BOWS AND ARROWS — KLOPSTEG 575 



sion. Several shapes of cross section are shown in figure 3. Such a 

 limb is said to be stacked. 



The grip occupied the region where the tapering limbs merged, 

 and bending occurred throughout the length of the bow. For this and 

 perhaps other reasons, an unpleasant recoil might be felt in the bow 

 hand when the arrow was loosed. The stacked limb, characteristic of 

 the longbow, was a violation of good mechanical principles and did not 

 properly exploit the possibilities of the wood from which the bow 

 was fashioned. On the contraiy, it subjected the wood to needlessly 

 high stresses. Indeed, such a bow had to be long to minimize stresses 

 and prevent breakage ; hence longhovj. That the margin of safety in 

 the longbow was recognized as precarious is implied in the saying that 

 a bow fully drawn is nine-tenths broken. This is not true of the 

 modem bow. Another feature of the longbow was that its lower limb 

 was about 2 inches shorter, and stiffer, than the upper. This seems to 

 have been a concession to the bowyer's desire to keep the overall length 

 within tolerable limits and to have the arrow engage the string at 

 the midpoint of the latter. Both desires were satisfied by moving 

 the handgrip in the direction of the lower lunb by a couple of 

 inches. 



Figure 3. — Typical shapes of cross sections of limbs of traditional longbows. 



During the known histoi-y of the longbow up to the early 1930's the 

 only change in design seems to have been one intended to reduce the 

 aforementioned recoil in the bow hand. The change consisted of mak- 

 ing the grip rigid and nonbending by leaving more wood in the handle 

 portion. The limbs then, instead of merging within the grip, made 

 juncture somewhat abruptly with the heavier midsection, where the 

 latter was fashioned into dips which merged into the limbs. The 

 limbs thus became more clearly defined in length. In other respects 

 the design remained frozen. 



The original motive for Hickman's work and mine was the convic- 

 tion, bred by recognition of the theoretical shortcomings of the long- 

 bow and by the desire to unprove its performance, that much better 

 bows could be made. The improvements that resulted from the work 

 demonstrate the effectiveness of using science and engineering princi- 

 ples as compared with the stagnation inevitable in adherence to 

 tradition. In contrast with these improvements, brought about within 

 a few years, is the frozen design to which bowyers in England and 

 America adhered through the centuries, because they "knew" that it 



