BOW TYPES. There are three main kinds of bow used today : Longbow, Recurve and Compound.
Longbows
The longbow is made of a single straight piece of wood such as yew. By tradition, the longbow is typically shot without a sight and without any other shooting aids. The same bow can be used by both right-handed and left-handed archers.
Compound bows
Compound bows were invented in 1966 in the USA. This is by far the most popular bow type in use today. The bow has off-centered pulleys at each end. Steel or other material cables are fixed at the end of each limb. These pass around the pulley at the opposite end (directly or via another linked cable). The free ends of the cables leaving the pulleys are joined together with a bowstring.
The pulleys provide a mechanical advantage that makes the bow easier to draw and to hold at full draw. A compound is more powerful and shorter than a recurve. It has a wide bow window enabling the arrow to be center shot. Many compound archers use additional shooting aids such as a telescopic sight with a horizontal spirit level, a back sight fitted within the string (called a peep sight), a draw length limiter and a mechanical release aid for holding and releasing the string. Owing to the power of the bow and the shooting aids, the compound bow is the most accurate of the three types of bow described.
Recurve bows
Unlike the longbow, the ends of an unstrung recurve bow are curved away from the archer. This allows the strung bow to be more powerful and shorter than the longbow – ideal for the horsemen who invented it! Unlike the longbow, a one-piece recurve is made of several thin laminations fixed together in the recurved shape rather than one piece of straight wood.
Although one-piece recurve bows are used, particularly for field shooting, most modern recurve bows are made in three pieces – a body (called a riser) with two detachable limbs that fit into each end. These are called takedown bows. The riser is made of wood or lightweight metal alloy cast into shape or machined from a block of metal. The middle of the riser is offset to the side (left for a left handed archer and right for a right handed one) to form the bow window. This allows arrows to be shot more centrally past the bow than with a longbow. An arrow rest is fixed inside the window just below an adjustable, spring-loaded plunger button. The button keeps the arrow from striking the riser. It can be adjusted to tune the bow for the correctly matched arrows being shot (described below). Target archers have a sight fixed to the side of the riser, with a sight ring that can be adjusted sideways, to allow for wind, and vertically according to the distance being shot. A handle with a hand grip is fitted on the riser. The limbs are made of laminations of materials such as wood, glass-fiber, carbon fiber and ceramic. A long rod can be attached to the front of the bow (away from the archer) to stabilize the bow on release of the arrow. The bowstring is made of around 12-18 strands of very strong man-made fiber, twisted together. The middle of the string is wrapped round tightly for 150-200 cms with strong thread, forming a serving to protect the string. Two rings of soft metal or thread are fixed closely together on the serving to form a knocking point to which the notch (called a knock) in the arrow’s tail can be clipped when the bow is about to be drawn.
Recurve bows are used in archery at the Olympic Games and the Para Olympic Games. Although archery first appeared in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, it has only featured on a regular basis since 1972 using the rules and rounds established by the international archery federation (FITA).
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