Longbows

hello today I'm going to say something about longbows in my previous videos about bows and actually have a bow to show you but now I do because I've got myself a longbow now the first thing you'll notice about this longbow is that it is long it's taller than I am and I'm going to talk well actually I had this one made for me and a longbow is taller than its user and that's sort of a definition of a longbow there isn't really a brilliantly good definition of a longbow and I've looked in various dictionaries and encyclopedias for one and identity say things like oh it's the sort of bow that was used by the English against the French in 100 Years War and so forth while it's not really a definition of a bow is it by large it's a piece of wood that's taller than its user and perhaps there is an implication that it's used for war as opposed to for hunting or other things but you could use a longbow for hunting now one thing that distinguishes the long ago from shorter bows is that people say that they take a lot more skill to use I'm not completely convinced of this I think people are confusing two things a very powerful war bow that of this type would be a longbow took an awful lot of strength to pull and so you need an awful lot of training to get the strength to pull it to try it but actually in terms of the skill of holding yourself properly getting into the right position and looking down the sights and judging distances and all those sort of things I think those are pretty much the same for other bows as well really so I'm not completely convinced that longbows really take any more skill to use this one is made of ash you probably know that a lot of them are made out of you that's quite a famous fact and it's true a lot of them were made out of you but ashes are perfectly authentic and very good wood to make a bow out of and one of the reasons I have an ash bow not a yew bow is that you is now flipping expensive apparently it's much more lucrative to sell you trees now for manufacturers of medicines rather than to Bowyer's which is a showing for people who like archery so it has a string strings were made out of various thing but linen was pretty common although it's very difficult to get the right sort of linen these days and like this one be thoroughly coated in beeswax to make it more resistant to moisture and make it a little bit stiffer and more manageable now first time I try to string this I had a bit of trouble because when I was used to with shorter bows I have seen I've seen some videos on YouTube and elsewhere on the net people talking about long bows on the bows come up to here and they're quite clearly a flat modern recurve thing they're now long bows this is a long bow they're long I fell it got difficult to string because well I was used to doing is just sticking the bottom end into my instep holding the string at the top pushing down into the belly of the boat and then pulling the string up but when the it's above you the bow this long that's really awkward but there are solutions to this one being can you see that this has actually got let's try and get it in focus there we go it's got two knocks at the end and those outer knocks are for a bow stringer which I made one myself pretty easy really it was just a long piece of cord with a loop in each end you put the loops into those outer knocks and then you hold the bow this way up you stand on the bow stringer and pull the bow up and that bends the bow and then you can put this string on quite easily and that was the solution to the problem if you strung it correctly this distance here between your way but the arrow and the string should be about a fist and a thumb this is one of the possible origins for the expression the rule of thumb but there are others if you want to adjust this distance you can of course take the string off untie the loop retie it and so forth but actually I've never found that necessary because all I need to do is take a string off and just put a few twists in it and just the act of twisting it makes a remarkable difference in the length of the string put it back on and that's how I can get this distance to be correct now something you don't see in the movies is arches doing this before a battle I'm warming the bow up you would do this to get best before out of your bow if you just shoot from cold the performance of the bow doesn't doesn't last so well apparently early the velocity of the arrows drops off very quickly after a few shots if you go straight to cold so I'll just be doing this before a battle they get ready and I notice I'm wearing a glove on my left hand arches would have something on this hand probably although I suppose an alternative to having something to protect this hand will be having lots of scars on this hand because when you get an arrow in your bow and you're using a long bow it just rests on top of your hand and so this arrow with its fletchings skims across the top of your hand very very fast over and over again you can get horrible cuts particularly if these are goose feather quills if a little bit of the quill is just showing there it's like a sharp fingernail if that goes across the top of your hand you certainly know about it they'll be yeah blood and all sorts so something to protect your left hand now when I did archery in my teens I never ever slapped myself on the inside of my wrist and that was quite contemptuous of the sort of people who wore wrist protectors fat archers braces I believe or to call them pansies so I thought but the first time I used this longbow I hit myself quite painfully on the inside of the wrist so I've been wearing various armed guards since and for my right hand I just made myself this pretty simple things it's a piece of leather there are other things you can do to protect your right hand but you're pulling back on this string with a lot of force and you can do that over and over and over again you will just skin your fingers so that's how that is used pretty straightforward you notice it's got a little slot in the middle of it for where the arrow goes which is useful when you're shooting outdoors very long distances playing over a great long way but in fact indoors the arrow goes there on the string and I hold the string quite a bit lower down because short distances that's what you got to do and other things I can say about the bow while I've got it here yes ways that you can use the bow and ways that you can see that someone in a Hollywood film is not using the boat correctly one thing is that in order to draw the bow back he's used quite a bit of muscle power and if I want to aim the bow off all this an enemy up there I want to shoot up that way I don't just move my arm if you move your arm like that your whole body's not braced properly my arm there is much much weaker than it is there so instead I will aim my whole body up that way when you aim from the hips so you're at full draw you then move your whole self not just your arm and something it's really cool to do if you're in a Hollywood movie maybe you're an elf or something is because it looks cool I don't know why would you do this anyway because you hold a boat sideways like this and you go trying like that well if I hold this if I held them bow the right way up I can look down the arrow and can see accurately where I'm aiming if I'm pulling it down here I can't do that so you have funnel low of accuracy also if I pull it towards me my body gets in the way pretty quickly so I can't pull the bow back to full drawer so you get a low power inaccurate shot this way but if you want to look cool apparently that's what you have to put up with there is one alternative for you could draw it to full draw out of this sort of angle but then if anyone does that you know they're not using a full poundage bow because only with a very low poundage bow would you'd be strong enough to pull up that sort of angle you need to pull into your body you've got to have any off right that's probably enough for one video don't you think

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 633,262

Rating: 4.9681735 out of 5

Keywords: long, bow, longbow, archer, archery, arrow, twang

Id: 7ZpDIpqDwxI

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 05 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/yugung]

50 XP bonus for the sweater, dressing in character

[u/Bagelson]

There are indeed plenty of interesting videos on the channel. Spent the better part of an hour looking through the choicest ones. That said, details like this only really applies to the most simulationist of gamers; I prefer to keep things more abstract.

[u/Kevslounge]

That guy reminds me just a little of Hugh Laurie. Was very informative though. Definitely going to be following his channel from here on out!