Mongolian bow vs English Longbow

Hi all,

I've recently become very interested in the Mongolian bow. I have read that it was faster and more powerful than the English longbow. I have read before how powerful the old longbows were, so has anyone ever tried comparing a Mongolian bow and an English longbow of equal pondages to see ?

Originally Posted by Heed

Hi all,

I've recently become very interested in the Mongolian bow. I have read that it was faster and more powerful than the English longbow. I have read before how powerful the old longbows were, so has anyone ever tried comparing a Mongolian bow and an English longbow of equal pondages to see ?

Shot a clout round today. I was shooting a Sammick SKB at 45lb (actually weighs 38lb) I was easily reaching at 180 yards with lots of room for chucking the arrows closer towards 200 yards. I was shooting 2016 Gamegetters with 2 inch fletchings and standard 70ish grain points.

Next to me a fellow archer was shooting a 70lb Longbow with POC shafts and was falling 15 yards short most of the day.

My SKB is very fast, powerful, does not stack right up to 32inches.
I used to own a 50lb Bickerstaff longbow and wouldnt swap my SKB for one now. I love my Sammick!

All for around £90 delivered you cant go wrong. Set of arrows (Gamegetters) for £25 (shafts) full set up including delivery for under £140. (bowsports)

If the two bows have the same draw length and draw weight, the Mongolian (or any Asiatic recurve) should store more energy (and thus shoot further/hit harder assuming identical arrows) as it has a higher initial draw weight due to the recurve and the higher force required to string it to bracing height. E.G at say 10" draw the Asiatic bow may be 35 lb vs the longbow's 8lb even though the final draw weight will be the same.
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You can see from the graph (2 of my bows) how the Asiatic style starts at a higher draw weight (although in this case it finishes lower than the longbow). The Area under the curve represents the energy stored. If you imagine the graph for the Asiatic bow shifted up so that the final draw weights were the same, you can see there would be much more stored energy, (and the figures I suggested would be about right).

Del

Neo Asiatic (and other) recurves and afbs, especially those made with modern materials are always likely to outperform wooden elbs, but don't forget that elbs can be very slow or impressively fast according to design.

The flight record for a 35lb elb is 260yards; shooting a very light arrow, I admit. It's easy to make a laminated wooden bow of around 40lbs shoot an ordinary arrow such as your gamegetters 180yards. It wouldn't compete on price, though.

Design is the key, more than draw weight. The 70lb longbow did poorly because it or the arrows or both, were too heavy for the energy that was being stored. Not knocking alternatives to longbows here, but wood is still great engineering stuff.

Btw, might be fun to shoot a wooden flight arrow through the Samick, see what happens. David

Originally Posted by Neo

Shot a clout round today. I was shooting a Sammick SKB at 45lb (actually weighs 38lb) I was easily reaching at 180 yards with lots of room for chucking the arrows closer towards 200 yards.
Next to me a fellow archer was shooting a 70lb Longbow with POC shafts and was falling 15 yards short most of the day.

That 70lb Longbow must be poor if it can't make 200yards...
Were you shooting into a hurricane?
Del

Comparing 2 bows at a recent clout shoot....

1. 45# Samick SLB II AFB
2. 45# Bickerstaff long bow (don't know exact materials - ask Woodsplitter)

Arrows, were fairly similar - I think Woddsplitters being slightly shorter possibly. 4" feathers and heavy points.

Shooting @ 180yards...My flatbow was reaching fairly easily, however, Woodplitters long bow struggled to hit the distance.

In my favour, my DL is slightly longer then WS, and my AFB containg more modern materials ie. glass fibre.

I don't know how my 50# Hungarian compares to WS's long bow @ distance.

I've got a hickory/lemonwood longbow and a Scythian, both 45lbs at 28". Firing the same arrows from them, there is clearly two different trajectories of the arrows. The Scythian is certainly quicker on the loose and hits them in harder than the longbow.

That's my experience anyway.

Del the cat's graph works well at showing the difference.

The Mongolian recurves tend to be very powerful at low draw - so give a nice push off the bow. where as a longbow can drop in weight at low draw.

This is why a longbow that is too long - isn't such a great thing, as the limbs are hardly working.

Check out this pic of this turkish bow (which has many similarities to a mongolian)



Those limbs have already bent round a heck of a long way - that's a lot of stored energy!!!

Wood itself struggles to offer this level of performance - hence why the mongolian bows have fish bone and skin to reinforce the bendy bits.

D

Originally Posted by edmundblack

Firing

???? Sorry don't understand the term

Del

Longer arrow, rag, tar, match.

That's a nice Turkish bow there on page one. Might stick my Scythian up. :P

Edit - here it is. If anyone is ever in any doubt about getting one, do. They are immense fun to use, and the sight of many faces going green with envy is also nice.

Originally Posted by Heed

Hi all,

I've recently become very interested in the Mongolian bow. I have read that it was faster and more powerful than the English longbow. I have read before how powerful the old longbows were, so has anyone ever tried comparing a Mongolian bow and an English longbow of equal pondages to see ?

All things being equal you'd expect the Mongolian bow to be faster than an English Longbow, as said above. I do find, however, that the arrow will play a bigger part in this than a lot of people realise, also the quality of the bow. A top quality longbow will be faster than a poorly made Mongolian. As with all things archery there are as many answers as there are people who shoot the things, I personally find the Longbow easier to shoot accurately, so although I have a Mongolian bow, it doesn't see the light that often, I'm too busy shooting in the longbow!

Alot depends on the construction materials used in the bow. Modern synthetic bow making materials have better mechanical properties than natural woods. As for performance my 78lb longbow sends a 28gramm arrow 316 yards, thats good enough for me

Does anyone know what the average poundage of the historical Mongolian bow, used from horseback, was? Surely being on a moving horse must limit the amount of strength you could put into your draw?

In terms of design, superior and inferior are task specific evaluations. The elb was designed to allow hundreds of occasional infantrymen to launch arrows en masse at armoured knights. Mongol recurves used en masse might have been even more devastating, but the more complex design would prohibit mass production. The elb could be said to be superior to the native American short, d-bow, but it wouldn't necessarily be a better tool for hunting small game in a forest. A historical bow should be judged in its historical context.

Originally Posted by calib

Does anyone know what the average poundage of the historical Mongolian bow, used from horseback, was? Surely being on a moving horse must limit the amount of strength you could put into your draw?

I think (from my reading...) one of the problems is that a complete bow has never been found - due to the wood rotting etc. Therefore, much if the design that we see now, is almost educated guess work. Obviously, what poundage these folk shot is guess work as well....

When you consider that a lot of the archers from that part of the world basically lived on their horses with their bows, I would assume that they could comfortabley shoot a fairly high poundage bow, however, I would doubt it would be the 100+lbs that the longbow men were using.