| I attended the talk by Pip Bickerstaff and it was a very good day. Some of the points that Pip bought up were very interesting including the lifespan of a longbow. He suggested that 2 to 3 years for a basic hickory/lemonwood bow and 5 to 6 years for a bow made from more exotic timbers before the bow lost its crispness and the performance dropped off. Also he said that a good laminate bow should out perform a yew longbow.
He also had copies of both his books and answered questions about the contents. An interesting point was about the poundage of the Mary Rose bows. His view was that poundage’s of the bows would be about 90/100 lbs. The reasoning is the nocks in the arrows found are approx 1/8 inch and a linen string of that diameter would be at its breaking limit at those poundage’s and if the bows were at the higher poundage’s that have been suggested the strings could not have stood the strain.
He also demonstrated some pieces of equipment that he had built, one to show the draw curves of a bow and a mechanical shooting machine. This machine that was set up on the shooting line on the Chiltern shop range was used to show that a longbow, AFB and a short recurve all of the same poundage, would shoot the same weight arrow at almost the same speed.(I guess that the other archers on the line including Big Boy Blue and Radar UK were very surprised to see a longbow archer using a car battery to shoot a bow).
Best wishes , Mark  |