Tod from Tods Workshop here and I'm back with another Arrows vs Armour 2 film.
Back with Toby Capwell and we're going to be talking about bow weights, everything between
100 pounds and 160 pounds because those are the kind of areas that people talk about when
they're talking about medieval war bows.
The problem we have, and this is a really big problem, is that when you're talking about
warbows, medieval bows and the battlefield, there's no evidence.
No really hard evidence.
We've got circumstantial evidence and it's really annoying because we've got armour,
we've got drawings, we've got manuscript pictures, we have got arrowheads, we've got descriptions,
we've got all sorts of things, but we do not have the artefacts.
We do not have a bow, not one.
The only ones we have are off the Mary Rose and that's 130 years later and it's naval
warfare, it's not open battlefield warfare like it was at Azincourt.
So we can think that they're reasonably similar, but we can't know, but that has to be the
basis.
We have to start thinking about things somewhere, but the thing is there's all sorts of opinions
about how heavy bows should be.
Should they be a hundred pounds?
130 pounds?
160?
180 pounds?
in draw weight.
We can't know the answer to that, we just can't, but this film is really to try and
address that a little bit and to explain our thinking behind getting Joe to shoot a 160
pound longbow for the Arrows vs Armour 2 films and it comes down to one simple thing, and
we're in total agreement on this actually.
Is that if you shot a lighter bow it's never going to prove the case, "do arrows go through
armour?"
You can't do it, so we've pursued the 'normal' in all these cases, all these films, we've
pursued the ordinary man's objects as best we can.
But in the case of the bow we're going heavier.
We're going a little bit special to answer the question "do arrows penetrate armour?".
We take what little bits of evidence we do have and try and get the most out of that,
so something like the type nine arrowheads that survive.
You've got the diameter of the socket, what does that tell you about the diameter of the
arrow?
You infer from that what kind of arrow weight have you got.
You end up at around 80 grams that's an 80 gram arrow.
So what kind of bow is going to throw that well enough?
That's where you arrive at something like 160 pound bow that's about what's right for
an 80 gram arrow.
But you know that's coming at it from one direction, then there's the difficulty of
you know how many people could ever shoot bows that heavy, is that the most militarily
efficient weight, is there some advantage to making a slightly lighter bow the military
standard.
Or is it about the standard arrow because you got if you're the King of England in the
14th or 15th centuries, you got to order half a million arrows at a go.
If you start messing around with different arrow sizes for different archers shooting
different bows, it gets logistically very inefficient and complicated.
So really it makes a lot of sense to try and find that military-grade arrow and if you
have that, we've decided we do for the sake of the films, then there's another question.
How much can you vary the draw weight of the bow and still be effective with your military
standard arrow?
The question is what is that arrow and that is the real problem.
So we have things like the Westminster arrow, one medieval arrow, no bows, one medieval
arrow that's it.
But that's a type 16, it's a different kind, it's a bladed, barbed arrowhead.
Possibly what was known as a harassing arrow because it's small and it's light.
It's not the sort of thing you associate with Azincourt And there had to have been standards
you know.
When archers show up at a late medieval muster there's gotta be a baseline requirement.
You have to be able to shoot at least this bow with these arrows.
What is the baseline.
Is it 160?
Maybe not, but how much lighter can you go when you're still shooting within that defined
military standard whatever that is.
Well I think what we're going to do now is we're going to run a very simple test, we're
going to take our standard 82 gram arrow it weighs around about there, that shoots beautifully
off Joe's bow, his big 160 and we're going to shoot it from different bow weights between
100 and 160 pounds at some 1.2 millimeter thick steel sheet and we're going to see what
it does.
Does it shoot left, does it shoot right?
Because the waiting is wrong, because this is important to match the arrow to the bow.
Does it penetrate?
Does it not?
How deep? if it does.
So take it away Joe on 110 pound bow.
Beautiful shooting Joe.
Thank you.
Okay we're gonna go, mark those.
Before we do that actually how did you feel about that?
I can tell from shooting the bow, the arrow just definitely does not leave as quick as
the big one.
So 135 please Joe.
So Joe, 160 pound bow please.
That's all we need thank you very much.
Right should we go and check it out?
Yeah see what we got.
Here it is so let's measure up and see what we got.
So we'll start with the 110, 11 centimeters
nine and a half centimeters.
13 centimeters.
so 135lbs
16 centimeters yeah very short.
Nine
and twelve.
Twelve and then we go up to 160lbs
Evidently deeper... uh 18 and a half, 18 and a half centimeters on the 160.
Ah ten centimeters, interesting the variation isn't it?
Twelve.
So we've calculated the averages of the depths of these shots and surprisingly actually it's
not that different.
So there's only about two centimeters difference on the average between the lightweight and
the heavyweight.
I find that interesting, but there are some outliers in here so I'm wondering, end of
the day we have been shooting you like a maniac all day maybe you are doing a little bit of
forward loose and you're knocking some of the power off, a little bit of unpredictability.
I don't know but Toby what are your thoughts?
Yeah I mean the first thing to say here is that this is not demonstrating that all of
these arrows can penetrate armour.
They're all going through this plate of steel, so we could understand if people got that
impression, but that is not what this shows.
This is simply a visual representation of how much energy these arrows are delivering
at 15 meters.
Now that's a whole, that's interesting, but that is a different thing than saying all
of these arrows would pierce armour, that's not necessarily the case.
This is a flat piece of 1.2 millimeter mild steel.
The question of where the military effectiveness lies is more complicated than that but this
is still interesting, it's still, it suggests to me that it is worth pursuing the more in-depth
potential of lighter bows throwing the heavier arrows in our investigations.
If there's ever an advert for making another Arrows versus Armour film what has happened
here is.
To look at, look against male, look at it against gambeson look at it against plate,
the different ways.
But then there's also the range.
Is the hundred pound bow gonna be able to do that?
Maybe it falls down and is disqualified because it can't make the range.
And how does it feel to shoot these arrows out of these bows anyway, does the archer
want to be doing that?
Well shooting uh 85 gram arrows out of 100 pound bow, they just feel sluggish and they
come out clanky, they don't they just don't feel great.
Out of the 135 pounder, they they're starting to improve a lot better, come out nicer and
out of the 160 pounds they come out sweet.
I've not shot these arrows for distance, but I could tell that you could at least do 200
yards for these arrows easily.
And I feel that out of 110 probably wouldn't do 200 yards, even though in this steel there
there's not a huge amount of difference.
I feel over distance there would be a big difference.
But it does still suggest that that medium weight bow, its potential is worth pursuing
in the experiments.
Definitely.
You could you could imagine that a bow at 135/140 would be a good war bow with these
arrows.
Oh I'll definitely say it is.
With my own personal experience of shooting heavy bows for for you know 22 years, that
135/140 pound bow is definitely a good bow weight to shift fairly sizable arrows you
know.
So it would be good to know what the distance issues with these three bows actually are,
yeah if for nothing else to just disqualify the 110 as not being powerful enough, but
that still starts to give you a much better idea of what is the acceptable range for a
warbow and when your archers turn up at the muster, what do you accept and what do you
send home.
Exactly, so I think what we've learned here today is actually really quite important.
It doesn't alter the fact that we are going to be shooting with 160 pound bow because
we want to try and answer the question "do arrows go through armour" and you can't do
that with a hundred pound bow or 120 pound bow, you can't answer that question.
160lbs we can answer the question, really nobody's, not many people are going to be
on the field with more than that.
But also what this says to me is you could really validly shoot with 130 pounds and still
be extraordinarily dangerous.
It's worth pursuing, gotta be one for the future.
There's a last question.
Joe so if they made an arrow that suits a 130 pound bow is that going to shoot well
enough off 100, well enough off a 160?
Are you going to hit your targets?
So yes it will come out of all those bows fine the fact is on this I'm trying to hit
one single breastplate sized target.
If there was a whole row of them it wouldn't matter what arrow I shot out, well what spine
weight arrow I shot out of it because if I was aiming for that one and it skewed off
left it's fine.
So I hit would hit that guy there.
For this test it's important because I'm just trying to hit a target at 15 meters.
You have to have accuracy, you have to have accuracy.
But in the case of a battle you don't have to have accuracy, you have to, have probably
distance.
Yeah it doesn't really matter.
So definitely would say that an arrow made for 140 pound bow would come off 100 right
up to 160 no problem, when you're shooting at a body of men.
Brilliant.
Well I think that's really as much as we can get out of this one today.
It's just opened up an amazing bit of questioning again because the debate about the weight
of warbows and how heavy they were is just going on and on and on and this has absolutely,
conclusively, not answered that question.
Which is a shame, but what it does do is, it's absolutely, conclusively said to me we
need to come back and visit this because 160 pound bow that will answer the question "can
arrows defeat armour?", but actually is by no means the end of this story.
130 pounds seems to do the job pretty well, 135.
We're going to come back, but Arrows versus Armour is signing off again for this one,
but really thank you to the backers you have been amazing in allowing us to do this and
allowing us to get the knowledge to feed back into the main film.
So thank you very much guys.
Loads more Arrows versus Armour2 films.
Go check them out and we'll see you again.
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