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Find out More - Medieval Arrows*
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- Опубліковано 14 сер 2024
- Arrows vs Armour 2 NEEDS YOU! - www.kickstarte...
Medieval Myth Busting - More Detail. This film looks at medieval longbow arrows, specifically the ones we used to conduct a series of tests that are shown in here.... • ARROWS vs ARMOUR - Med... . It will make more sense if you watch the main film first and then return to this one.
The contributors are all world class in their fields of expertise.
Joe Gibbs - Archer and bowyer
Will Sherman - Fletcher - www.medievalarr...
Kevin Legg - Armourer - www.plessisarmo...
Chrissi Carnie - Fabric armour - www.thesempster...
Dr Tobias Capwell - Arms and Armour Curator, The Wallace Collection
Tod Todeschini - Host - www.todsworksho....
www.todcutler.com
Find out more about the battle and the armour in these companion films.
The battle • Find out More - The Ba...
The armour • Find out more - The Ar...
Longbow
160lbs (73Kg) mountain yew English Longbow based on those found on The Mary Rose (sank 1545). Bow was shooting 80g (2.8oz) arrows at 55ms (180fps) at 10m, giving 123J and 52ms (170fps) 109J at 25m
Distance 10m 25m
11yds 27yds
Speed 55ms 52ms
181fps 170fps
Energy 123J 109J
91ftlbs 80ftlbs
Arrows
The first arrow type we used was MR80A764/158. The diameter at the shoulder was 12.7mm (1/2”) tapering to a nock of 8.5mm. Total length was 30.5”
The second arrow type was MR82A1892/9. The diameter at the shoulder was 12.9mm (1/2”) and the nock was 7.5mm. Same total length.
The shafts were black poplar (Populus Nigra) and ash (Fraxinus Excelsior).
Fletchings were swan, bound with silk into a beeswax, kidney fat and copper verdigris compound.
Heads were wrought iron, copied from MoL Type 9 7568
Arrows weighed 80g (2.8oz)
If anyone is interested there are 24 arrows in a sheaf. The price of 1 sheaf of arrows in the 14th century varied between 10p and 18 p (from crown purchases). While an archer earned about 3p a day.
Henry V had several campaign of gathering goose feathers "six feather from every goose"
Nobody escapes the war taxes!
And the feathers for each arrow had to be from the same side of the goose.
Adam Koncz I would warn against the 3 penny a day wage archers would earn more through the gathering of spoils and most of the English army had horses not for combat but for movement an archer who had his own horse was paid more
@@wargey3431 They could gather more from spoils when there sere spoils which wasn't always the case.
Anyway it gives a comparison.
An archer got 3p day that is in similar level as craftsmen like weavers.
However an infantry man got 8p a day and they had the same share of the booty.
@@adam-k Werent the infantry men of a higher class than the archers, with higher equipment costs tho?
Editor here: My Apologies for the re-upload. There were a few edit issues in the last version and a bit too much repeated information so this is a new version.
@Stephen Thomas thank you.
Production values look pretty good to my amateur eyes.
Agreed, amazing quality.
Agree that this edit is better, thanks!
This series is one of the best things I've ever watched on UA-cam or any other media.
This makes me really appreciate my aluminium arrows with their silicone fletching. I was thinking that arrows were like the cartridges of their time but they’re more like the rockets for a bazooka with how much they’d cost to make.
This bought the cost perspective into the equation. Very absorbing. Thank you.
This mini doc is so good you can make a whole series of medieval myth busting, package it up, and sell it as a DVD.
What? Just DVD? No VHS? Beta? Laser disk?
...And the amazing thing is he is uploading it here, for anyone and everyone to access, for absolutely free no cost to the viewer. UA-cam and modern dissemination of information is incredible when you really think about it.
UA-cam has kind of replaced DVDs. When was the last time you bought a DVD?
It's amazing what they've accomplished, but I really think we're past due for anti-trust folks to get involved.
I'm starting to sense a gradual build up to something big but I hope knowing the UA-cam demographic it builds quickly and has a dazzling climax
Shad and Metatron did a response to this videos. I'm waiting for Skall and matt to do that also. And than, Tod will probably have 100K new subscribers he deserve
I'm just a beginner at archery, and I haven't seen a great many arrows. Still, these are by far the most beautiful I've ever seen. Toby was right about those smaller arrows being used against him, I see why he respect these ones. Having seen only other tiny arrows all my life, these substantial ones give me a new level of respect for historical archery. It's like a .308 (7.62x51mm)!
Absolutely the finest examples of bodkin arrows I have ever seen, Will! Impressive! I've been an avid archer and archery enthusiast for over 40 years now. My Dad first started teaching me the bow at age 9. So, I've loosed a few arrows in my day. :) But, my arrows are far lighter than those 80 gram beasts! Wow! Awesome job!
I wish i found this channel years ago , i used to make longbows for fun with very limitid information and feeling like i was the only person doing it.
These videos make me want to get back into it and start fletching and make my own crossbow.
Thank you tod and company thank you all
Imagine the chastisement from trainers back in the day when archers in training missed and lost or destroyed an arrow even in practice.
That shot at 3:25 looked amazing
Very good show. Really high quality production. So good to see. I'm guessing not all men in an army of thousands would have had that top of the line plate armour? Devastating weapon even if it couldn't go through the breast plate,, lots of horse flesh and lighter armoured targets to hit.
Almost all should have at least a breast plate.
your right but the french famously chose not to use their crossbowmen and light troops at Agincourt, there would have been variation in the quality of the armour used but everyone who fought on the french side would have been wearing a lot of it.
if you are doing more armor vs arrows can you do some tests with the
"armored" object at 45 degrees to head on, not all targets would have
been staring the archer in the face
They would do that with most of the armor parts.
I really enjoyed this as well as the actual test video. One of the things I found myself wondering about is this: Is there any data on how many archers there were on the English side at Ajencourt and an estimate of how many arrows they put into play. It seems that if the arrows weren't effective they would not have been using them so maybe they were less likely to be targeting center mass and going for horses and extremities. You wouldn't have to kill a soldier to put him out of the battle. A shot to the foot or the arms or shoulders would take them out of action. Having their horse go ass over tea kettle would also mess up a knight's plan of action and if the rider survived the horse fall then the cavalry guy becomes a heavily laden foot soldier. It would be interesting to investigate how effective horse armor was at deflecting arrows, but then again, the horses were not and could not be fully covered so lots of meaty targets there.
I'm pretty sure there are accounts of the french knights being worried the arrows would penetrate them from the sides of their armour. Which only makes sense to me. Why would you target the strong parts? I suspect the archers wouldn't be shooting straight ahead but rather shooting on a 45 degree angle.......left shoots right, right shoots left so all the arrows are preciseley hitting the enemy from the sides. Obviously this angle would change depending on the range they were shooting at but it seems perfectly logical to me. Aiming at head height would also be a pracitcal option since taking one or two hits to the head, even without penetration might be enough to just knock the rider out for a second or daze him enough for him to fall from his horse or even just confuse him for a few seconds causing chaos in their charge formation. You also talked about horses........a horse is a far larger target from the side than straight on so it seems logical. Anyway, if the knights were worried about hits from the side.......they must have been taking hits from the side.
I think there's way too much emphasis here on the 'price', and, on the notion that given 'the price', it was important to "make sure the [arrows] are going to hit something" when they get where they're going. This also just happens to play into the modern anti-arrow storm argument pushed by one of the people featured in the video. Yes, arrows would have been a serious expense at the time, but so too are rifle projectiles and artillery shells in the modern age. In Vietnam, for example, the US military calculated that something like 70,000 rounds were expended for every enemy combatant killed. That is a hell of a lot of money, at a guess about $25,000 per enemy soldier. And this would be small change when compared to the cost of the larger calibers. My point is, ammo expenditure (be that arrows or bullets) is a inescapable cost of warfare. Suggesting that arrows, or bullets, would only be expended if there was a high probability that they would hit a target, just doesn't correspond with the realities of the battlefield.
Where's the video about the bow though?
Agreed! Need one of these in depth videos with Joe Gibbs!
@@davidm1563 Don't worry, we've got more with Joe!
The bow is obviously important but the “technology” is the modified human that uses it. I want to see him in an x-ray machine or at least with his shirt off in slo-mo taking a few shots. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not into guys but he is a pretty amazing specimen of a man so I certainly couldn’t be faulted if I was. I absolutely love the “awkward” looking posture he presents when shooting which shows the sacrifice of accuracy for strength in a “weak” 160lb bow which he can shoot “all day”!!! Obviously a 100lb bow in his hands is Robin Hood accuracy but the tremendous power required does limit this. I’d really love to see him give what for with a 200lb bow!
@@mchernett it would be excellent to see more of his shooting. Why does he arch his whole body into each shot. Why did they shoot flat? How would a mass of archers aim? Especially the third or fourth rank...
DATING HARLEY QUINN wow, I’m actually not too surprised. I use a certain group of muscles in my very physical work and that has changed with my work in trades. Some people can tear coins in half but can’t pick up 150lb bag of gravel from the ground. I have seen concrete workers hustle wheel barrows of concrete near to 500lbs across 2x6 planks seemingly effortlessly but they couldn’t hold a piece of drywall over their head for more then a couple hours before fatigue sets in and they become useless. (Obviously not continually, but intermittently.)
Impressive. Really objets d'art.
Yes, they are dart objects. LOL!
I can’t help but imagine some archers had their own “special arrows” for specific situations. Now for sure they probably weren’t that different from the arrows being issued. As an ex-soldier I know of many such examples some legal and some not so much. I was given orders to pass down to my sergeants for example to ensure the enlisted did NOT sharpen their bayonets as this was a symbolic gesture of war, (except when this was an inevitable conclusion). They were forever making the men dull their bayonets on curbs and even occasionally smashing the edges with hammers. And of course don’t get me started on modifying ammunition which is a very serious military and political statement and potential long prison sentence due to “laws of warfare”. Of course not all countries adhere to these laws and so often we would find such ammunition as well as many other modifications. Soldiers are soldiers no matter the time and we train/program/brain-wash them to be so, (I’m not politicizing such matters but merely pointing out facts).
I got kinda raked over the coals about carrying an additional bow, (I know of soldiers who did carry extra guns, typically indigenous firearms who’s report wouldn’t attract undo attention). But for sure special ammo, would likely be made/modified. Mine is a real world experience that on paper seems ludicrous especially considering a second rifle weighing 8 or more pounds seems stupid when often we cut our 1oz toothbrushes in half and cut off extra belt lengths and the like but indeed these things do happen and I suspect they did happen then with standard bows being around 160lbs and some archers carrying a second bow of different weights perhaps lighter even for special purpose. But yes, definitely “special” arrows.
@@john-paulsilke893 Standard bow for shooting the supplied ammo and lighter bow for faster shooting perhaps.
Yup, maybe ancient machine gun for peasants and auxiliaries plus perhaps some individuals with 180lbs bow for heavy auxiliaries with chain and hauberk armour? I know soldiers and whilst I carried my pistol because I was required to as an officer I also definitely carried my non-mandatory rifle and thought about leaving the stupid useless pistol in my locker along with the useless magazines. I would definitely have carried a spare FN in 7.62x39 if allowed and traded it around to share the weight as that would have been useful.
Special arrows... Explosive arrow, sleeping gas arrow, boxing glove arrow, water vial arrow to extinguish torches...😁
I can think of barbed, not barbed, some maybe covered in feces for the guys you really don´t like or maybe a quiver for expensive arrows (knights only) and and another quiver for the cheap arrows (peasants only).
Do you think a more aggressive twist in the fletchings would counteract a wide broad heads tendency to steer the arrow, would be an interesting test
This is so cool! He preserves and explores part of human history with this and he can even live from it
Did they ever cap arrow points as used in AP shot and shell ? Also in naval shot, in 19th century, they developed a Palliser shell where they they heat treated the tip of the shell by quenching the cast shell tip in water .
Yes, they did. By the time plate armour began appearing on medieval battlefields, we see orders being placed for arrows with heads "hardened" or "tipped with steel". By the time the battle of Agincourt took place, arrowsmiths were legally required to furnish arrowheads that were either made of steel or that were case hardened because it was recognised that wrought iron was generally too soft to bite into steel plate, which is exactly what proved to be the case with these wrought iron heads in this test.
I also wanted to suggest, that perhaps not all of the soldiers shot the same quality of arrows. Weren't a lot of the archers in some of these battles and wars conscripted from the local populations? didn't a lot of these soldiers/archers make their own bows and fletch their own arrows?
Crazy how much work went into these disposable objects.
Having now watched these videos about the battle, the armor, and the arrows, I am curious to see how the arrows A> do against modern Kevlar armor, and B> since they were being shot forward with a flat angle with significant punch, I'm curious to see what the maximum distance/strength is and if the accuracy can be maintained over longer distances.
And people say, arrow spine didn't matter in medieval time. May be that wouldn't be as perfect as it's today, but it did matter. They might not have technology as we have today, but they had same knowledge as we do. So, basically arrows can't be shot back if draw weight doen't match. Arrows won't just fly straight.
I suspcet it was - Does it shoot well? If yes slimmed right, if not spine lighter or heavier
I've heard of composite arrow shafts being part ash, birch or poplar with the last six inches of the shaft before the head being grafted oak, or even made entirely of Oak, a much heavier wood. Presumably this was to increase hitting power. Forget the source, but I'm sure I read it in a 1970's archery textbook. I think it was quoting Roger Ascham's 1545 work on Archery. Can't be sure though.
Could we have a couple of shots from the side like you would stand if you were also shooting an arrow back at your enemy?
That's impressive, it doesn't take me nearly as long to work the shaft down. It's been a great series guys. I'm starting to wonder what sort of effect they'll have on knights with really low quality armour...
Knights , people that were born into the gentry and knighthood, wouldn't be that poor.... that would been low ranking men at arms or a wealthy burgher that would wear muntion grade plate
I suspect the big question is how quickly and widespread was the adoption of great bacinets, gorgets and armets among lower ranking armsmen. Look at that first shot in the main video, Aventails aren't gonna do crap to stop that.
@@jaybluff281 They mentioned how incredibly loud it was from their distance. I imagine that even if a helmet wasn't penetrated, the person inside would be reeling and possibly broken cheekbones or other small facial bones.
@@jaybluff281 I considered that "miss" just as informative as all the "hits". But yeah, aventails would offer minimal protection against such war arrows.
@@jaybluff281 Early armets had short mail collars attached, dog cone like gorgets had been around for a while but the mail avential and mail collar never really went away because being able to turn your head quickly is super useful. Solid plate defenses, unless really well designed, limit your ability to turn your head. Knyght errant has a video on this subject.
*Relevant and Supportive Comment*
Very proud to say I own one of his arrows beautiful piece of work great to shoot.
Actually, arrows will not always be shot for the corresponding poundage of the bow.
The reason is that in the battlefield, you don't have the luxury to choose your arrows and have to take what you have. Here my reasoning.
Even if you standardize somewhat the bows of your troops, it will be something like ‘This unit use bows that are easier to draw than this one, and this one will use bows that are harder to draw than this one, the rest form a reserve’.
I’m not saying that they couldn’t have ways to measure precisely the poundage of a bow, but I don’t think you can have the luxury to do anything better as far as bowmen unit’s organisation is concerned: it will slow down the original organisation of the units, and if the unit loose men, they need to reorganize the unit. Even then, sometime it’s not the men who die but the bow that just break, and, again, he won’t be able to choose the poundage of his new bow.
Let’s be frank: they won’t transport tons of documents registering the poundage of each bows just for that, and all of that would mean slowing down the whole organisation while increasing it’s complexity and the number of people needed to run it, meaning that it increase both the cost and the odds of problems happening in the organisation.
Also, even if you bring fletchers on the field, they can't be as precise as in their workshop as they have to use limited tools to make in a very limited time a lot of arrows.
Even if they were as precise, the arrows will most probably transported in bulk when on the move and distributed as fast as possible when on the field, since archer can only transport so much arrows themselves.
So, what would all of that mean for the archer? A bit more precision, but not at a game changing level. Would that really worth the price? I don’t think so.
Just found your channel and subscribed. Thank you for the great history you provide.
An interesting and thought provoking video.
Metal of any kind during the medieval period was a great deal more valuable because of it's much lower availability verses what we have today. Add in the time and effort for the rest of the components to be gathered and processed plus the arrow smiths and any decently made arrow would have been a whole lot more valuable that what was mentioned in this video. Only a guess, but Will very likely produces much better quality than what was an average back then. So they were probably produced at a bit faster rate than he can. It still would have cost a huge amount just to fully equip a sizeable army.
When you consider the price and man hours that go into producing arrows, you would expect accuracy over rate of fire. A mad minute style shoot of aimed shots would be good to see, you could work out the time it would take to burn through your supply of arrows or even if you would have time to fire them all before you had to get stuck in and give the enemy a bollocking. We all know the myth of slow moving armoured knights, he's going to cover 50 yards pretty quickly on foot. The damage to Will's arrows shows that many would not be recovered after the battle, war can be an expensive undertaking.
I imagine that logistics was of more immediate concern that ordinance cost. Obviously you don't want to waste shots but I don't think it's quite at the level of don't shoot at anything you can't hit.
Great series you have here.
I find it had to imagine that a single fletcher would be responsible for an individual arrow from the bough to the bow.
In an industrial production line each part of each process would be farmed out to someone paid per piece, so that a mass production run would produce an entire batch of near perfect conformity.
Can you use the term myth buster without issues? Just asking. Nice videos, thanks.
As long as it's not the trademarked one word "Mythbusters" I don't think there's a problem with using the words myth, and busting alongside one another.
What's the purpose of the verdigris in the fletching compound? Is it just for colour?
Pesticide. Bugs eat feather
What about the thicker in the middle arrow design? Did you ever get any of those "right"? Would they apply to this test?
I know the arrows didn't penetrate the plate armour in your tests, but through the the thinner side/leg/arm and especially throat armour it's surely got a chance, the spalling from the shaft on impact could cause a nasty wound I'm sure a 3 inch splinter in anyone's neck would slow them down 🤢
Or any part of their body really!
That's what I found most fascinating about the jupons. They acted like a flak jacket reducing the amount of energetic splintering.
no doubt it was this experience which led to the innovation of the V shape and the jupons. remember it was the French that commonly used the jupons and it was the English which used the longbow.... I wonder if there's any correlation between the two.
Would the efficiency actually change if you treated the wood in any way? Would be interesting to see what would happen if you made it more durable, flexible or used lacquer. Or is it inevitable that the arrow bursts on plate?
I have no evidence that medieval arrowsmiths or fletchers did this, but they had the materials to do so, so they could have: a wood object like an arrow shaft can be strengthened substantially by gluing a paper skin around it. The glue causes the paper to expand while it's wet, then it contracts when it dries, forming a high-tension jacket. You'd be amazed how much strength a thin sheet of paper can add. This is a little trick I learned doing model rocketry, where rockets have fins made of balsa wood that have to withstand wind speeds that are a substantial fraction of the speed of sound. The paper skin trick could have enabled arrowsmiths/fletchers to build smaller diameter arrows, which would have enabled the arrow to concentrate its energy on a smaller point and improve its odds of penetrating through plate.
The next thing that needs improving with these arrows is the arrow head. The sockets need to be longer so they distribute the pressure on the shaft over a larger area when the arrowhead strikes its target at an oblique angle to prevent the arrow shaft from snapping off at the socket's base as they frequently did in the test. Also, the arrowhead should be made of case hardened steel and its cutting edges should be sharpened. The business end of the arrowhead should be shaped like the tip of a phillips head screwdriver and the size of the hole it cuts should be large enough to allow the rest of the arrow to pass through it without touching its sides.
Iron, horn and feathers are all expensive, but England didn't have any silk production back then. That thread would have to be imported from the Italian states.
TVM for the edit!
Unfortunately while shaft content (WRT materials used) was now covered, the actual construction method wasn't :( Were they turned using (presumably portable or jury-rigged made-on-site) lathes (hand- or fooot-operated ofc) or were they simply adzed/drawknifed/rasped from suitable long-grained straight timber? (I'm assuming that the forces supplemented at least some ammo stocks while 'on the march')
FWIW I'd expect ash to outperform poplar slightly WRT breakage & knockback (poplar is surprisingly brittle, as is eg willow: both are less dense than ash) but a professional arrowsmith is much more likely to provide a correct solution than I :)
Check out Will's site. Loads of good info there. You could even book a course and he'll teach you how to make them!
www.medievalarrows.co.uk
Basic timber conversion at the time involved a big hammer and an assortment of wedges. Take a straightgrained log and split it in half, then split repeatedly into feather edged boards which in turn can be split into suitable sized blanks. Rough dressing with a drawknife then finished with some sort of plane.
Ash is definitely stronger but it is heavy. Ash shafts are or used to be available in 11/32 and at 80lbs I found them heavy, sluggish and they felt sort of dead when shot. Knocked about 20 yards of my mazimum range. Perhaps this is why there weren't many ash shafts found on the Mary Rose.
@@davidpowell5437 Tks for that reply; I'd completely overlooked the wedge method of basic boarding (hence my suggestion of adze). However I still feel that bow-lathes if not treadle would be utilised within an army of this size/strength: they're easy enough to set up & tear down, can be made on the spot from local (scavenged) materials if necessary (ie requiring effectively no transportation; the treadle version's components may require limited such, however) & don't take a full craftsman's skill lvl to use (ie may be operated by an apprentice, at least when blank-forming)..
Appreciate the headsup on ash vs poplar shafts too; I hadn't considered the extra density of ash WRT bow 'arming/knocking/drawing time' & consequential range drawbacks for the shaft's increased density, simply the brittleness of poplar vs armoured opponents..
Abouth the shaft, is it tapered? Not at the tip obvioussely but the whole shaft!?
How long were these arrows from the valley of the nock to the shoulder of the arrowhead? The length you list in the description suggests you're giving the arrow's length from the tip of the arrowhead to the end of the arrow shaft.
Thanks so much for this series of videos. I have seen other series do this very test with similar results. Since plate was obviously a superior defense against long bow arrows it must have been painfully obvious to the people of the time as well. This assertion begs the following questions: 1. Do we have any writing or documentation from the period that addresses what archers were supposed to do when faced with heavily armored knights? 2. Why would Henry the V create an army so full of archers if he knew their limited effectiveness against plate?
Very much enjoyed your video and gave it a Thumbs Up
Did they put any kind of light sealant on the shaft? You guys are doing a great job! Thank you
Are the feathers used ones that can be plucked from a living swan, that could be regrown during the next molt? Or does the swan have to be dinner?
I've used both. From geese I hasten to add! As long as you pick up moulted feathers while they are still "fresh" there isn't much difference. You'll be cutting off the most worn sections anyway. And of course you can find damaged feathers in both categories.
Thank you. I was thinking about plucking feathers from a still live goose, but picking up dropped feathers sounds easier.
@@mickaleneduczech8373 You are a braver man than I! Geese are quite stroppy birds...
More foolish than brave, I think. And now that I think about I've heard of swans pummeling people to death with their wings.
I've just watched this for the nth time (!) and the the arrow being shot at 3.20 caught my eye. Looking at the ground markers the range appears to be, say, 50m? The arrow is still visibly crabbing as it climbs out of sight although it appears to be flying straight as it nears the target.
It looks as if the arrow needs something close to 25m to overcome the initial yawing which is probably quite respectable - but it does raise questions about the nature of impacts at ranges of 25m or less. Is a square on hit what it appears to be from a side view?
great series, well done all :) top masters
This was a very informative video, and the question I have is the following. The arrows used on the last season of the "walking dead" where they made by you, because they look of excellent quality.
I really can't see the point in making the fletchings so secure when you are only going to shoot it once .!!!
I want to try to incorporate some of the information from your videos and incorporate them in my DnD campaign, so I have a few questions that would otherwise sound weird. Does weight of the arrow impact damage and range? Would waxing/greasing the arrowheads and shafts improve damage? Finally, would the craftsmen of the era have been able to make a 4-blade broadhead?
Another reason bows became replaced by guns... the cost of ammo.
What did arrows cost around the 15th century, for each type?
Swans and geese were trained as medieval arrow makers? The things we learn on Tod's channel. Sarcasm. Don't # or @ me.
“Dont @ me” must be one of the most obnoxious things to say. Its also a good way to determine if someone if mentally capable of having a conversation
"Don't octothorpe me" is an expression now? ;)
Given the cost of mass producing arrows, was it common for armies-or at least the archers-to retrieve spent arrows after battle?
I would be curious to see what these arrows would do to a modern IIIA ballistic panel
Such a great series. Many thanks to all involved. I have made a few dozen wooden arrows for 60 # bows, and I can tell you, it isn't easy. If one wants easy, one uses aluminum... so simple, so consistent .
How careful does one have to be with the spine of the shaft? +/- 10% ?
for a professional, very important. getting spine and weight within a tight tolerance will be the difference of getting a good grouping (arrows close together) or bad (arrows far apart)
long fletchings (feathers) can mask some spine error, but you also have to account for the fact that not every shot will be exactly the same either. you might pull back further on one shot and not quite as far the next. feathers can only "fix" so much before the arrow misbehaves.
@@x3roxide Yes, thanks. I was wondering specifically about wood shafts on very heavy bows, where I have no experience. When I set up aluminum arrows for Olympic style archers, it is very tight indeed (to the gram, using an electronic spine tester). We always shoot bare shafts to verify final spine / bow weight. If the final shaft and point combo fly straight without fletchings, they will be good when fletched.
@@RAkers-tu1ey pretty much exactly the same. I know someone who shoots longbow and the fletcher he uses makes wooden arrows with amazingly tight tolerances in both spine and weight per dozen.
however he pays more money for that bundle than an archer would pay for a dozen x10's cut and fletched. It can be done, but it's very expensive indeed.
with the arrows I made, I can usually get them with +/- 3 lbs of spine but the weight can vary a lot. I usually just spine the shafts and leave them un-fletched until I get a group of 6 within +/- 5 grains of each other.
fletch em up and enjoy them until they eventually break.
@@x3roxide Thanks. Yes, that was my experience with wood for the 60#. I had to go through a lot of shafts before I could find groups of 6 that were within 15 grains of each other when spined. I wound up adjusting lengths as much as 2 inches to get grain weight and spine consistent. It looked weird in the quiver, and of course wouldn't work with a clicker, but for a trad bow for hunting.... who cares?
I would venture to suggest that they would have been a lot more tolerant of arrow spine that a modern archer would suspect. Archers on campaign, while they may well have had a few carefully selected arrows set aside for when it really mattered, would, for the most part, have been shooting arrows from sheaves randomly handed down from a cart. These, or their components would have come from all over the country. How consistent do you think they would be? On the Mary Rose arrows of different lengths were found bundled together...
I'd love a quivver ful of those arrows. But I could never afford them. :-(
Fortunately almost nobody can afford plate armor. So you could prob get by with a sling and rock.
Love this stuff!
I posted this question on the other video but maybe it is better asked here. Could the arrow heads have been quickly spray painted a fluorescent colour to make them easier to recover on the ground? Or would that have affected the test in some way.
Can you guys try the same test but on a crossbow
What , the French Knights were dropped by the English Archers wile on the charge , the tips were bodkins not what I have seen here Archer that were with the king also fought in the Holy Wars you were not given a bow and you were now a Archer . I strongly dispute that they were pulling over 160 pound bows. So what we have seen here does not add up to every account of the battle from both sides.
You gotta admit, that the arrows are quite a bit pretty if deadly
Why not heat treated steel arrows heads same as the armor?
The armor was normalized. There are steels that can harden in air but medium carbon stuff makes a tool steel not. Normalizing is a step in heat treating that means to cool down something slowly so that the stresses in the steels caused by being work (ie being hammered or bent) are relieved, making the piece far tougher. It does not make it harder. So it wouldn't do much for the bolts, but is helpful for the armor.
To harden something you must cool it down quickly to trap the carbon within the austenitic crystal structure to form martensite. This requires a certain amount of carbon in the steel, which is why some of the tips were carburized. Carburizing is a method of taking a cheap, low carbon steel and making its outside edges harder by adding carbon to a thin layer on the outside.
Is Will Sherman the guy who makes heads for Tod's crossbow bolts?
Are the components of the compound used for fletching known from the Mary Rose examples?
Pretty much, but check out Will's site for more info www.medievalarrows.co.uk
The arrow didn’t penetrate but knights died that day , was the weak link the horse. Or the shear volume dismounting the knight?.
We may never know
I have to say, most of this is really great, but the "arrow whistling by" sound effect straight from LOTR kinda bummed me out. Arrows don't really make that noise, do they?
That might be the bow string snapping through the air
We've had a couple of comments on that, and it was a direct audio recording from the arrow itself. No effects!
What is the difference between a "Plate Cutter" and a "Bodkin" Arrowhead?
A bodkin is anything four sided and pointy. A plate cutter is the modern term for a specific type of bodkin, with heavy front end and diamond cross section.
@@MedievalArrows Thanks for the clarification.
If arrows were so expensive to make, how did archers practice their craft? Regular practice with arrows like these that are destroyed upon impact would have been extremely costly. Did they have cheaper versions of these arrows for practice?
There's some brilliant research conducted by Mark Wheatley into "practice arrows" - essentially they would have used wooden blunts, and shot into mounts of earth. The heads are the most expensive part of the arrow, and are dangerous enough to enable the citizens to rise up against the government, so they were strictly controlled. It also explains why virtually no metal heads are found within towns where you'd expect archers to lose them.
Practice arrows would have been much simpler, without the verdigris or binding (just fletchings glued to the shaft), horn nock inserts would have been replaced by making the nock itself larger (known as a bulbous nock) and the heads would have been simple turned wooden blunts. Lots of artwork depicts this, especially the Lutrell Psalter.
@@MedievalArrows Very interesting! Thanks for the detailed reply.
@@MedievalArrows Has this research been published anywhere yet? Love to read it if so.
Libertas Europe: Are you saying that you think archers practiced by shooting arrows into armor plate instead of packed straw butts?
@@philipwebb960 Of course I didn't think that archers practised by shooting at plate. But since I didn't know how they practised, I asked. And I'm glad I did, since I got a great response.
Hey, Joe!
Damn, that is a great beard
Assuming arrows optimized for a 160 pound draw bow what is the most powerful bow that will fire them effectively?
tl;dr I say 10lbs draw weight either side will work in my experience, but people who accept even less accurate arrows would be fine with more. It's subjective.
An arrow is "spined" for a draw weight, which means it's designed to be just the right stiffness for the draw weight. It's not the weight as the video says, but they're close enough in meaning in this instance as stiffness is directly correlated with weight and thickness in almost every case.
An arrow that is designed for 160lbs will not fire accurately out of a 200lb bow unless that bow is far more centershot (Has a hole in the center and shoots straight forward) or the head is far lighter. I would guess through my experience as an archer that there is a 10lb leeway more or less for a spined arrow without it becoming too unusable. This is subjective as different people will accept different levels of accuracy. As you can see at 3:36 the nock of the arrow tilts right when it comes straight out of the bow, which means that the arrow was too stiff for a 160lb bow. This arrow is probably more suited for a 170lb bow but it's obviously not horrible for the 160lb bow either. If an arrow's nock tilts right straight out of the bow, the arrow is too stiff, if it flies left then it's too flexible for that draw weight (on a right handed shooter, left handed people will be opposite.)
I would recommend you look up arrow spines and archer's paradox if you're curious why this is the case.
Maybe 175 lb bow. I used to work in archer lessons and repair with modern bows and materials, so I am just guessing when it comes to traditional would construction. Modern arrows of carbon and aluminum can function with and least moderate effectiveness without breaking, within 20 - 30 pounds outside the weight and drawlegth they are cut and specified to. I imagine that a wood arrow would be bit more finicky or delicate, but that only conjecture based on my experience with somewhat dissimilar construction and materials.
Given how close some of the hardened tip arrows came to penetrating an extra 10 - 15 pounds of draw weight might be enough to do the job especially if the average bow 170 rather than 160 pound used in the test.
Can you make a video on your stiletto or stilettos in general? Not much informations about this out there.
Всё логично. В Англии 15-16 веков каждая стрела стоила 1 пенни, и никто ими как в фильмах не разбрасывался. Лучники всегда старались собрать свои (и не только) стрелы после боя.
An hour an arrow seems quick
This fella uses black poplar wood for shafts. How does one derive that shaft from what source? (I am wondering if your standing there at a large wood lathe...) And.... Would a wooden dowel from a hardware work just as well?
generally the shafts would be cut from a block of wood into 1cm long rectangular shafts. Then they would be planned down using a shooting board. This is also to control end weight and ensure that the grain is straight and smooth. (dowels don't care so much about straight grain for a length of 32", but an arrow with off-grain might just end up splintering and jabbing your arm upon release)
what's only briefly mentioned in the video at 2:50 is what is called arrow spine. This is the amount an arrow will flex during flight after being shot through a bow. The more poundage the bow, the stiffer the spine has to be. The spine by supporting the shaft with 2 supports at 26" apart, a 2lbs weight is then hung from the centre and the deflection is measured in thousands of an inch, thus, the smaller this number, the stiffer the arrow.
Traditionally, cresting would also have been used (painting rings on arrows) so that an archer could just look at an arrow and know if it was appropriate for their bow.
also if he's going through the trouble of forging arrow heads and using traditional methods to glue the fletches (feathers) to the shaft, I doubt he's going to use a lathe or dowel to make the shaft.
@@x3roxide thank you. My ignorance is still pretty thick here, but you've def. got my brain going down a better direction. This just looks like something I want to play at. New hobby? 😁
@@imhigh0013 hobby which can turn into quite the obsession. I've done everything except make my own forged arrow heads. It's a great way to spend a weekend - and somewhat heartbreaking when you break an arrow which took hours to make. When I can't be bothered I usually use aluminium shafts - I like them more than carbon for the longbow since they are pretty close in weight to the woods. Carbons can be a little on the light side and therefor feel and sound too different.
@@x3roxide Really really difficult to turn anything so long and thin. A lot of wood prep back in the day (and continuing throughout the 19 century) was accomplished by splitting. Straight grained log sawn to length and split in half using wedges. Then split repeatedly along radii into what we would probably describe as feather edge boards.These would then be split again circumferentially into blanks which could then be finished by some sort of plane. I just rest my (sawn!) blanks in a groove on a board while planing. A reasonably quick process when you get the hang of it.
So They talk about hundreds of thousands of arrows for 7500 bowman. That´s morte than 10 per person, yet they shoot from 25 meters. I understand that is the effective distance but at the same time... your not shooting 10 arrows by the time knight makes 25 meters... not even in mud. So how many arrows are you actually expected to shoot over the course of one battle?
For some reason I always assumed they were using type 16 arrowheads
Bodkin points were used most frequently. They were cheaper to made, and had advantage of piercing the mail. Mail armor was used most widespread.
I don't think that type of arrow head was intended for use against heavily armoured men. Full harness aboard a Man of War would be suicidal.
It would be devastating effective against lightly armoured men & unarmoured seamen.
One of the problems we had with this test was picking a suitable head. There are hundreds to choose from, in various museums with all sorts of dating issues.
The reason I picked this one is because it's smack in the middle of the typology for the time period, and it's too short and heavy to have been designed purely for maille, and it has a strong diamond section so it must have been designed for plate - we just don't know whether it was designed for specific types of plate. It's also not as heavy and blunt as crossbow heads (which are often used in armour penetration tests and incorrectly labelled as arrowheads).
@@MedievalArrows My intuition is that arrowhead geometry optimised for penetration of plate armour would closely resemble the tip of a phillips head screwdriver. The four proud edges would be sharpened but their profile in horizontal cross section would be somewhat stout to give them the strength to withstand impact forces without deforming or snapping. Between the four proud edges, as with a phillips head screwdriver, would be valleys that incline upward toward the rear of the arrowhead, eventually reaching level with the four prominent cutting edges. The purpose of the four cutting edges would be to cut and initiate the formation of petals in the armour, and the valleys between the edges would serve as wedges to bend the petals backward. The diameter of the tip at the point where the cutting edges and valleys are level with one another should be the largest of any portion of the arrow so that the hole created by the tip is large enough for the test of the arrow to pass through it without scraping or rubbing against the hole's walls. Would this geometry have been achievable for medieval arrowsmiths?
If the arrow head is expected to pierce case hardened steel, it should also be made of case hardened steel, otherwise too much energy will be wasted in arrowhead blunting and deformation on impact. Surely contemporary medieval weapons testing would have revealed this. I would be surprised if it didn't also reveal that longer sockets made arrowheads impacting armour at angles other than 90 degrees less likely to snap off.
scuffed technique 3:25
All that effort and expense, for so long a period, convinces me of the long bow's effectiveness. Even Benjamin Franklin lobbied for bows to be used in the War of American Independence. allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/bows-and-arrows-pikes-and-spears/ Though, granted, in that period armor was very limited in use.
beauties
Klingon bat'leth please!
164th
I think they may have been mostly interested in killing the horses under the knights.
420 cavalry in the initial advance. (120 on one flank, 300 on the other).
With:
5000 armoured infantry. With another 3000 in the second wave immediately behind them.
Advancing towards 6600-7000 archers and 1500-1600 men at arms.
I suspect they might have been most interested in disrupting and wounding the infantry. But maybe I am confused about something?
"Need all your archers shooting the same kind of bow."
You know that they didn't. The estimates on bow weight on the Mary Rose vary between #80-#180.
They either specifically distributed arrows to the bows. (lets say by arrow weight) or they juts didn't care and "stiff enough was good enough". It is not like they understood the archers paradox.
The Mary Rose bow weight estimates are a big problem - since Bob Kooi did his formulas to analyse a potential range, that's been taken as gospel but it simply doesn't work. A number of us have been making accurate copies of the MR bows for years now, and they simply don't make 80lb bows, even with timber of a much lower quality than what they were using. There are a few examples of bows of about 80lb being made with exceptionally light, poor quality timber but it's so far from the original bow stave quality that the outlier isn't relevant.
From personal experience, I've made copies of some of the average bows using average quality English yew and even they have reached 175lb weights. Copies of the big ones (the slab sided ones in particular) made from quite good yew get well into the 190lb range.
On top of that, if you take an average Mary Rose arrowshaft profile, made using the correct timber (Black poplar or birch) and try and shoot it from an 80lb bow, it just doesn't work. It doesn't shoot properly, it doesn't shoot accurately, it will never travel a suitable distance and it will never have the energy required to deal the damage it's supposed to.
We believe now that the bows were much heavier than first thought, and the range is much tighter with 160lb being a good average with maybe 20lb each side, plus a few exceptions at both extremes.
If you get the chance to handle the original bows and look at them from the perspective of a bowyer or archer you'll see quickly that the weights were quite controlled - the more open grained bows were made slightly shorter to increase the poundage, the very densely grained bows were made slab sided to control the weight etc.
It's also a very dangerous idea to suggest that trained archers, using a weapon developed for over 1000 years didn't understand which arrows worked best. Give a crap arrow to any decent archer today and after one shot (or simply by flexing it in their hands) they'll know it's not right for that bow, and we know for a fact that arrows on the Mary Rose were not distributed to the bows - the bows were kept unmarked in chests, and the arrows were bundled in huge amounts of varying length and weight. This means everything was made standardised, and the only way that can work is if the weight range was much smaller than first estimated.
@@MedievalArrows
Well I bow before your expertise.
But not before I am making a few remarks.
So you have made exact replicas about the Mary Rose bows? Why dont you have videos about it?
Secondly I hope you continue this series with other tests. There are so many interesting questions about the English longbows and the question whether it can penetrate a plate chest armor is the least interesting.
So you have data about traditional longbow distance and speed on various draw weights?
How far can you shoot an 80g arrow with a #190 #160 #100 longbow?
The world record with English Longbow is 412m with a #100 bow but I dont know the arrow weight.
Is there a point for #200 bow if the arrows were standardized as you say. The way I see it the advantage is that it could shoot heavier arrows. But if arrows do weight the same then why?
For penetrating armor or other things which is more important arrow weight or arrow speed?
@@adam-k I will try to answer what I can.
"The world record with English Longbow is 412m with a #100 bow but I dont know the arrow weight. " - that would be a very light arrow - nowhere near the weight of this arrow.
"Is there a point for #200 bow if the arrows were standardized as you say. The way I see it the advantage is that it could shoot heavier arrows. But if arrows do weight the same then why?"
distance and penetration power. do you know what an arrow shot out of a 200lbs bow would do to a knights horse? probably go straight though it.
also, it's not about the arrow weight for good flight, it's about the spine.
a certain mass is required to ensure the limbs aren't stressed to much and break the bow (called a dry fire), however it's the spine which ensures the arrow flies straight.
using an incorrect spine arrow would be like using an incorrect caliber bullet. slightly off and it could produce unexpected results, be way off and it WILL be dangerous.
having too stiff a spine is safer than weak, because while stiff will mess your aim... weak can actually snap during release causing real injury to you and can even result in a broken bow.
"For penetrating armor or other things which is more important arrow weight or arrow speed?"
personal experience, arrow weight. Force = mass x acceleration. mass is more of a factor in determining the overall force.
in order to increase speed enough to compensate for the mass... we would have to go into super human strength. In general with my gear I've found that increase of 10lbs usually ends up with around 12 - 15 fps more or thereabouts - but that's with modern ILF bows - which are more efficient than the traditional longbow. add extra weight and re-tuning the bow tends to end up with more penetration from my limited testing at least. It's why hunting arrow shafts are generally much heavier than target archery shafts - because they have more oomph.
hope this helps.
@@x3roxide "distance and penetration power."
The problem is that the distance depends on the speed of the arrow. Therefore I do not belive that a #200 will shoot the same standardized arrow faster than a #160.
A heavier bow made of the same material will have heavier limbs. Depending on the material there has to bee a sweet spot where the limbs cannot move faster by increasing the weight.
Otherwise flight archers would go for the heaviest bows every time. Yet records were not done with such bows.
Otherwise you could just scale up a bow to shoot rocks to miles.
They could still increase in momentum by being heavier, so they could move heavier arrows. But again arrows were standardized. So arrow weight is out of the equitation.
if a heavier bow cannot shoot faster, because cannot move the limbs faster and cannot shoot heavier arrows , because arrows were standardized then the distance and the penetration power will be the same.
"Force = mass x acceleration"
But an arrow does not accelerate on impact only decelerate after leaving the bow.
You could calculate the kinetic energy of the arrow. Which is (1/2) * m * v^2
That means the speed of the arrow counts more since you have to square it.
That is why a 7g 9mm bullett has 500J energy while the 80g war arrow only 130J energy.
Or you could calculate momentum. That would be p = m * v.
No, No. You cannot convince me. Tod and Will have to make a new video, possibly a series of videos to put these questions to bed.
@@adam-k "But an arrow does not accelerate on impact only decelerate after leaving the bow. "
true, but it DOES accelerate during the loose. quite rapidly too, depending on draw length and bow poundage. The energy is transferred into the arrow resulting in kinetic energy over the course of it's flight.
the energy is lost, either gradually during flight, or rapidly (almost instantaneously) when it hits something. Mass remains constant while speed is decreasing.
At shooting distances, mass is usually the better of the two unless you can get the speed high enough (guess what - for bows you can't). It's different for guns because the speeds we are talking about are insanely FAST while the changes is mass are relatively small. (you could double the weight of your arrow quite easily, but you cannot double it's speed without great difficulty)
going from 160lbs to 200lbs will be faster, I have no doubt, but.. not much faster. Partially because of the increased air resistance and also inertia - the arrow itself resists being moved.
however, increase the weight of the arrow it will go slower increasing inertia, but also decreasing air resistance. Air resistance increases exponentially so there is a net benefit.
also upon impact, a heavier projectile will expell it's energy over a longer period of time, the change is much higher for arrows than bullets due to the relatively low speed.
mass > speed for arrow penetration within realistic parameters.
I suggest you do a search for the Dr Ed Ashbey studies on arrow lethality.
It's the longest running study (27 years) on the topic and everything in it would apply to warbows just as much as hunting bows.
No disrespect to the craftsman here, but there is nothing i would rather do than make arrows all day every day. And not be homeless.
In what way might your comment be disrespectful to the craftsmen featured in the video?
Going back to what the bowman said in a previous video. He’s tired after firing a 200lb bow after 6 shots.
Well try that then. Maybe they only fired one shot each.
First
if you are doing more armor vs arrows can you do some tests with the
"armored" object at 45 degrees to head on, not all targets would have
been staring the archer in the face