The Hill Chronicles

[longbowguy]

Well, gee, Bender, it's because a longbow should be long. And because most of we veterans who are fair hands do our best work with longish ones.

And because Mr. Hill himself suggested that the last digit of the bow length should match the last digit of draw length. So he used 68" bows to match his 28" draw. And I use 70" bows to match my 30" draw length.

Isn't your current bow, a Lee or a Fox as I recall, longer than the little stick you started with? Not that a shorter archer should not use a shorter bow.

I am also fond of the notion that if an archer places his strung longbow on the toe of his boot and his hand on the upper tip, as he poses for the camera, his hand should just clear his eyebrow and not block his manly face. I deduced this rule from many old photos of the greats of our sport. I myself prefer to pose that way. - lbg

[Bender]

Hey lbg how's it going? We miss you!
Now you're absolutely right in the points that you do make, especially the part about how one should pose for photos. Absolutely critical. When I saw the post concerning the "potential" of the bow, my first thoughts were about things like KE, arrow velocity, and efficiency. I was being horribly short sighted and forgot to consider other aspects of a bow's "potential". Good call on your part!

[AROMAKR]

Longbowguy:
Just read your last post, don't always go by what Mr Hill said, although I'm admittedly am a Hill groupie. Many of Howards personal bow's are 70" long and I have cataloged and measured many of his personal arrows at 26 1/2" long, so go figure.
Bob

[SteveMcD]

I was over on that other Trad Website last week, hadn't posted for a long time over there. I posted a response for someone asking for an opinion on "Hill Style" bows. And I got bashed by the usual click of tgmm members, that Howard Hill Bows were crap, and would make you lose your teeth. Then I remembered why I don't post there anymore.

[Bowlim]

"Why the assumption that one ISN'T realizing the "full potential" at that bow length and draw length?"

I would agree it is unlikely to be the full HIll potential. Might be a great bow by some other standard. And you have pretty much outlined some of those features:

"things like KE, arrow velocity, and efficiency."

Basically speed by other names. That is not the main aim of the Hill bow, though it needs it's share.

I know that for my draw of 29" the GN Bushbow minimum length is 64" for what that is worth. I have some somewhat more modern Hill type bows, in the shorter lengths that do work, and I am not talking anything hybrid like. To make a short bow for a long draw you need either limb tip recurve, or hybrid, or wide looser limbs. What you can't have is a deep section type bow like a hill.

[Bowlim]

I recently got a copy of the John Lee video where he describes Hill bows. He gives the formula for the pre-composite bows. Basically as described here. Limbs were tapered as follows: From the fades which on wood bows would be the 14" riser block, the limb is full thickness; at 66% length it is cut to 75% depth and width. At the nock it is 50% depth and width. Limb length is calculated from the fades to the nocks, and the taper is parabolic.

This is a slightly more clubby bow than what we see today. A lot of "Hill" bows have shorter limbs and taper more steeply. Of course the overall tiller can still be the same if the bow taper is adjusted as required.

Early Hill glass backed bows were built as above, fully tillered, then glass backed. This led to an even clubbier club, at least as a blank.

Last summer I had a project from which I had some 48" lams that were about 1"x .125" I had some fun cutting in side taper and thicknessing these to reproduce various tillers. That allowed me to get some standard tapering schemes that I could apply to any bows I wished. And the whole thing took about half an hour.

At the moment there seems to be a rebirth of interest in Hill bows, and there are makers making them with different degrees of reflex, to straight, to string follow. So can't go wrong there...

[AROMAKR]

I'm having difficulty understanding a statement in your last post. "Early Hill glass backed were built as above, fully tillered, then glass backed." Then you said "This led to an even clubbier club, at least as a blank" What did you mean by that last quote? I've cataloged and measured at least three bows Howard made of that type and they were far from clubby. One of those bow even though it was in-excess of 80# was extremely graceful, and far from clubby.
Bob

[Bowlim]

I can't imagine they would let a bad bow out of the shop. All I meant was that if you gross up a wooden bow with an untapered lam you end up with the same degree of taper on a thicker limb section or a less proportionally tapered limb. If a club is a parallel limb then more or less parallel, is more or less clubby.

As almost a year has gone by, I can't really say why I thought that was something in need of a commentary. Whether there was some specific stuff in the tape, which would make sense, or whether the point was purely theoretical. Probably the former. It is amazing how often very sophisticated companies will make a change, and blow the math. I remember calculating sell out percentages for a large bond firm. They trade stuff all day long on percentages, and yet they got the math on their buy out equity wrong. Those of use without the lambos, may hang onto such trivia.

Now in 10 months I can come back and figure out why I said that crap.