Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

In Chapter 1 of the story Young Warrior by FantasyLover on SOL, there are discussions about the use of bows and arrows, among other weapons.
One of the characters (in olden times) using an orangewood bow can allegedly hit a target 400 paces away and still penetrate metal or thick wood armor enough to kill an enemy. I don't know how far 400 paces would have been at that time in that fictional place, but if it were 2 feet, 400 paces would be 800 feet (almost 3 football fields away). Today - for a fictional story based on realistic modern abilities, how feasible does any of that sound?

That would be dependent on my factors not specified.

What type of bow (orangewood is a material it's made from not the style of bow)?

What's the draw weight?

What kind of arrowhead. Way back when in the real world they had arrowheads designed for penetrating armor.

As a ballpark here's information on the English Long bow:

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/the-english-longbow-machine.html

The heavy war arrows used by English longbowmen were able to penetrate leather and cloth armor, iron plate armor, and even some types of steel plate armor.

Few medieval weapons of the projectile-firing (or, rather, loosing) variety have achieved as much fame as the English longbow.

A six-foot bow made of yew wood, the English longbow had a draw weight of between 80 and 150 pounds, an effective range of up to 350 yards. The heavy war arrows used were able to penetrate all but the very best steel plate armor of the medieval period.

350 yards would be 1050 feet or 525 2 foot paces.

Without knowing more about the design parameters of the "orangewood bow" I'd have to say that it's plausible, or at least not outrageously outside the realm of real world plausibility.

Some additional information on arrowhead types:

What most modern people would think of when you talk arrowheads would be a broad head, a wide flat triangular or leaf shaped blade like a miniature spear head. Used for hunting, or against lightly armored human targets, no matter what kind of bow it was fired from it wouldn't penetrate armor well.

A war arrow would probably have a bodkin point, a short chisel point tip with no "blades". Think something along the lines of a hand forged square nail on the business end of the arrow shaft. Good penetration even fired from a relatively weak bow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrowhead#History

your link didn't work for me...this one does

https://www.wood-database.com/osage-orange/

looks like your missing the : after https

Didn't one of the US Native American tribes make bows out of Osage that were about 3 feet long for use on horseback that were good at close range but had a short range?

I would imagine that several of the plains tribes made bows sized to be usable from horseback. Whether any of them used Osage as a material I have no idea.

US Native American tribes make bows out of Osage

Pretty much all the different Indian tribes East of the Rockies you know that hilly area over by California to the Atlantic ocean made and used Osage orange bows.

The Osage orange make an excellent bow in what we would refer to as a medium weight bow as they can be made for a draw weight between 30 - 80 pounds and most found being around the 60 pounds of draw weight. One of the characteristic of the Osage Orange tree is that the wood is naturally Rot Resistance thus adding to the durability and life span of the bow in an environment that the Indian tribes lived in.

A bow of Osage Orange that is 40 inches in length and a draw of 20 inches at 54 pounds will fire a 30 inch by 14.5 ounce arrow at around 150-160 feet per second. Considering that the plains Indians where able to bring buffalo down I would consider that highly effective.

As to why Indians hunted so closely to the buffalo on horse back that was because once they shot the first buffalo the whole heard would start to stampede and would run at 35 mph (56 km/h) for distance 5 Miles (8 km) so there target of opportunity vanished quickly and the other and biggest reason they wanted to get close was that the Indians wanted to shoot down onto the target so that when the buffalo collapsed they would not land on the arrow and break it as arrows where prized and hard to replace and more so out on the plains.

The horse bows of the Plains tribes were often composite designs make from a wood core (like osage orange) with horn and sinew laminated to it with strong hide glue. They were a recurve design and very effective.

Mongols use the same type for the same reasons -- a shorter bow is required when shooting from a horse, but short all-wood bows wouldn't survive the first pull of the string due to the forces involved.

I've made a few wood bows, called self-bows because they're all wood and not layers of wood, sinew and horn. Osage is one of the nastiest woods to work with, imo, because the grain doesn't run straight and smooth like Hickory or Yew. Of course, it's worth working into a bow because for all it's grain is aggravating, the bows are tremendously durable and look fantastic!

I was wondering what a self bow was since I ran across a mention of one in another story, and hadn't taken the time yet to look it up.

A pace is two steps, which given normal proportions works out to about equal to a person's height, so 400 paces is closer to 800 yards (2400 feet) than 800 feet. Figure shorter people and some fudge factor because a pace over natural terrain will be shorter than across a parking lot, and we're still looking at like 700 yards.

You might be able to make 500 yards with a modern bow (current world record with a longbow is about 500 yards), but with a period bow, you're looking at more like 300–400 yards. Even the modern bow comes up well short of the 700 yards called for.

If they're saying "400 paces" when they actually mean "400 steps", it's a very long but not totally implausible range.

But note that at the edge of a bow's range, you're shooting up at a 45° angle to maximize the width of the parabolic arc, which makes precision shooting very difficult, in part because shooting 45° off your actual target makes it really hard to aim, and in part because the arrow flight time is long and gives your target plenty of opportunity to move. It's good for shooting at massed formations, not so much at individual people. But on the bright side, it lets you drop arrows down in behind walls and the like.

sue a 'yard stick' for marching pace measuring.

Dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. :)

A pace is two steps,

Not exactly. A Roman pace was two Roman steps where a Roman step was 2½ Roman feet. The US pace is 2½ ft. A stride is 2 paces.
The confusion might be caused by the sometimes used double step as a pace which makes the pace twice as long. The standardized pace in the US though is 2½ ft.
So 400 paces would be 1000 ft = 333.33 yards.

Most systems a pace is the rough equal of a yard, which is why the military used to sue a 'yard stick' for marching pace measuring. os 400 paces would be about 400 yards, not 800 yards.

No. That's a step. A pace is two steps, left foot to left foot, not left foot to right foot. That's nominally two yards, though in practice, especially for shorter medieval people, will be a bit less than that.

The word "mile" derives from Latin mille passuum, literally "a thousand paces". Mile markers were set on the old Roman roads by legionnaires literally pacing off the distances as the marched. A mile is 1760 yards, not 1000.

We're talking about medievalesque measurements. This is the relevant definition:

c. Five Roman feet or 58.1 English inches, measured from the point at which the heel of one foot is raised to the point at which it is set down again after an intervening step by the other foot.

But in any case, there's a reason I spent half my post on the assumption that they were using a "pace" of half that length.

Until this discussion came up every usage of the word pace as a measurement I'd seen in life and in writing equated it to a yard.

Prior to this discussion had you never heard of a pace maker?

:)

@Ernest Bywater

Until this discussion came up every usage of the word pace as a measurement I'd seen in life and in writing equated it to a yard.

Prior to this discussion had you never heard of a pace maker?

A pace maker is not a measurement.

You know, FantasyLover uploaded a glossary for Young Warrior that states what the length of a pace is in the story. Other definitions aren't really relevant to the story.

You know, FantasyLover uploaded a glossary for Young Warrior that states what the length of a pace is in the story. Other definitions aren't really relevant to the story.

Looks like he did the same research I did and also came to 2.5 feet for a pace and 400 paces = 1000 feet = 333 yards.

Whether any of them used Osage as a material I have no idea.

Traditional Cherokee bows were either Hickory or Osage wood. The latter was preferred.

He makes them about a 60 lb draw

What does a 6-pound draw mean? Or any other draw. Is it that a person has to weigh at least 60 pounds in order to use the bow? And whatever the number is - how do you determine what the "draw" is. Is there a "draw meter" or something? Does a higher number in draw mean the bow is weaker? stronger? longer? prettier?

What does a 6-pound draw mean? Or any other draw.

It refers to the amount of force required to draw (pull back) the bowstring.

For a 60-pound bow, the force required to draw the bow is the same as the amount of force required to lift a 60 pound weight.

For any N-pound bow, the force required to draw the bow is the same amount of force required to lift a N pound weight.

how do you determine what the "draw" is. Is there a "draw meter" or something?

Yes, it's called a scale. There are spring scales from which an object can be hung to get it's weight. Such scales can also be put into a rope or cable to measure force pulling laterally on the line.

They also get referred to as force meters.

There are specialized scales of this type specifically made for measuring the draw weight of a bow.

But if you know how to rig it, any generic spring scale can be used.

Does a higher number in draw mean the bow is weaker? stronger? longer? prettier?

A higher number means the bow is stronger. This has two implications.

1. The bow is harder to draw, the archer needs to be stronger.
2. More force is imparted to the arrow. It will go farther and hit harder.

For a compound bow, the draw weight would be the maximum force before the pulleys turn over and the force required drops dramatically so that the holding weight is a small fraction of the maximum pull required.

For "traditional bows" (no pulleys -- long bows or recurves), the draw weight would increase the further the arrow is pulled back, so the draw weight is generally listed as "xx# at xx". Often, the draw is at 28" but not always as, depending on length and other factors, bows can begin to "stack" (get much harder to draw much more quickly) at either shorter or longer draw lengths.

Howard Hill is said to have once been in a shop where the owner had a bow he couldn't string. Boasting and joking was going on. Someone bet Hill he couldn't draw the bow. "If you can string it, I can draw it." It took two men to string the bow, but Hill then drew the arrow all the way past the bow and let it down on the other side. Estimates put the draw weight of the bow, iirc, at around 180#. (And, it is WAY harder to let a bow down smoothly than it is to draw it!)

Just to throw another data point in - I had to determine the length of my pace when I was calibrating my fitness watch. Heel of left foot to heel of right foot was two feet/24"/0.6 meters.

That was my normal walking steps. If I would have stretched it a little it would be three feet.

For "traditional bows" (no pulleys -- long bows or recurves), the draw weight would increase the further the arrow is pulled back, so the draw weight is generally listed as "xx# at xx".

I wasn't unaware of that but thought it was getting too complex for someone who had no idea what the draw weight was.

So what did you think of the plot? The character development? And so on?

I warmly The Slingshot Channel and Todds Workshop on YouTube to sate all your weapon porn urges.

Also note that it's been said that a longbow at full draw is 90% of the way to "broken". There's a reason they're so long... simple wooden sticks are not actually all that flexible, so they have to be long to be able to bend that far. If you overdraw them, they very quickly start to stack, and not long after, snap. If you underdraw them, on the other hand, they lose a lot of efficiency... and they're not terribly efficient bow designs to begin with. So there's a very narrow range in which they actually work properly, and neither underperform nor break.

The length requirements depend on draw length and wood type. I've got a chunk of black locust, which is a decent bow wood, though not as good as yew or Osage orange, seasoning in my garage, and figured that, at my 34" draw, the bowstave is going to have to be nearly 7½' long.

Makes sense!

34"! Yowsa! Long draw length for a traditional bow!

34"! Yowsa! Long draw length for a traditional bow!

Draw length is determined by the archer.

Proper full draw goes with the bow held in one outstretched arm, drawing the bowstring back with the other hand to the corner of your mouth.

The length is then measured from the bowstring at rest to the corner of your mouth, but it pretty much comes to around the length of your arm.

It's possible to shoot a bow that won't support a full draw for a given archer but it's very difficult to shoot accurately like that.

A modern compound bow and some modern recurves have a bit of adjustability but a traditional longbow has to be made to fit the archer.

Sorry, it's 34" arrow shafts. The actual draw is only 32". But, yeah, it's a long draw. I'm fairly tall, and have very wide shoulders even proportionate to my height. My wingspan is like three inches more than my height, and the difference is all across my shoulders.

Umm, was just saying that 34" is unusually long for traditional archery. And, Olympic archers typically anchor under the jaw with the string touching the their chin and the center of their nose. And I think the measure is from the belly of the bow to the anchor point, not from the position of the string at rest. (String at rest to belly of bow is "brace height," something that traditional archers play with to "tune" a bow.)

Many of traditional archers don't use the fully erect, locked stance of Olympic target archery or of compound shooters, thus resulting in shorter draw lengths. Not as repeatable for target shooting, but perhaps better for hunting situations. Howard Hill never did all that well in NAA competitions, but was hella good in NFAA, and, of course, a phenomenal hunting archer.