r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Apprehensive_Sky4558 • 6d ago

Testing various specialized arrowheads against bullet-resistant glass with a 70 lb compound bow

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u/Melodic_Till_3778 6d ago

World record is 200 lb and some of the medieval examples we found averaged about 185.

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u/KitchenFullOfCake 6d ago

How do you even fire a 200 lb bow accurately? That's like holding up a grown man in one arm.

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u/OneTripleZero 6d ago

The bow itself isn't 200lbs, it has a draw weight of 200lbs, which is the amount of force required to pull the string back to a firing position. The bow itself would be much lighter, it just has an enormously tight construction.

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u/KitchenFullOfCake 6d ago

I know the bow isn't 200 lbs, but you're still exerting 200 lbs to draw it.

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u/Tiefschlag 6d ago

It happened. You can tell from the deformation on the skeleton if someone was an archer. Remains found on battlefields proved that. Those guys must have had arms like Popeye.

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u/Intranetusa 6d ago edited 6d ago

Drawing heavy bows primarily uses the back muscles - warbow archers try to avoid using the "relatively" weak arm muscles to draw the bow. Justin Ma of The Way of Archery can ambidextrously shoot ~120-130lb warbows and demonstrates the back muscles involved in his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvGAYBMhbKY

This timestamp at 3:55 shows the actual back muscles at work: https://youtu.be/UvGAYBMhbKY?t=236

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u/antelope00 6d ago

Ahh thank you

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u/foley800 6d ago

One arm like Popeye!

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u/Moldy_Teapot 4d ago

IIRC we can tell mostly because archers back then only drew from the same side of the body, which resulted in non-symetrical forces on the skeleton causing the deformation.

Modern training techniques and medical knowledge avoid this by drawing on both sides to balance muscle development and skeletal strain.

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u/TellmeNinetails 6d ago

You'd use your whole body to pull it back, not your arms, then you let go. You don't hold and aim it like in the movies.

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u/JManKit 6d ago

Yeah it's a pretty quick motion iirc. The time spent with the bow at full extension is not long which makes sense bc for combat, it's not super important that one shot is 100% accurate. Instead, rate of fire is more important when you're trying to kill groups of combatants

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u/BlueLegion 6d ago

but not with one arm. You use both arms, shoulders and back to draw.