Swords and Steel

[Oldwolfe]

Due to some interest in the subject, I am posting an old conversation here I wrote previously on some other forums. Also here are some questions asked of me, and my responses.

 

((Oldwolfe))

Due to a conversation we had in guild chat I decided to talk a bit about metal and how it applies to swords.

 

One thing to mention, metal pretty much has been the job I have held in the military longer than any other. Aircraft Structural Maintenance Technician. This covers metals and the advanced composites such as graphite, boron, and kevlar.

 

To understand how to come up with a good sword steel, I should explain the properties behind any metal. These properties include Hardness,Weight, Malleability, Ductility, Conductivity, Heat Resistance,Corrosion Resistance.

 

Just because a metal is exceptionally hard doesn't make it a good weapon material. Generally, the harder a metal is, the more brittle is.(lower malleability) While a carbide drill bit maintains a great edge,a sharp blow on the side will shatter it. That is not a property you want in a blade. So coming up with a good weapon material is a balancing act. Coming up with one good property is usually offset with an undesirable property.

 

For all that technology has advanced, the best weapon material is still carbon steel. Stainless Steel is kind of a misnomer. It's corrosion resistant, but no steel is truly stainless. And when a knife manufacture brags about using Surgical Steel, that doesn't mean a good weapon grade steel.

 

Surgical steel is actually used for surgeries because it is highly corrosion resistant. It's softer than a high grade carbon steel, but more sterile. And it can hold an edge long enough to last through a surgery.

 

So what really is steel, high carbon steel, and stainless (surgical) steel?

 

Steel is iron that has been mixed with carbon to make it harder.

Stainless Steel is steel that has been mixed with Chromium to make it more resistant to corrosion.

 

Think about it this way: Carbon is the stuff that diamonds are made from. The more carbon in a steel, the harder it is. And the more brittle it is.

 

I was asked if titanium makes a good weapon material. The answer is no.The advantages titanium has are light weight, relatively high strength,and very resistant to heat. But it's not good for weapons because it's fairly brittle. You could make an okay weapon grade material by alloying it with steel probably, but it still wouldn't be as good as a high carbon steel. You will usually find titanium in an aircraft in the engine, where it is exposed to a lot of heat.

 

Okay, lets look at swords. What makes a good sword material is not necessarily the same as a good knife material. And while it may seem like I was down talking stainless for a weapon, that's not necessarily true. I like stainless in a knife in some circumstances. For example: A boot-knife or pocketknife made out of stainless that is not constantly used is good for "store and forget". However, if you are going to be using the blade a lot, a good quality high carbon steel will hold an edge far longer.

 

In a knife intended for a lot of rugged use, I will prefer a higher carbon (harder) steel than I would want for a sword. A knife won't need to take the shock of parrying the way a sword would.

 

The best sword steel is a balancing act. Soft enough to take the shock and impacts of the blows, hard enough to maintain an edge. This would normally be a high carbon steel. When examining a good sword, you should be able to flex the blade 30 degrees and have it snap back without any deformation.

 

Speaking of edges, a sword edge is different from a knife edge. When properly sharpened a knife edge is a 60 degree bevel. When properly sharpened, a sword edge is a 90 degree bevel. Anything sharper, thee dge is too prone to chipping and cracking from impacting another blade, shield edges, or armor.

 

Historical Swords were far lighter than most people realize. A typical broadsword was about 3 pounds. Longsword would be around 4-4 1/2, with bastard swords going up to 5 pounds. Two-handers ranged up to about six pounds.

 

The massive greatswords were far heavier but not designed for war. They were really used for dueling and for awhile Germany, Switzerland, and Austria had schools all over teaching dueling with those massive blades. They weren't practical for war because no matter how strong you were, you couldn't swing that thing over a day's prolonged fighting.

 

Below are a several links for good information and examples of some high quality replicas.

 

http://www.myarmoury.com/reviews.html

 

http://www.albion-swords.com/

 

http://www.christianfletcher.com/Site/Welcome.html

 

So how good really were the swords of old?

 

Well, this is a very hard question to answer. Because there is no se tanswer. The quality of swords varied greatly. The vast majority of them were mass produced junk. Just like today.

 

So how good could they be?

 

Three of the major swordmaking centers were Augsberg, Nuremburg, and I forget the third. Actually most of the better swords came from Germany.One of the best weaponmakers was the "Running Wolf" maker's mark from Nuremburg. Some modern metallurgical scientists examined a Running Wolf brand (A brand was often called a horse sword, an early bastard sword) from the 1100s. It was not only an exceptional balance of hardness and malleability, but they could not reproduce that metal today! They tried to make a sword metal that was as good and simply COULD NOT!

 

So apparently over the centuries, whatever technique was used to make such an exceptional blade was lost.

 

What about Damascus Steel?

 

Damascus is yet another myth. It actually originated by the Norse. The reason it is called Damascus Steel is that Damascus was a major trade center and when the type of steel became popular through much of europe, most of it was actually sold through Damascus. But it was rarely made there.

 

More properly called "Pattern Welded Steel", it was invented by the Norse as a very early way of making steel swords. They took thick wire or thin rods of varying carbon content. These they would braid or twist into a rather thick cable. Then it would be heated and hammered into a bar from which a blade was formed.

 

That is what gives it it's particular mottled colors that can be so beautiful. There are several different patterns that are gained by varying the braid or cable strand makeup.

 

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l141/Oldwolfe/Knife.jpg

 

As far as blade quality, it's a fairly crude way of making high carbon blades. However, a true master can produce amazing results.

 

(HaeKaula)

 

You mention the Germanic sword making regions, but what of the Syria? Didn't Syria create the best swords at least metallurgically, ie Damascus Steel?

 

If the last of the Damascan Steel swords were made from 900AD to nolater then the mid 1700's and metallurgists have been trying to replicate the properties of that particular steel since then. And only fairly recently circa 1980 did Wadsworth and Shelby at least discover a method of recreating said steel, even if the current method is not historically accurate.

 

The "Running Wolf" might be the mark of Passau of Germany and was widely traded and copied throughout Europe and the Middle East. Thereis some speculation that the true origin of the Running Wolf mark datesback to Chinggis Khan and the Mongols. To further this, there is research that says that the Mongol's and Middle Asia may have produced Steel as much as 500yrs prior to any Europeans.

 

((Oldwolfe))

 

but a lot of that is speculative, and not much is confirmed. What I was trying to do with this thread was familiarize people with some ofthe bare facts behind swords and metals. And to dispell a few myths. Chinggis Khaan, aka Ghengis Khaan (his real name was Temüjin)... there are arguments on when he was born, but he was coronated in 1206.

 

Steel had been around a LONG time before that. And the Running Wolf maker's mark had been in Germany before that too. Most German Runnning Wolf blades are 1300s-1400s, but some are as early as the 1100s. PROBABLY the earliest forms of steel were made in India and Sri Lankaaround 300 BC using a Bloomery.

 

A bloomery is a type of wind furnace that hasn't been in use for a VERY long time. Blast Furnaces can make a much higher quality of steel. By far the most widespread users of steel early on were the roman legions. That's one of the reasons they managed to defeat Boudica's Iceni revolt in Britain despite being so massively outnumbered. It was steel against bronze and iron. And this was in 61 AD.

 

Oh, and there are some norse woodcuts that show braiding strands of something and hammering them on an anvil. So that is most likely a historically accurate techniqe for making pattern welded steel .I wish I could remember the stats on that running wolf blade I mentioned. They were insane. I think something like ck 80ish on the rockwell hardness scale while still being flexible.

 

Most good smiths today can't get a sword in the 70 range without making it too brittle to be serviceable.The famous Sheffield steel of England invented in 1740, may not have been so revolutionary after all. Archeologists from Bradford Universityin England have discovered some ingots and knives of this quality steel dating from saxon times (8th to 9th centuries) around Southampton. Thiswould have been the old Saxon port of Hamwick. Since the Saxons of Britain originated in Germany (Saxony was a duchy in the Holy RomanEmpire), I wonder if this steel technology is related to the Running Wolf blades.

 

So much history in the middle east has been lost due to all the centuries of constant warfare. They know beyond a shadow of a doubt where some ancient historical persian cities are beneath the sands.... but can't get archeologists to them because of all the fighting in Iraq, Iran, and other places. Syria was actually the ancient country that had Damascus as it's capitol. Syria has very little in the way of good iron deposits in it. However, sandstone excellent for glass manufacture is mined in the Palmyra mountains. Glass was used in several early steelmaking techniques.It's possible that good Syrian blades were made, however Damascus was a MAJOR trade city. It's more likely that most of the the pattern welded steel coming from Damascus was actually made in other places.

 

In old writings people often confused Syria with Styria. Styria was a duchy in the Holy Roman Empire in what is now Austria. Styria is VERY rich in high quality iron, and a lot of the german blades were made using Styrian Iron. The reason Styrian iron is so good for high quality steelmaking, is it is very rich in Manganese. Manganese helps greatly with the sulfur-fixing and deoxidizing of steelmaking. Your thoughts on Passau being the origins of the Running Wolf blades might very well be supported by this, in a way. Passau is in Germany but on the border of Austria. And so much good quality iron entered Germany from Styria in Austria.

 

(Dear lord, I am so full of boring and relatively useless information.)

 

While this kind of speculation is kind of fun, probably only to us geeks who are REALLY into it. ANYWAY, the quality of medieval swordsvaried greatly. From the junk massed produced to be handed out to peasants in time of war, to some that were so exceptional that we can't even reproduce them today, despite all our technology.

Edited November 29, 2011 by Oldwolfe

[Oldwolfe]

((Oldwolfe))

 

I was planning on avoiding this topic but changed my mind. I am going to talk about one of the most popular (and myth ridden) swords today.The Japanese Katana.

 

Before I get started, I would like to say this: It may sound like I don't like the Katana. That's not true, I love them. But I am not a fanatic about them and am a realist about their abilities. So I am probably going to piss off some of the fanatics of the Samurai and Ninja.

 

Myth # 1: After the WWII some Japanese Katanas actually cut through .50 cal machine gun barrels.

 

False: This is simply impossible. Even if there were a laser beam running down the edge it would still be impossible. The blade is too wide. The reason a saw can cut through a tree limb is that the cutting kerf it wider than that blade. Anyone who has had a saw blade bind in apiece of wood will know exactly what I mean. The cutting edge of a katana is so narrow you can't measure it with a ruler. Yet the blades tend to run up to 1/8th of a inch thick.

 

Myth # 2: The Katana is the ultimate evolution of the sword.

 

False: The reason that the katana hadn't changed much beyond blade and grip length over the course of centuries isn't because they had perfected it. It was because the Japanese society was so tradition bound that the design of the sword became stagnant. It stopped evolving and changes to the design would have almost been considered heresy. There probably is no ultimate evolution of the sword, really... as different swords suit different purposes. ie. rapiers for speed against unarmored foes, heavy broadswords for defeating armor, curved cavalry blades to not hang up when riding by on horseback.

 

Myth # 3: The katana blades were the finest quality sword steels ever developed.

 

False: Before you scream, let me explain. The reason that the United States, Russia, and China dominate the Olympics are not that we are better physical specimens. They dominate because they have large population pools to draw off of. More selection. Japan was very isolationist. As such, their resources of Iron were limited to whatever could be mined in their territories. They couldn't pick and choose from say, all the iron deposits of Europe and Scandinavia.

 

However: Since they had to make do with the iron they had available,they DID develop some remarkable techniques for crafting the steels they could make. Clay hardening, laminated steels, and other developments helped them to get the most out of the iron that they did have available to them.

 

There has been countless arguments about who would have done better:European Knights or Japanese Samurai. Honestly, that would depend on how the battle was fought. Don't forget that most Samurai were also horse archers, and the funny looking Dai-kyu is one of the most impressive horse bows ever developed. If the samurai engaged in moving archery battles, European knights would be decimated. However... in a toe to toe battle... the Katana was not designed to strike hard armors.And certainly not steel-rimmed shields. The samurai never encountered any serious shields, and their sword styles have no real maneuvers to get around a shield.

 

The only real recorded conflict between Europeans and samurai took place when some decided to chase off some Portuguese merchants that decided to brave the shores of the isolationist country. Kendo, as a sword form, is pretty straightforward and simple. It is composed of sweeping cuts. There are really only 8 basic cuts in Kendo. The Portuguese merchants were not as well trained and dedicated to war as their samurai opponents. But they were armed with rapiers. The thin blades of the rapiers were lightning fast compared to the much heavier katanas, could easily puncture the samurai armors that were designed to resist cuts, and the Portuguese were used to fighting against slashing styles. The samurai were completely unfamiliar with fighting against the point-work of the Rapiers.

 

The rapier developed over time into a light fast blade that was very hard to defend against. Whereas the katana, being stagnant never evolved.

 

Now, that said, I must admit I too have fallen prey to the mystique of the Katana. And dearly hope to lay my hands on at least a good well made replica someday.

 

This is a sword thread, but since I mentioned the Dai-kyu (translation:Great-bow) I thought I would show it here briefly. Most horse bows are pretty small and achieve power through lamination and other techniques.The english longbow for example, doesn't work well on a horse because too much of it hangs low where it would mess with the horse and tack.

 

The famous horse bow of the Mongols is a good example of trying to get the most power out of a short bow using both laminating different materials, and using an unusual bow shape. This is pictured below.

 

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l141/Oldwolfe/10.jpg

 

The Japanese approach was to make a large powerful bow, but to make it lopsided. Surprisingly, it actually works. And works well.

 

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l141/Oldwolfe/daikyu.jpg

[Oldwolfe]

((durwinfeanora))

 

Hum now I must translate some english words before being able to really enter the subject. However, talking about that myth, I actualy saw two videos that show the katana cutting the bullets in half..

 

I know that in combat, this could not be possible, since anyway the bullets would have touched the samurai, but we can clearly see that in slow motion.

 

Maybe you could explain what are the trap of those videos. I know that google video is not a place to learn true fact, but that's why i'm putting those. So you can explain to me if other swords could do that as well.

 

The first one seems pretty easy since the katana is designed to be much more resistant than those bullets

 

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3818187790122256202&q=katana+bullet

 

The second one though let me perplex.

 

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4949875018414626052&q=katana+bullet

 

I will not be upset at all, If you say to me that this is total crap. I just want to learn. And have a better understanding of how it works in reality.

 

Your point that the japanese culture was traditionalist at a max. range is indeed true. And they are not inclined to accept other culture or take learning from other people. But on other subject, they can do quite inovative things.

 

I saw those Japanese bow and they are more than amazing. Quite weird, but far better than many other.

 

I just found that reading your information, swords and kind of likeviolins. It's pretty amazing to see that some cannot be match even inour day of "high technologies". But could this be explain by the rawmaterials that cannot be find anymore.

 

The wood used for stradivarius violins cannot be found anymore. Since sound came, in a big way from the wood used (as well, as how good was the techniques used), it is now really hard to match the beautiful sound. And I'm always wondering why everybody stopped to mak einnovative thing with the shapes, or the way to do. The only stick on the patterns of stradivarius.

 

We can also say that no real improvements are made to building as well.Some really old building are perfect even afters hundreds of years of wars, weather, and time passing. And our building last... well no so long.

 

I fear that time consuming art is the key of this. As well as raw material. At a time, It could take more than a year to create a violin.Now nobody want to take that time. I think the same thing should apply for weapons. And buildings as well. Who would want to take so many year to build a church or a mall.

 

I can say the same thing in Swords and other medieval war material. In the armor tread, you showed to us, the modern cloth for protecting the army guy. It was the exact same design of the first one. Well... Why? I know that now we have guns and such things. But no greats improvements.

 

I'll stop now, and go take a night of sleep. I wish, I'm not too hard to follow with my ideas, it is quite hard to me to translate my ideas,in english.

[Oldwolfe]

((Oldwolfe))

 

First of all, I want to thank you for putting in the effort to struggle through the english to get these postings done. Your questions are NOT silly or stupid in any way. So I want to give you a huge emote hug for participating in this thread.

 

 

Now: I have seen that first video before. I have not seen the 2nd one.I believe that both videos are probably very accurate. However it is not just japanese swords that are capable of cutting bullets. Any well made sword could. Bullets are made out of lead, sometimes with another soft metal as a jacket to reduce lead buildup in the gun barrel.

 

This trick actually has been around far longer than the video makers probably realize. I used to go to some Mountain Man Rendezvous. I didn't list it as a hobby because I only went a few times. I would liked to have gone more but they are too spread out and no groups were close tome.

 

This is another re-enactment group. Pioneer days of the old west, trappers and such, using black powder weapons. I own a Pennsylvania Long Rifle (flintlock) and a Hawken Rifle (percussion, made famous in the movie Jeremiah Johnson). I took them to one. Anyway... a stunt done there as a shooting competition dates back to the early 1800s. They'd take an axe head, face the edge towards the shooter, and put a clay pigeon on either side of the axe head. (In the old days they used bottles) The point was to shoot the axe head perfectly in the center,the bullet would split and the idea is to break both clay pigeons with one bullet.

 

It sounds impossible but it's actually far easier than one would think.The old black powder guns shot BIG bullets, averaging half an inch in diameter.

 

Okay, getting back to sword cutting. Lead is soft... far softer than the metal in a sword. A machinegun barrel is hard, and doesn't move out of the way to clear a path for the width of the sword blade.

 

You can actually take a bullet, hold it on a table with a pair of pliers, and cut it in half with a good solid knife.

 

As far as the 2nd video which shows a machinegun chopping a sword in half... I easily believe that. For one thing that is a VERY powerful machinegun. It's a Browning M2, .50 caliber air cooled machinegun. Its cartridges look like railroad spikes. While the bullets are lead, they are BIG, HEAVY, and propelled by an AWFUL lot of power.

 

One thing that makes a machinegun so dangerous is how quickly the bullets hit. If you shoot something slowly five times, it won't do as much damage as the same bullet in a machinegun hitting five times. The reason is this: When a bullet strikes something, it causes a shock effect. Like a rock hitting a pond, ripples of force go out across it.If you shoot slowly, the item hit has time to recover from the shock.If you shoot in rapid order like a machine gun, the item is still in as tate of tension from the last bullet. And the bullets are striking an object that is already in stress. Whether it be a sword, or a living body.

 

Back in the late 70s they came out with a submachinegun called the American 180. It fired a dinky little .22 rimfire cartridge. This cartridge was never taken seriously as a real powerful cartridge,mostly used for target shooting. Anyway, this submachinegun was insanely deadly due to how FAST it could shoot. The little .22 bullets could chop right through a cinderblock wall and easily shatter bulletproof glass that larger weapons couldn't touch. In effect, it acted almost like a chainsaw.

 

That's the physics you are seeing in that 2nd video.

 

Yes, you are right that the japanese culture would do amazing feats of crafting. So much of their society was dedicated to crafting in a way that is rarely seen in western civilizations. A Japanese crafter would work on something until it was done with no thought at all to how long it was taking.

 

As far as that modern vest I showed. There is a reason that it is just a carrier holding metal plates. People are in awe of kevlar. One of the reason kevlar works is that bullets are so soft. For all intents and purposes bullets do crushing damage, not penetrating wounds like a knife. An icepick goes right through the weave pattern in kevlar with very little resistance. Since that vest was designed for shrapnel,kevlar would not have been as effective as good old steel plates.

 

Okay, what about modern composites? I worked with these on aircraft.Hard composites made out of Kevlar, Boron, Graphite, etc, are basically high tech forms of fiberglass. They are mixed with different epoxies that are more suitable to the fibers, but still basically high tech fiberglass. If you want to make a VERY resistant plate, Boron would probably be the best. Boron is HUNDREDS of times stronger than steel.

 

HOWEVER, boron would have a drawback. Boron fibers are incredibly strong, rigid, and microscopic. If a boron plate were to be punctured,whatever punctured it would drive microscopic needles throughout the person wearing it. Definately causing far more damage to the wearer than the shrapnel itself.

 

If a boron structure on an aircraft is damaged, enormous care is taken when repairing it. This is probably the most dangerous thing I have ever done, outside of actual war. Boron fibers are so strong, that when a structure is shattered, invisible strands may stay intact up to six inches long or longer. And they are so strong that if you reached for the broken structure, not knowing that a fiber is there and hit it at the right angle, it could drive that microscopic strand right through you.

 

So... despite all of our modern technological advancements... when trying to decide what to use to protect people from shrapnel.... it eventually comes back to good old steel. That has been around for over 2000 years.

[IndorilTheGreat]

Very interesting...

 

I have always been fascinated by various forms of martial arts; Western and Eastern. I have practiced Kendo for several years myself (alongside karate), and I am know practicing with the bastard sword that I created.

 

This information has definitely increased my interest in the subject.

[Beriallord]

I saw an interesting show on TV on how the Ancient Japanese made swords. They used Hagane, basically an Iron sand shoveled it through the top of this furnace loaded with burning coal, and the steel would melt into a giant glob, and they would knock chunks off from that and forge their weapons. The burning coal probably added loads of carbon into the steel and make it very, very hard. And they use a technique to more or less heat treat the blades, by spreading clay on the back half of the blade when they tempered the swords to make the cutting edge of the blade harder than the back edge of it. Meaning the weapon was both hard and durable. The method the Japanese used to craft blades was far superior to that of Medieval Europe. Although the Europeans had the Japanese beat at armor crafting. You can still buy Katanas made in Japan using the ancient crafting methods. They are very, very high quality, and also very, very expensive. As much as $8000-$10000 or more for one. Folding the steel is also very important, and also keeping the steel hot enough while folding it. The more layers in the steel, the better it is and the less impurities it has in it. Some swords are folded more than a million times, each time you fold it, the layers doubled. Only a master craftsman could achieve that high of a fold count.

 

I don't think a Samurai would win vs a Knight in full platemail. Knights used a variety of weapons, from maces, broad swords, axes and halberds. A katana would be completely ineffective against steel platemail. I saw a show where someone shot a modern recreation of a medieval platemail, with a muzzleloader, and the platemail succeeded in keeping the bullet from penetrating. One could argue the modern recreation was probably lesser quality, and also that the modern muzzleloader was superior to any firearm that would have been used. If a bullet can't penetrate, neither would an arrow.

 

One could study modern metallurgy and figure out the perfect temp to keep the steel at and monitor it with a laser temperature gauge closely, while the steel smelts. There is likely a ratio the Japanese used, how many shovels of coal per shovels of hagane, to get the mixture of carbon right. I am not sure how one could determine this other than experimentation.

 

Also the bow design the Mongols used is a recurve bow, and modern hunting bows mimic its design because of how effective it was for its size. Nearly all modern hunting bows are recurve design, because its simply a superior design. Nobody was able to produce a bow as superior as the Mongol bow until modern times with synthetic composite materials. It was simply the best bow ever made in ancient times.

Edited December 2, 2011 by Beriallord

[Oldwolfe]

Like I said, the Japanese developed some incredible techniques for getting the most out of the iron they had. But they had limits, based on the quality of the iron they had available. And... you can't put too much carbon in the blade or it becomes brittle. Try smacking the side of a drill bit with a hammer and you'll see what I mean.

 

It's impossible to for us to know how some of the high end European blades were made, because we simply don't know. Some very rare and exquisite European blades far exceed almost anything else made.

 

Actually, arrows had more armor penetrating capability than old lead balls from early guns. Early bullets were pure lead, soft, and had a fairly large surface area. A good arrow was very hard and hit on a tiny point. The difference between hitting a tin can with a rock and an icepick.

 

As far as Mongol Bows being the best... it comes down to the best at what? They were possibly the best horse bow... but never designed or intended for very long range shooting.

 

The English Longbow could reach out hundreds of yards. Not pinpoint shooting, of course, but when you are shooting at an entire army of massed troops, you only aimed for the general area anyway. Range and speed of firing was what was taught to basic military archers, accuracy wasn't as important as firing fast.

 

The Mary Rose is a sunken ship that was fairly recently recovered. Part of it's cargo was hundreds of English Longbows. Despite being underwater for a very long time, many of them are still in excellent condition. A lot about the old English Longbows was discovered from this wreck.

 

A properly made English Longbow was far more innovative than one would think. While not a laminated composite in the traditional sense like a Mongol Bow, it had the same effect in a way. In cross section it was shaped like a "D" with the rounded side being the rear of the bow and the flat side being forward. This helped with compression as the bow was drawn. If you look at a cross section of a log, you will see a color difference. The heartwood is darker, while the outer wood is lighter. They also have different physical properties. When properly made, the English Longbow was cut from the wood so that the rounded rear spine of the bow was made from the stronger heartwood and the front flat facing of the limbs was from the springier outer wood. This made a "natural" composite, of a sorts. It had two separate materials in it like most laminated bows, only it was grown that way, which is far better than gluing together two different materials. So the English Longbow was actually not quite as simple as most people today tend to think.

 

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l141/Oldwolfe/Longbow.jpg

 

The English Longbows on the Mary Rose ranged from 100 to 200 pound pulls. Unearthed skeletons of English archers from the time show distorted musculature due to the overdeveloped shoulder muscles on their drawing arm.

 

In the mass graves at the battle of Hastings, archeologists discovered a Norman Knight buried still on his horse. Both his legs were pinned to the horse by a single arrow. Keep in mind, this arrow also had to penetrate armor and saddle to pull this off.

 

The Mongols weren't the first to make composite recurve bows. Not by a long shot. Actually, the ancient Egyptians developed some remarkable war bows, beating the Mongols to the punch by several thousand years.. They laminated them using the very first fiberglass. It was done using very durable plant fibers and a fish based glue that took two years to fully cure. There are a few surviving examples in the Cairo museum in Egypt. Since they took so long to make, and took master craftsmen, all the surviving examples are beautifully decorated works of art. While recurves, they are larger than mongol bows, appropriately sized for use on chariots.

 

So... as to what the best bow ever made was... it depends heavily on the purpose the bow was intended for. A longbow was a better long range footman's bow, Egyptian bows were great chariot weapons, and a Mongol Bow was better for mounted archery.

Edited December 6, 2011 by Oldwolfe

[Oldwolfe]

Four things make a bow effective:

 

1) Draw Weight: How much energy is needed to pull back the string.

 

2) Draw Length: How far you can pull back the string. This longer the pull, the longer a duration of time that energy is being imparted to the arrow after released.

 

3) Stability: The less a bow distorts the more consistently the arrows are released, and the more accurately the arrows will fly. That's why a longbow is a bit more accurate. It's long limbs contort and twist less to impart the energy load, than a shorter bow that requires more limb movement to impart the same amount of energy. The tips of a longbow typically moves less than a foot when it is drawn. The tips of a mongol bow move well over a foot as the bow nearly unfolds when drawn.

 

4) Springiness: Think of a bow as a battery, of sorts. When you pull it back, you are storing energy in it. When you release the string, that energy is released. The springier a bow, the more energy is actually transferred to the arrow upon release.

 

As to the comment on recurves... all a recurve shape is intended to do, is as a way to get a full length draw of the bowstring in a shorter bow. The reason most modern non-compound bows are recurves, is very few modern people want to go hunting with a six foot long weapon. It's the wood-horn lamination process on the Mongol bow that adds to it's springiness, and therefore has a better transfer of energy making it more powerful than a non-laminated bow of the same draw weight.

 

A mongol bow is designed to put as much power into as small a package as possible to make it easy to fire on horseback. It was a powerful but short range bow. An English Longbow is completely unsuitable to fire from horseback, but was commonly used to fire at ranges that no Mongol horse archer would ever attempt. As far as power goes... both are limited by the strength of whoever is drawing it.

 

Use the appropriate tool for the appropriate job. Neither is better for all situations.

 

And this is where I am going to end the subject of what is better.

 

I was a professional metalworker for over twenty years. I know metal. People read these forums with all sorts of preconceptions and nothing I write here will change the minds of many people. You'll probably even encounter people who think aluminum makes better swords and nothing will change their minds.

 

This was intended to be an informative and educational posting, not an argumentative one. I won't be drawn into a "My daddy can beat up your daddy" sort of argument. I hope people enjoyed what I had to say. And it was originally on steel as it applies to sword-making, anyway.

Edited December 5, 2011 by Oldwolfe