Archery | Why Do Modern Bows Look Different?

Why did bows develop into the shapes we use today, and have we been doing it wrong?

Follow-up question from the June (not July) Q&A.

Bows featured:

Martin Cobra (courtesy of Archery Supplies)
Samick Sage (courtesy of 3Rivers Archery)
Bear Takedown
W&W Inno Max

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[stuartanderson]

Great videos. I'm a beginner archer and your videos have made a huge difference. You answer all the questions beginners and intermediates have.

[faris]

I come here because of 2020 Japan Olympics after Archery session ended. Interested with the design. Thanks for the explanation sensei.

[Keaninan]

Amazing channel! Found it after I bought a shitty ebay bow, wish I would've come across you earlier, but really enjoying archery all the same and your channel helps so much! Thank you!

[TurtleGamers]

Kind of makes sense for all medieval-style bows to look the same, as it's much easier to mass-produce them in the context of wars

[MikeMafiaII]

Great video, one small thing: There actually was very much variation in bow design between different people. Also in bow grips there was variation between different peoples/cultures. Even a thousand years ago, there was a great variation in bows (and also grip shape) in the Near East alone. Sorry for the nitpick, it's a good video nonetheless and keep the content coming!

[mattconroy]

Sensei, Eastern woodland bows and some other tribes had a metal knife sticking out of top limb. self bows are as you know very strong. I would imagine a major tactic would be to break the native bow or cut the string. seeing that these bows were flat or longbow, I do believe it did play a role in melee attacks. In response to your video about melee. Perhaps the little knife was to cut other feuding tribes strings. I’m going to ask about the knife on limb.

[shanemccarthy]

Just read an archery forum titled "Archery Control. Are there too many Bows and Arrows in your town"? The first post was "What if someone loaded two or three arrows on the string of these killing devices let alone one"? I think it's time to end myself due to the amount of cringe I've sustained.

[MrWizardjr]

why do target compound bows not have the ergonomic grip

[torjones]

I would think that center shot bows would still have some induced oscillation in the arrow's flight, yes?

[davydeglin]

Wow, when did you get the Inno Max and how is it shooting compared to the CXT ?I love the look of the inno Max and am looking into buying a secondhand one myself.

[KILLKING]

the best way to look at this look at the recurve the Huns first discovered the recurve and found it hits harder power wise due to the physics it uses and recurves are shorter and easier to use since the Huns were nomadic and traveled on horse the recurve fitted that really well so each bow design is a reflection of the time that they first came out.

[TheNockingPoint]

Nice Merlin shirt! When will we get to see the Bear take down in action? What fiberglass bow is that? I am not familiar with it. Thank you!

[Muhamad_Taufiq]

Hold on, you couldn't just show Inno Max without doing proper review video for it lol

Although to be fair maybe it's not that different than CXT.

[ViBoMe]

About the handle I disagree modern bows has a more ergonomic design. The handle looks like a gun handle and it is not adequate to hold tension because it doesn't stay in the right part of your hand. As I learned in Aikido, in order to hold something firmly, you have to place it crossing the entire palm of your hand diagonally, where you have the most lenght possible and, therefore, most contact area with the thing you're holding and it is perfectly possible to hold straight objects like this. In modern handles you concentrate all the tension between your thumb and index finger, having a lot more pressure in your hand

[kalinkhosel]

Sensei. I used a takedown recurve bow. Yesterday as I was using it, it suddenly break at the bottom "limb holder" / bottom part of the riser which hold the bottom limb.

I don't know why or how this happened. My anchor point is still at its place. The string is good. The arrows are good too. By these data alone can you please diagnose where I messed up?

If those data isn't enough I also can send you a pic if you give me an adress to send the pic to

[LoriWolfcat]

Ugh, modern bows make me sad. I wanna get the arrow with my right and put it on the RIGHT side! I hate that awkwardness of swinging it over. It feels like yet another wrong grip.

[davefoc]

I don't do archery although I've been inspired to try it after watching quite a few of NUSensi's videos. I have enjoyed all the videos. NUSensei has the ability to ask interesting questions and answer them in an interesting way. For me however, this was the most disappointing of all of his videos so far.

There was a lot of bow development going on before the simple wood bow that he showed came around that wasn't discussed and there ancient bow developments that made it into a modern recurved bow that didn't make it into the simple wood bow he showed that weren't discussed including:

1. Change from a rounder limb like on an English long bow to the flatter wider limbs on the wood bow he showed. Why this change?

2. All the experimentation with different shapes and materials in different cultures some of which ended up in a modern recurve bow.

3. Why the recurve shape in general? How is it better than a stick? I saw a video that suggested that long bows had the ends bent to achieve something of a recurve shape, so the recurve shape seems like it might be a really good thing.

3. All the routine bow doodads that got improved on a modern target shooting recurved bow.

4. All the little doodads that got invented for a recurved bow designed for target shooting.

5. Removable limbs.

OK, NUSensei wasn't going to get all this into one video but maybe a series of videos on topics like these might have been better or if there is only one video maybe topics like these could be mentioned even if they weren't discussed in detail.

[edexpress]

sir i want to buy a recurve bow for archery . i m from India. Plz

[lindasano]

We might have a better understanding of basic science if the main stream media would stop screwing it up.

[mcdougles]

You don't talk about eastern style bows, but they are the real ancestors of modern recurves not flat bows. Or maybe both are? Most ptobably, grips were came from longbow-flatbow line. But limbs from eastern bows, like korean.