Wingfoot wrote:Hi ForgeForgeCorvus wrote: I am an archer
I have long wanted to get myself a bow, what in your opinion is best ?
My opinion is biased, I'm a Longbowman.
Is it the best bow available now ?..... Nope, not even second best.
It is however the easiest to make yourself and can be made very powerful from just wood.
Compounds are the most powerful, both in terms of draw-weight and arrow speed.Are the compound style Bows as powerful as an old longbow ?
I know some of the longbows found in the Mary Rose were 120lbs+, but to draw that heavy a bow you need to of started young and kept practicing. Modern Longbows tend to be less then 80lbs draw, mostly around 35lbs to 55lbs.
Youth Compounds tend to be around that, adult ones even more.
A decent basic kit?If I wanted a bow for hunting ( I know I cant use it in the Uk for that ) or general use what would be the best to get from the outset, these things are rarely cheap so I would like to get something that will take me from a beginers point of view to a good level.
Basic bow, any of these would be fine
http://www.quicksarchery.co.uk/superbas ... /Club+Bows
Some arrows of the correct stiffness (Spine) for the bow
Bracer (arm-guard)
Tab (the leather thing you protect your fingers from the bowstring)
Arrow rest (a basic stick-on will be fine to start off with)
If you really want to push the boat out:
Sight
Quiver
Bow bag
I'd recommend you either join a club or contact Quicks and ask for advice on draw weight, bow length and arrow selection as Recurve is different from Longbow.
A standard target Recurve has three peices two Limbs (the bits on either end that bend) and a Riser (handle part in the middle, this shouldn't flex.)
The Limbs do all the work of storing your muscle energy, the Riser's job is to join the Limbs together, act as a hand grip and be a mounting point for all the other bits such as arrow rest, sight, stabilisers and ( in the case of some hunting rigs) bow quiver.
As you may of guessed you can buy Limbs in different lengths and draw weights, this means that you can use the same Riser and still move up in terms of draw-weight.
Draw weight is how powerful a bow is based on the force (expressed as a weight in pounds) required to draw the string back a fixed distance (normally 28 inches for adult bows).
However, you also have to take into account how 'Fast' a bow is. This is how quickly that stored energy is transfered to the arrow by the bow returning to its un-drawn state (when you 'Loose' the arrow)
A Compound, a Recurve and a Longbow of the same draw weight do not product the same speed.
The governing body GNAS (or ArcheryUK as they call it now) doesn't exclude any type of bow, there is a handycap system to level the field in open competitions or there will be different 'Classes' where archers are grouped by age, gender and equipment.I might also consider competition use if there are bows that are suitable for all round use.
Wf
