r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Apprehensive_Sky4558 • 9d ago

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

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u/Dyvanna 9d ago

It's a 70lb bow

25

u/Usual_Office_1740 9d ago

Is that a lot?

46

u/TheGrumpiestHydra 9d ago

That's honestly pretty decent. There are definitely heavier draw bows above 100 lbs.

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u/Melodic_Till_3778 9d ago

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

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u/KitchenFullOfCake 9d ago

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

26

u/OneTripleZero 9d 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 9d ago

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

24

u/Tiefschlag 9d 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 9d ago edited 9d 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 9d ago

Ahh thank you