As for arrows, I don't believe using softwood will make them safer. I cannot see how. Softwood will break more readily than maple. Perhaps even moving to Ash or Yew as they are both very flexible and forgiving. It will be difficult for most people to tell the difference. A 30 poundage bow at 28 inches of draw is a reasonable weight. I say that as the arrows do not hit too hard, nor do you have to arc them in at close range. A bow 20 to 25 pounds is too light a weight, and 40 pounds being heavy. So a range of 25 to 35 pounds would work.

My experience as a combat archer in that-other-club-that-shall-not-be-named for over 20 years, has given me a feel for what may work. I never fired golf tubes and do not want to either. I was forced to do many stupid rule changes and gave up when required to put blunts on both ends of the arrow. Instead of foam or rubber, I started using High Molecular Weight (HMW) plastic heads as anything else was too heavy in the huge diameters 'required'. That convinced me to move to HMW shafts as well. They did not need to be taped, looked good and more importantly, did not break. I never needed to throw away two or three arrows per battle. All I am saying here is what I did in the past. I am not saying I agree with it or enjoyed it. But it does work well. What will the swords be made of? Will metal balls be on the points of the metal spear heads? If so, then plastic shafts flashing past at a distance to spectators, should not be too bad.

As for the larger than normal fletchings. Air resistance will not be noticed for some distance. Hence flight arrows have smaller fletchings, but not by much. If you want drag on the arrow over a short distance, fletching already exist. They are called 'flu-flu' and you should be able to see what they are from a supplier. This is what 'entertainment or stage artists' use to snatch arrows out of the arrow with. The arrow travels as per normal for about 90 feet and then wham they stop. The lad just stands at the predetermined distance and grabs the arrow before it falls to the floor. The flu-flu is very obvious a modern idea. If we attempt to make the normal fletchings larger, the drag they will impart will not be noticed.

Blunts, depends on eye slot openings. Some historical eye slots were near 1/2 inch wide, so a 3/4 inch blunt would fly nicely, but still be noticeable as a blunt. A heavy blunt will slow down the arrow alot.

Having said that, large hunting heads, designed to cause massive bleeding wounds in game, would not have been used in battle. So making large game heads in HMW plastic (3/4 inch thick by 3 inches wide) would not do at all. Very small bodkin points would have been used in battle. It is very hard to replicate that. Some people would say that in an emergency game heads would have been used. Well.... yes bird blunts may have been used too, but what are we trying to create?

I don't believe there is an easy solution.

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Originally posted by Woodcrafter:
As for arrows, I don't believe using softwood will make them safer. I cannot see how. Softwood will break more readily than maple. Perhaps even moving to Ash or Yew as they are both very flexible and forgiving. It will be difficult for most people to tell the difference. A 30 poundage bow at 28 inches of draw is a reasonable weight. I say that as the arrows do not hit too hard, nor do you have to arc them in at close range. A bow 20 to 25 pounds is too light a weight, and 40 pounds being heavy. So a range of 25 to 35 pounds would work.

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In general, I have to agree. I think 35 is about the max upper limit although I have a 42lb longbow that I could let off a little. Wood shafting won't matter. Because, ideally, the stiffness of the shaft should be balanced to the poundage of the bow, the length of the shaft, and the weight of the head. Frankly, a soft of mismatched shaft could lead to a mis-aim or mis-fire. I'd rather use something solid.

The problem is that we want to hit our enemy yet not change hurting them. I might suggest 3/4 inch be a minimum with 1 inch being perhaps more appropriate. Larger fletchings at very short range won't slow down a shaft enough but a large foam head will help that can compress a couple of inches before exposing the end of the shaft.

I would VERY strongly argue against EVER doing any kind of mass melee combat for the public, and here's why: ("Oh God in Heaven, here he goes again" you say...) If the public is there, it very obviously should be considered an interpretive event. As such, our job is generally to present as accurate a picture possible for educational purposes to said public. With that in mind, doing some of our combat [sic] with whatever guidelines we come up with will be an anachronistic and artificial system which will eradicate any sense of accurate interpretation we would otherwise be doing. While all of us are doing our combat [sic] in said system, WE know it's artificial and fake, and that we're doing it 1) to have fun (let's be honest), and 2) to try and get even the slightest insight from a first person perspective about troop movements, marching, pressing, and fighting [sic] within the historical parameters of period tactics and material culture. However, from the outside it will look like and be a complete farce.

We have a somewhat fundamental difference of opinion here though Glen I think that with a large target area, the innacuracies can be limited enough to give an effective demonstration, wheras you do not.

I've been following this discussion in troll mode until now, and I think I can add something to this discussion.

You simply cannot re-create a mass melee medieval combat scene without sacrificing historical accuracy to safety concerns. You would not have a cavalry charge against the line, you would not aim for the neck with a sword, and you would not shoot arrows at people. If you want to have these elements in your battle, your first concern is not to portray it accurately, but the safety of the participants.

Living history and mass combat have mutually exclusive goals. But only if you take both to the extreme. So in order to have an event where both are displayed, you have to find a middle ground. And by doing so, you accept to sacrifice authenticity elements for safety reasons. You already established rules for cavalry and acceptable targets, so you are willing to do the changes to archery to archery displays.

The way my group does it is with corks and foam arrow heads. Yes, they look ugly. Yes, they modify aerodynamics. But we have arrow volleys, and we can fire at opponents instead of behinf their line. In this case, we're clearly on the safety side of the spectrum. I can show you some examples if you wish.

So now, you have the history extreme, with [real bodkin ], and the foammy heads arrows [for the safety side]. How about a cork with a 1" foam plug at the end? This would cause the arrow to be slower for its entire flight and the impact force would be absorbed by the head. By requiring each and every participant to have head protection, the risk of serious injury is greatly diminished. As a drawback, you sacrifice distance and arrow "look". You can still display real arrows outisde combat, though

My opinion on blunts:

If you have a soft headed blunt designed to compress more than half an inch, when it will graze the target, the tip will stick and the shaft will rip the head off. To work perfectly it must strike the target perpendicularly, and people as well as hard armour tends to be rounded. It is difficult to hit an arm square on, and heads are round.

There are no target blunts, rather there are 'bird blunts' which are slightly larger than shaft diameter heads. The idea is that the concussion of striking the bird will do major damage to the hollow bones, etc and the bird will fall. If you used a wide game head, you would really mess up the bird.

When I first started combat archery, I used a 5/8 inch head. After a year or so, we moved to 3/4 inch head. Then screening came off of helmets and we moved to 1 1/4 inch heads. Now (I am not sure) but it is something insane like 1 1/2 inches at both ends of the arrow. The idea is that it may not enter the in-accurately wide eye slots.

Bows: The English were noted in the 14thc for the longbow, a Welsh invention. The longbow is in fact a 'self bow.' That is to say a stick with a string. A recurve bow is a stick curved at both ends. This provides a smoother release, is easier to use, and you are able to obtain larger poundages in a shorter bow. The majority of all Western cultures including the early English used a short self bow. The horse tribes of the steppes used even shorter bows that were recurved. You may see many pictures of people hunting with bows much shorter than they are. The battle at Hastings would have been with short self bows. Only when the longbow was discovered that it was quickly adopted because of its much higher poundage. We know the Mary Rose had longbows averaging 70 to 100 pounds or there abouts. I am unable to check the exact weight at this time.

So my point is that our recreation need not be with high poundage longbows. A 20 pound bow will be very light in weight. This is sufficient for small battle fields. However an arrow, at any poundage, in the eye will be a very memorable event.

[ 10-06-2003: Message edited by: Woodcrafter ]

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I am afraid I missed your point to some degree?

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Blunts and low-poundage bows are horrible alternatives, but they are the only ones that will make it safe.

Sounds pretty dangerous to me, especially as they don't do head blows.

Regarding bows, there is no way to make a 30 pound bow look realistic, but also consider that in a real battle with 100 pound bows, the archers would need to be at such as distance that the audience could hardly see them. 30 pounders would not have this problem.

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Originally posted by Lachlan Yeates:
Well, I am not too sure, but the impression I got from the english was that they used target blunts (still with a point) designed to stick in targets.

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If a target arrow could do that, it could possibly go through mild steel armour at close range. Or skip off of a surface into a non protected area.

I'd rather either eliminate the archery or err on the side of caution and go with nasty foam blunt tips to protect the object of my aim. But I would leave the nock end as is.

I think they are aiming at shields, and need to make eye contact before they fire, so they know they are about to get shot at.

we once shot a target blunt at a 16ga. round sheild for shiggles. we were all amazed as to how at "close" range, about 25 feet?, the tip peirced the metal sans problem. this stuff will easily go through any "naked" soldier.

the more i think about it the more that i can't see it happening with cerrtain acurate portrayal. believe me i would love to see/hear hundreds of arrows take flight in unison but not at the cost of hurting the people we work with.

so are we left to just portraying the encampments after/before the battle/skirmish?

as a side note, some time over the summer i was out shooting with one my buddies. we were just shooting for distance; getting some nice arcs. after treaking out to where the arrows had fallen, i "charged" my buddy and started to count the number of times he could have shot an aimed arrow at me that we would have been able to hit a target at that distance. by no means are we a great shot, but i was able to count at least 6-8 shots before i reached him.

so what kind of scenario would we have in a reenactment? a couple of volleys into the lines before we change to an aimed straight on shot? yeah, fine as an archer we wouldn't be able to pick off every single one charging into the line but it would be hard to "miss"

just more food for thought.

daniel

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1) A flared rubber tip. Some of which are rather small in size.

2) A full metal flat nosed target point. Basically a flat cylinder attached to the tip of the shaft.

the target blunts that we used were of the metal capped end variety.

the test were not scientific by any means, i.e. control group etc. it was conducted in the following manner: "are you SURE that you want me to shoot at that thing?"

we had been shooting most of the day the lower poundage bows 35-45#. the first two arrows that hit the sheild skided off after leaving a nasty dent. the last one hit it squarely and penetrated the steel.
we stopped conducting the experiment after my freind protested that we were messing his sheild up.

so we're talking a 35# bow at around 25' using steel blunts.

shooting we've broken some tips off and continued to use the arrows sans blunt tip, just the shaft. at 25-50' with the same bow, they have no problem sticking a couple of inches into the tree behind the target.

so do you still want me to shoot at you Bob? i'm very comfortable wearing a big red "X" on my chest but if you want me me to change into something else....

wait a second... this sucks! portraying the burgundians is like runing around with a big target on one's chest! i really don't like that idea.

daniel

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The difference that will be noted is the arcing flight of the arrow. All bows will have to arc for long ranges. Weaker bows will have to be fired at a higher angle, but the shaft will still fly in a large arc like other arrows fired from stronger bows. The weaker bows will not fire the shafts as high or as far. So if all the bows were close in 'weak poundage' it would look OK. At close range, there would be very little arc unless you have a quite weak bow, like in the range of 20 pounds.

When I was 12 years old, I was shot in the leg with a sharpened stick, fired from a 10 pound kids bow. The arrow stayed in my leg, my leg stopped working, and I fell over. At first I had not known I was shot. I felt no pain (from the impact numbing nerve endings et al) but the muscles locked around the arrow and my leg would not respond. Metal tipped 'target' arrows will be worse. As for going through a chain shirt... perhaps someone will want to try and let us know. Use a metal (not even steel) pointed 'target' arrows with a 30 pound bow and say 30 feet from the butted ring shirt. Then fire a metal flat bird blunt to see the difference. Please don't let anyone wear this test shirt. I may be prejudiced, so I look forward to what others will find out.

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but I got the impression that there is supposed to be a difference in look between varying poundages of bows. ... My earlier post above tried to say that we should normally be using short bows. Unless specifically English and then specifically using Longbows, most Western Europeans would probably be using 'short' bows and therefore not in the 100 pound range. [/B]

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Well, part of the problem is that reducing a bow from a 100 pounder to a 30 pounder is not a straight reduction. From a LH visual point of view, a longbow would look a little different. But I don't think people are concerned about the size of the bow, it's the shape and flight of the arrow that's of concern. From my point of view, safety being the foremost issue.

I don't understand your second comment?
The type of bow you would have would be very much dependent on the time period. For early and high middle ages, yes, short bows were the most common. For late medieval including the 15thC in europe, it would have been the longbow particularly for military portrayals. (And that the focus of the original ARMET concept was for 15thC/WOR events.)

I think the arc of the arrows would be the biggest thing that would look a bit funny.

I have done combat archery, and the arrows move pretty slow. I have seen people grab them out of the air on the fly.

Playing with rubber tips and 30 pound bows, the impact is very similar to paintball, and the arrows seem to move only marginally faster.

I was under the impression you still had high poundage shorter bows, not going up to longbow levels though.

I would try the test on me with rivited mail and padding, but I think a dummy would be better for safety

The problem would not neccesarily be that of arrows going *through* the plate - I'm pretty sure my current harness would not be penetrated - the problem is arrows skittering off plate and into areas where the armour does not cover.

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Also, I've been fired on by rabbit blunts at range with a 30-poundish bow. The arrows rapped pretty loud on my shield and helm, but didn't seem to have too much power. If everyone in the target area had proper face protection of period 3/8"-ish occularums, bevors, etc., I don't see a problem.

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I can see the point of not summarily dismissing another organizations system, just because.

CYA clause.

Just a thought.

Jenn

(edited because my train of thought derailed)

[ 10-08-2003: Message edited by: Fire Stryker ]

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Possibly in the 15thc and certainly in the 16thc, plate that was arrow and bullet proof was marked with two dents. The dents being created with one shot of a crossbow and one shot of a handgonne. So not all plate is proof if it had to be 'proven' so by this test of craftsmanship. Would the common soldier be able to afford 'proof' plate?

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