Native American long bow

Indian steel bow

Pigmy bow

Composite bows:

Mongolian bow

Chinese bow

Korean bow

Russian bow

Indo-Persian bow

Hungarian bow

Hun bow

Skythian bow

Turkish bow

North Native American composite bow

Inuit bow

Japanese Yumi

Assyrian triangular bow

Modern bows:

Recurve bows:

Recurve (Olympic) bows

Modern traditional bows:

Recurve bows (Field bows)

Modern longbows (American flatbows, semiindian bows)

Compound bows:

With cams on the top of limbs.

With cams on the base of limbs.

PRIMITIVE BOWS

So called primitive bows are historical bows, made of a solid homogenous material; mostly of single branch of a tree, or carved from splited trunk, when heartwood part is left for bow’s belly, and sapwood or the white – for the back.
SHORT BOWS

Short bows are such primitive bows, which length is up to 1,5 m. Their efficiency due to short draw length was low. They wer good enough for hunting, but on the battle field were pushed out by longbows and composite recurves. Arrow, casted from short bow (regardless their poundage) barely reached 100 meters distance.

LONG BOWS

These are primitive bows, which are over 1,5 m and up to 2 m long (sometimes over 2 m). their length allows to draw bow string more – to the face (this is important for more precissin in auiming) or to the ear. The longest arrow flight distance could reach long bow is 340 m.

ENGLISH LONGBOW

It is supposed that English intercepted longbows from Welch, who used such bows both for huntingg and war against invader of British islands: first Saxons and later Normans. Welch bows were man height long, which is equal to both hands span. They usually were made of elm or ash wood. Longbows were most widelly applied during Hundred Yars’ War (1337-1453 m.). The best longbows were made of yew, which was specially grown in England. But the best quality yew was from Itally an Spain. The shape of longbow is wery simple: it is the stick, which gradually tapers from the center towards both ends with notches for bow string. Later, because yew wood is soft, were introduced more solid notches cut in glued on cow horn tips. The seccion of most english longbows was D shape, where the flat part is on the bow’s back side and round part on the belly. According to extant longbows, elevated from sunk XVI century Mary Rose ship, the poundage of English longbows was from 60 to 180 pounds (27 – 81 kG). However it is not 100% clear if all of them are finished bows or just billets to be shortened and thinned in future.

STEEL BOWS

Steel bows formally are primitive bows – they are made of single homogenous material. The steel is Wootz steel (Damascus steel). Such bows were mostly used in XV – XVII century India. Their shape repeats the shape of asiatic composite recurves, and thay could be of similar characteristics. Usually they were richly decorated with engravings and inlays. Such bows were used used by nobility.

COMPOSITE BOWS

Composite bows, as a general rule, consist of wooden (or bamboo) core laminated with two horn strips (for each limb) on a belly side. Limds are short and flat, at the ends there are stiff curved syah’s, whish are glued in. Wooden grip is glued i the middle and all details on the back side are covered with bundles of sinue. Bow then is covered with birch bark (lacquered silk threads, leather, pergament, silver foil) to protect it from moisture and excessive drying out. Such bows because of their construction are about 30% more efficient than longbows. Greater arrow velocity is obtained by using several times more compression and tension resistant materials. Therefore deformations of bow’s belly and back materials store more energy required to cast the arrow. As a rule – limbs of such bows are bent outside (away from the belly side), some of them so much, that unbraced bow in rest position is of C shape, or even forms the ring. This creates (when braced) quite greate primal tensuion of the bow string. To brace bow of such extreme reflex is impossible without a special device. The syahs of the bow serve as acclerators and play the same role as cams on cam bows, i.e. they allow to draw the bow more, and at the miment of shot they sharply decrease the effective operating length of the bow string, herewith increasing it’s velocity. These constructive emprovements allow high deformation of bow’s limbs no primitive selfbow would withstand.
In Central Europe – Hungary composite bows are found at X century burials and are the result of longlasting contacts with their allies – Huns. In Western Europe such bows appear (as we can judge from iconography) after first Crusades to Palestine. In so called Maciejowski Bible, dated to XIII century and richly illustrated with miniatures depicting daylylife of period France, we can se composite bows.
Bas-relief of capital from XIII century Prussian Marienwerder castle’s (now Kwidzyn in Poland) hearth collumn depicts Lithuanian warrior shooting with such bow. Most probably they could reach Lithuania from neighboring Rus lands and with here Tartars and Crimean Caraite settlers, later during war against Turks.
Exceptional are Japanese Yumi. They are sandwich glued from bamboo and some wood strips. Another distinguishing feature of Yumi is it’s asymmetry – their lower limb is 1/3 shorter than top limb.

In the picture we can se Chinese bow bracing with the help of teplik device (this is as well as syah is the Turkish term), though the bow of such small reflex could be braced without it. On the ground we can se another bow, second teplik jig and ropes used tu tie tepliks to bow limbs. Highly reflex dows were left strung for longer time. In the case of bowstring brackage during battle or hunt, such bow was impossible to string.

In the picture we can clearly see bamboo core with the crack (which was the cause of brackage of this bow) cowered with two layers oof sinue. At the bottom side (belly) – dark horn strip. Everything is glued together with so called fish glue boild from fish air-bladders (Sturgeon was the best one).

Turkish bow                                      Mongolian bow                                 Hun bow

Chinese bow                                                      Japanese Yumi

Assyrian bow

Compound bows wiyh cams at the limb base                  Compound bows