Longbow

Longbows are bows with a length of approximately their user's height. They were used for hunting and for warfare. Hunting bows have an average draw of about 220 N, this can go up especially for warfare bows, with the most powerful bows being the English longbow and the African elephant bow, both of which topped the 900 N at 80 cm mark.

As a hunting weapon, longbows are simple, reliable and capable of taking game as large as African elephants. As a weapon of war the longbow has been instrumental to several cultures.

Production
The traditional construction of a longbow consists of drying the yew wood for 1 to 2 years, then slowly working the wood into shape, with the entire process taking up to four years. (This can be done far more quickly by working the wood down when wet, as a thinner piece of wood will dry much faster.) The bow stave is shaped into a D-section. The outer "back" of sapwood, approximately flat, follows the natural growth rings; modern bowyers often thin the sapwood, while in the Mary Rose bows the back of the bow was the natural surface of the wood, only the bark being removed. The inner side ("belly") of the bow stave consists of rounded heartwood. The heartwood resists compression and the outer sapwood performs better in tension. This combination in a single piece of wood (a self bow) forms a natural "laminate", somewhat similar in effect to the construction of a composite bow. Longbows will last a long time if protected with a water-resistant coating, traditionally of "wax, resin and fine tallow".

Bow strings were and are made of hemp, flax or silk and attached to the wood via horn "nocks", which fit onto the end of the bow. Modern synthetic materials (often Dacron), are now commonly used for strings.

History
They have been used for thousands of years, for hunting and warfare by, among others, Nubians, Kurds, Arabs, Native American tribes such as the Cherokee, South American tribes like the Bari, Indians at the time of Alexander, African tribes such as the Bassa, and Europeans since Mesolithic times.

In ancient Japan, very distinctive long bamboo and wood laminated bows, known as yumi, became important to mounted samurai warfare.

In the Middle Ages the Welsh and the English were famous for their very powerful English longbows, used to great effect in the civil wars of the period and against the French in the Hundred Years' War.