"Armour" Piercing with Medieval-style Arrows - Video 14

bigbowbrum Says:

May 19, 2013 - I guess that's progress for you, though I'm guessing that the arrow you shot off the yew bow was much heavier than the arrow off the recurve so this should be taken into account.

andras zalatnay Says:

May 10, 2013 - i have a laminated 63lbs reconstructed medivial-hungarian bow(turkish influence on bows). it shots a 35 gramm arrow at 260-65 feet/sec i think a lighter but quicker arrow should penetrate a lot deeper. because steel is a hard material and it cant resist high velocity.(against high velocity and lightweight a soft, more flexible thing is better fr ex:bulletproof-kevlar)anyway its normall that a 60-70 gramm arrow with 170-80 feet/sec is not good against steel.

dogo babuna Says:

May 10, 2013 - I tried with Yew warbow 130 lbs and with 65 lbs samick shb recurve, damn i was disappointed with performance of yew longbow :( Arrow from modern recurve is so much faster and hit much much harder. I shoot all my life with primitive bows and i didn't know that modern bows are so fast

bigbowbrum Says:

Mar 4, 2013 - To be honest this isn't a very authentic test. The heads are of all different designs, they are not case hardened nor sharpened. Also, one of the archers was only short drawing his bow so a good third of the arrows bouncing off were his so should be ignored anyway. We were just having a bit of fun. Hopefully in the future we will produce a better video and explain in detail the properties of the heads, bows and plate to make it more relevant.

jednoucelovy Says:

Feb 24, 2013 - 1:12 an ace hit - right in the cross

radtex03 Says:

Feb 20, 2013 - Are you only using quarrel heads and are they of equal or greater toughness than the plate?

bigbowbrum Says:

Feb 18, 2013 - Actually the opposite is true. The celular construction of all the bows would have been degraded by their time in the water, so the few that were put on the tiller and drawn up measured less draw weight than they would have when they were new. Glad to hear that you enjoy the videos. Many more to come! :)

Rishov Chatterjee Says:

Feb 15, 2013 - Hey Nick, LOVE the vids! Ive heard though that the bows from the mary rose had an increased draw weight due to the water and such, is it true?

bigbowbrum Says:

Feb 11, 2013 - The correct name of the town in France is Azincourt, though the common Englishman in the middle ages would call it Agincourt, just as they called Poitiers "Pointers" and the Dauphin "Dolphin". Their tongues weren't as cultured as ours are today! ;)

bigbowbrum Says:

Feb 11, 2013 - Yes they can be. It depends on the quality of the wood and which bowyer you are buying from. Generally a yew bow with a draw weight of 100lbs or more will cost £700 - £1,000 (EU800 - EU1200).

AnonMadara Says:

Feb 9, 2013 - is it true that yew-bows are by now basically super-expensive?

Vader Darth Says:

Feb 8, 2013 - Meanwhile in the movies 1 arrow hit = 1 kill...

vdub2002 Says:

Feb 7, 2013 - I'd like to add that usually an armored (armoured) combatant would be under volley fire. Meaning that it wouldn't just be one arrow coming at his column, but maybe even hundreds. And as we saw in Agincourt (Is this called Azincourt in English text books?) the volley was effective against cavalry and armored (armoured) men-at-arms. Any ways at point blank range, this could very well be the situation on armo(u)r. I feel better now arguing your scientific argument. Usually never one longbow.

schpoogie Says:

Jan 17, 2013 - I don't think they were trying to prove anything or test anything. They were just trying it out

valikk85 Says:

Jan 13, 2013 - applying Breastplate, most of arrows would have a ricochet. Sorry for my English.

ChaplainHaladriel Says:

Dec 27, 2012 - I think you guys broke that knights chest at about 0:45! LOL Great vid!

Jason Thompson Says:

Dec 25, 2012 - I have 1 question why would you thumbs down this video, love it fellers

crispy4448 Says:

Dec 23, 2012 - looks like a heap of fun! and armour piercing or not one thing we can all safely agree on is you really don't want to be on the receiving end of a line of long bowmen

rchave Says:

Dec 6, 2012 - Great video, and massively agree with all your comments. (well not totally on 9, I'd say it would kick and bruise badly, but I doubt injure) There's so many arrow-vs-armour debates out there which are frustratingly silly, people get into a yes/no mindset... Which is about as futile as saying yes/no to "is a car crash fatal?" Mostly not, there's exceptional 'proof' either way, but it doesn't have to be fatal to be undesirable.

NoOne3234 Says:

Oct 11, 2012 - The typical Manchu bow was a static recurve bow with a draw weight of 80lbs. The merits of such a design are discussed in B.W. Kooi's thesis. The string bridges allow more energy to be stored in a Manchu bow's draw than in a straight bow of comparable draw weight and draw length. On the other hand, the heavy string bridges decreased efficiency significantly. It's telling that both weapons fired 1000-1500 grain arrows compared to 300-600 grain ottoman arrows, making them nasty vs armor.

HeirOfWallachia Says:

Sep 26, 2012 - It does not depend on the bow but the strength of the archer, if an average guy shot with an average bow he would do much better, than shooting with a stronger bow.

mojothemigo Says:

Sep 26, 2012 - See my comment to legioXequestriis and XXTeutonicKnightxx's comment. Also, iron pots and sheets don't necessarily equal good armor steel. However, crossbows the world over have been known for great penetration. They were the principle war bow is Western Europe and were known for frustrating knights because they definitely could penetrate mail armor. No weapon is perfect or supreme, no armor is impenetrable.

mojothemigo Says:

Sep 26, 2012 - English longbows are composites, two different types of fibris woods. The arrows can fly faster and be used on horseback but NO they can not penetrate the way you talked about. You are just flat out wrong about the level of penetration and xxTeutonic gives a good example. The Eastern Europeans and Middle East had them, and they did not penetrate armor like longbow arrows. You can describe how fast and longrange shortbows/arrows are, but history does not show they had the same impact on armor

mojothemigo Says:

Sep 23, 2012 - I think I have read that before, but it makes me smile every time I see it. There are too many who have no idea what the longbow or the smaller, eastern recurve bows were and an engrandization of the later. Not to mention how good mail was, which I think was the point of your comment. Thank you for posting it

lorenzo alvarez Says:

Sep 22, 2012 - do some more plz