ANST - Drawing a Bow Whi

[James Crouchet]

> Gunnora Hallakarva said:
> 
> >	Actually, guys, if you make your drawpoint such that the string touches
> >the tip of your nose and the bottom of your chin without a helmet, you can
> >use the exact same draw in a helmet without much adjustment to your
> >technique.  
> 
[snip]

> The main disadvantage of this draw that I can see is the reduced
> draw length.

Actually I tried what I THINK she is describing, and I only lost 
about 1/2 inch of draw. I just took a bunch of measurements in my new 
helm and here they are:
                 No Helm        New Helm        Old Helm
                 Lngth  Wght    Lngth   Wght    Lngth   Wght
                 -----  -----   -----   -----   -----   -----
Draw under eye   26"    26.5#   21"     18.5#   19"     15.5#
Draw under chin  25.5"  25#     23.5"   21.5#   ??      ??

My new helm helps, increasing my draw by a couple of inches, and this 
new draw technique gets me another 3 inches without me having to 
shoot off to the side. So now I am only losing 1/3 of my range and 
power, rather than 1/2. Mind you, I am still not satisfied with 
losing 1/3.

Also, notice that I don't draw a bow to 28 inches WITHOUT a helm. No 
matter how you slice this one, I am not going to get to a 28" draw.

> On target archery this may mean that the bow is not
> being drawn to it's optimum position but this may not be a
> problem. If you want to compensate get a stronger bow. In SCA
> combat archery where increasing the bow draw weight is not an
> option, you may not be able to directly compensate for this. But
> the increase accuracy may compensate.

What increase in accuracy? More accurate than drawing off to the
side, yes. More accurate than drawing to the eye? No. The bottom
line is that even with this technique I am losing about 1/3 of the
range that someone would have if they were large enough to use that
full 28". THEY do not have to draw off to the side, so I am NOT more
accurate than they. I just have less.

> My opinion on the combat archery is that we should keep the standard
> draw distance for our measurements. And in particular, the rule
> against gleaming or borrowing another archer's arrows.

As someone pointed out earlier, borrowing is not illegal. The rules 
states:

"Wooden shafted quarrels shall not be gleaned from the Field. Such
quarrels must be inspected by the appropriate Marshal(s) before being
used again and must be inspected after each and every firing."

> I think it is
> all too easy for an archer used drawing say, a 30 inch arrow to draw
> a quickly picked up 28 inch arrow past the safe draw point. It is
> true that we don't have points on our combat arrows, but I think the
> danger in this out-wieghs the slight gain.

Well, let's look at the danger.

When you say danger, you are talking about the danger of injury. For 
an injury to occur *because of draw length* Several things have to 
occur. 

I am assuming that if we matched draw measurements to the person, we
WOULD make arrow borrowing illegal. So:

An archer either has to go into a battle with a bow that 
pulls more than 30# at his maximum draw length (and arrows that 
are shorter than his max draw so he can use them to pass 
inspection) or he will need to be ready to draw off to the side 
once he gets longer arrows, with the resulting loss of accuracy.

Next, our cheating friend must stash longer arrows somewhere on the 
field before the battle OR he must find someone willing to loan him 
arrows, knowing it is illegal.

Then the arrow exchange has to happen without a marshal noticing. 
For all this trouble the archer gets an increase of maybe 5-10 
pounds (my old 40# bow yields 30# at 23" and 38# at 28" -- 8 pounds 
gained). 

Next our little cheating archer must shoot those particular arrows
at close range, as that extra few pounds certainly won't make a
difference past 20 feet or so. He must hit his target (not
necessarily easy if he is drawing in a way he is not use to) in an
area which is not armored, BUT is fragile enough that that extra 5-10
lbs will make the difference between whether or not he is injured
(never mind that he is armored against rattan swords...).

For all this to happen in the same battle seems wildly unlikely to 
me. 

Ok, now let's look at the "slight" gain. As I pointed out earlier, we 
are talking about ** 1/3 to 1/2 ** of my range and power. Perhaps 
more for smaller folks. I am 5'7" and there are a lot of folks who 
are smaller than me. A 100% increase in range does not look "slight" 
or trivial to me.

Ok, you guys got me to go digging in the rules, so here is the 
result.  On the subject of draw length the state:

"2. The marshallate finds acceptable only recurves and longbows which
are made of wood, aluminum or fiberglass and which: 
a. have a maximum strength of thirty pounds with a full legal draw
using legal wooden shafted quarrels."

Notice that no number is given for draw length. The closest thing I 
could find was in a description of wood-shafted arrows:

"The maximum length of the shaft shall be 28 inches."

No minimum was given. So a 23 inch arrow IS legal. Full draw using 
that arrow would be 23 inches. According to the above rules, it is at 
THAT draw that my bow cannot exceed 30#.

I also dug in the glossary. Here are a couple pertinent definitions:

"Draw: The distance from a bow's string, at rest, to the string when
pulled into the firing position."

Actually, this is wrong. It is measured from the front of the bow to 
the string. That makes about a 9" difference on my bow. The second 
definition is:

"Strength: The string tension measured in pounds when the bow or
crossbow is pulled to it's maximum allowable draw. The measurement is
taken at the point of the string where the quarrel would normally be
placed for firing."

This certainly looks to me like they measure off the arrow. I guess 
that means that the rules ALREADY allow us to use shorter arrows and 
measure off those arrows.

I guess that makes me a doofus for arguing to change the rules to 
what they already say. Oh well. :-b 

M. Doré
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