One of the most famous and well known bows of all time is the English longbow. A self-bow (a bow made from a single piece of wood) made most often from the yew tree, the English longbow gained fame from it’s use in several famous battles of the middle ages.
English longbows are made by shaping a stave into a d-shaped form with the back of the bow being the sapwood (wood near the outside of the tree) and the front of the bow heartwood. This was done because the heartwood reacts better in compression and the sapwood better in tension as the bow is drawn. The tips were often covered with horn that formed the notches for the bow strings. Strings were usually made of hemp, but sometimes of flax or even silk.
Most of the original longbows had draw weights from 100 to 185 pounds and required the archer to train constantly for years to be a proficient shooter. These archers practiced at long ranges and could often repeatedly hit human sized targets at two hundred yards. They could also shoot up to fifteen arrows per minute in the heat of battle.
First introduced in the mid 1200s, the English longbow enjoyed over three hundred years of military use until they were finally fully replaced with firearms at the end of the 16th century. English longbows still enjoy a lot of use in modern times
by both historical archers and others who enjoy it’s elegant and powerful design. However, most modern bows peak below 60 lbs. draw weight, a far cry from the military bows of the past.
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