Bow Facts

There were eight basic style of bows. They are the compound bow, the crossbow, composite bow, arbalest bow, ballista bows, long bows and the Yumi.

Each type of bow is different and was designed for a different sytle of shooting.

A compound bow is a modern bow that has pulleys, cams, or wheels at the end of each limb through which the bow string passes. As the bow is drawn, the pulleys or cams turn, which in turn changes the leverage of the bows' limbs.

The crossbow is a small bow attached to a wooden support and drawn towards a nut or pin. When a trigger is pressed, the pin or nut releases the bow string, shooting the bolt.

An arbalest is a large, powerful crossbow with a bow (prod) of steel, rather than of wood or horn/sinew composite.

A ballista is a torsion spring crossbow and can shoot large arrows or stones.

The Asiatic traditional composite bows use horn on the belly and sinew on the back, often with a wooden core to provide a gluing surface. The bows are backed with sinew because it is very elastic. Sinew will also shrink and pull a bow into reflex.

Longbows are ideally made from yew, but white woods elm, ash, hazel and Brazil were commonly used according to availability. Longbows were often built to be as tall as the archer, and a well-made bow could shoot well in excess of 300 yards (275 meters) using light arrows. A longbow archer could shoot up to 10 arrows per minute; a crossbowman or arbelestier of the Hundred Years War could only shoot up to three.

The typical modern flatbow is made from a whitewood such as ash, hickory, hazel, or oak, with limbs about 2 inches (5 cm) wide, tapering in the last outer third of the limbs to ?-inch (1 cm) nocks.

A yumi is a Japanese longbow used in the practice of kyudo. Traditionally made from a laminate of bamboo, wood, and leather, yumi are of asymmetrical design, with the grip positioned at about one-third the distance from the lower tip.