I suppose when you look at recurve vs longbow archers when the arrow choice is fairly equal.
there is alot of field archery types where the Continious "D" shapes for longbows are required.

You do have to consider his thinking "for his time"

Now that the concepts of stability have been grasped by some, then there is valid reason to realise that obsticles can easily be overcome.

What needs grasped is the concept of pushing a tip forward is in compairson to pulling a tip forward. and how to fix the complications of the two.

Dare i ask though, when you say straight limbed bow, i assume you mean unbraced?

Im not sure the unbraced shape is the prime observation, id like to add the continious "D" as the more important attribute.

There are three designs in our view. Continious "D", the limb where the string doesnt touch the limb face, and the limb where the string does touch. all three have different attributes, and all three have their own needs in terms of design.

 

Hill sold longbows right? IJS.

I have found the opposite to be true for me. While a D shape Hill bow is a beauty to behold I find them much more finicky and difficult to shoot compared to a heavier recurve bow cut past center with good carbon limbs. I would venture my 21" warf teamed with long Win-Ex limbs would knock Mr. Hills socks off were he around to try it.

 

I think I agree with this. Hill did get out of the target business right about the time the modern recurve came into being. This around the end of WW2. He could not make the superior scores others were putting up at the time with better recurves. I read one account of a young man named Fred Bear beating Hill badly at some national event with a recurve of his own making.

I love the lore of Howard Hill but do not believe half of what is written about him. That said, I still do my best shooting with his style bow.

 

d shaped, string follow longbow puts some deflex into the riser. your hand is forward of the limbs fadeouts a bit. definitely less finicky than a straight or set back longbow. also slower.


if i understand everything correctly hill had to make a lot of compromises. heavy, heavy bows to get decent speed..which means you need stiff arrows, which means you have to shoot shorter arrows (shorten your draw). the recurves he was comparing his longbow too were probably very reflexed/set back..his longbows were most likely easier to shoot compared to these old recurves.


hill seemed to like advances in shooting technology..whatever worked best is what he used..his bows just worked best for the shooting he did with the equipment he was stuck with. today hill could shoot a bow that was 30-40lbs lighter, get a longer draw and use materials that were less tempermental. i agree..i think he would be shooting a das type bow.


ive shot self bows, glass lam longbows, hill bows, radical bows, terrible bows and good bows. one may be more use to a hill style bow but imho there is no way a hill style bow can compare to a modern bow..except maybe in looks


the grip is the killer. if you like a broomstick grip or a deep longbow/hill style grip then try a recurve with the same grip style. easier to compare.

 

Recurve bows are much better today than they used to be. Hill had to shoot heavy weight longbows to get the "cast" he needed for hunting. In addition he didn't like multiblade broadheads claiming they couldn't be shot straight. He was a great archer....noone talks much about his marketing skills.

 

Whoa, archers, some of the above is right and some is not.

But, you have to understand the times in which he made those remarks. Fibreglas laminations were fairly new on the scene and they made short and curly recurves possible. And 'flight' archery, for max distance, became an interest among some of Mr. Hill's contemporaries in Southern California, Mr. Drake and Mr. Groves among them. Groves, in particular, went into the bow making business, with short fast recurves. And Fred Bear made some short ones also, including the famous Kodiak Magnum. I have shot some of these bows, and brother, they can be sensitive to slight form variations.

That sort of bow, I believe, is the sort Mr. Hill had in mind when he made his famous remark. There were and are some longer and much less sensitive recurves. He used and recommended the Ben Pearson two piece takedown all fibreglas recurves. He said on film that they were not sensitive and called his a 'very accurate bow.' He used one of I believe 70 pounds in an exhibition and described it in a letter. As I recall he said he shot about 80 arrows and 'never missed a shot.'

Now, I have owned a lot of recurves, and the longish ones with largish risers certainly have stability. But my pet 70" Tembo, with its nearly straight limbs and small riser, has stability of perhaps another kind. Those long, long limbs feel stable in my hands. And if I might have to make a quick or awkward shot, or at a mover or a flier, maybe at something big and bitey, that is the kind of stability and smoothness I would want in my hand. - lbg

 

I've never been able to shoot a classic "D" shaped longbow accurately. I don't care for the straight style grip. It feels uncomfortable and foreign to my hand. And I don't find them smooth to draw either.

 

I've hunted quite a bit with longbows and have tried about all styles.....from straight Hill-style to radical R/D.

The Hill-style was the hardest for me to shoot --------The longbows with real radically reflexed limbs had great speed,but were somewhat finicky for me.IMO it was because the limbs were somewhat noodlely(is that a word) and lacked vertical stability.

My personal favorite was a 66" somewhat mild R/D longbow with a longer than normal riser lenth(22" I believe it was).This gave it nice mass weight and was the best shooting longbow for ME.

Having said all that...........I am much more accurate with a recurve and it's the bow I hunt with.

 

I've hunted quite a bit with longbows and have tried about all styles.....from straight Hill-style to radical R/D.

The Hill-style was the hardest for me to shoot --------The longbows with real radically reflexed limbs had great speed,but were somewhat finicky for me.IMO it was because the limbs were somewhat noodlely(is that a word) and lacked vertical stability.

My personal favorite was a 66" somewhat mild R/D longbow with a longer than normal riser lenth(22" I believe it was).This gave it nice mass weight and was the best shooting longbow for ME.

Having said all that...........I am much more accurate with a recurve and it's the bow I hunt with.

I think from our understanding of bow stability, can be estabilshed by way of grip repeatability, hence our top "target" longbow has a pistol grip vs the HH style grip that has little in the way of identifiable features, when looked at vertically, the other point that is your point that heavy R/D bows ie Hybrids can have issues with respect to what ive mentioned above.
Some limbs pull the string forward and some push the tip forward, and the ones that push the tip forward are ones that need more thinking to sort the design out.
I fully agree with your observations.
Lets explore this...

would a recurve work with thick/narrow limbs like a HH bow...
NO.
Do hybrids work with thin, Narrow HH style limbs.
NO.
HH style bows do handle them well, id think its the slow arrow speed, and lack of grip repetition that makes the fussy for some. (oh and closing your eyes with expectation of hand shock)
so the more you flick the limb forward the more limb width you need to make the limb stable.
The MAIN aspect is the if the nock is INFRONT of any part of the limb at brace height, the nock it being pushed forward. and this makes the limb unstable. (Heavy R/D bows at brace height has alot of limb length infront of the inflection point on the limb) R/D bows and recurves cant survive with skinny limbs.
Bows with continious D shape at brace height is more stable by default as your pulling the tip forward at all times during the draw cycle.
A example of this, how far can you pull a trailor. vs How far can you push a trailor. one wants to jack knife while the other just keeps plodding along.

Speed can be a killer, if the understanding of this idea is not followed...
We have seen quite a few longbow designs that have a continious "D" shape, that have cross weave technology in them. When in essence there is no need as the limb follows for ever....
Recurves with thier 1.75" limb width is enough to keep a simple recurve profile in check, and thats where our observations of our XP10 concept brightened up our day back in 1999... you can change the paradigm of stabilty vs recurve design... we have been looking at materials, and design ever since.

So with this chase for speed, bow makers loose two main aspects, High preload leading to noodly limbs, and mass reduction of the out parts of the limbs making them skinny, leading to horizontal instability (release issues)

With the advent of modern materials (being sooo dam light) we dont see why the big boys are still making limbs with Earl Hoyts UD glass limb profile. Carbon changes the rules on bow design. We have never seen a better time for bow designers... Im just surprised no one else has seen this yet... Super recurves are the way forward and big tooling expenses follow those that want to play.
For example if every limb progression had a different profile, they would need to re-jig their entire workshop for every model...
I think this is a great time to be a smaller bow maker. If only carbon was easy to handle and incorporate into a bow.

 

Sid, I believe hand shock is greatly misunderstood. I've only shot Howard Hill bows for over 30 years and only occasionally shoot modern recurves. (for laughs) The Hill bow does have a thump in the hand but I'd not call it a shock by any means. I've never had any kind of wrist, shoulder, joint pain in all my years of shooting this kind of bow.

I don't own a bow under 65 pounds and prefer wooden arrows on the light side - average around 520 grains with nothing over 550 or so. Even at my prefered weight of 75 pounds I don't find the bow's recoil any kind of an issue. In fact I do not even think about it.

I have always maintained that the arrow is away from the string and riser a split second before the bow "thumps". This recoil, as I call it, has no effect on arrow flight and should not bother the archer once he understands it will not harm him.

Maybe the rare person with underlying physical problems comes along and cannot tolerate the Hill "thump" but I honestly feel archers who simply don't like the design use this as an excuse not to shoot one. Nothing wrong with this. I use a similar argument for not shooting recurves. I really think they are too sensitive for me. Perhaps I am kidding myself just like the Hill-hater mentions hand shock for not liking the straight bow.

All of this in good humor, I really don't care what bow a fellow shoots as long as he seems of good cheer on the 3D range or in the field. I mostly gravitate to fun folk of tradtional bent.

 

I agree...
Hand shock/recoil.... its all to do with limb mass and riser weight. Limb mass to riser ratio could be tuned in any bow. Heavy risers make up for some of the thump. We notice that some bows have massive lumps of Mracrter in them, and then you notice the limb has more UD carbon up the nutral axis then we put in a whole bow... but then they have glass either side of that...
At least Hill (and with total respect to his times) discovered that composits deserve their place on the outside of limbs... AND he didnt have pioneers before him to lead the way. Mike Holts was the only other at the time to my knowledge, but still impressive use of the materials of the day. Im sure if he had access to carbon he would have used it too.

Hill bows have nice lines to them, and our Merlin (now discontinued) followed those. Its a smart looking bow.
Now that we are 100% confident that carbon can be used on the back and belly, you can reduce limb mass, and reduce recoil, improve arrow cast and still have the same bow geometry, DFC ect.
If i were to buy a Hill bow Id choose one with the heaviest riser timber they had. That way id be reducing recoil, but still have the same bow.

Hill For his time was a true pioneer, Out and out so... That is never a question, As was Fred Bear. Though new materials are out there, and some badly use them, but others see its worth, and those bows are worth looking at.
We think times have changed. but Hill's bows are worth their place in the books of achievement...and that is credit to the man himself and nobody else.

 

Have any of you ever read Howard Hill's various books where he states a straight-limbed longbow is easier to hit with under hunting conditions or duress? He indicates the bow is more forgiving of bad form and release when the shooter is not able to get a perfect look at the target (animal) or body position to shoot.

He further states that this kind of longbow, while not a top choice for formal target shooting, is best for the roving shooter or hunter in general. All of this was written before compounds and the more modern recurve designs with the larger target risers that came along in the 1950s or so.

I only shoot the Hill bow and find this is true for me in every aspect of target archery be it hunting or 3D or formal indoor bullseye shooting.

Anyone else prefer a straight-limbed bow or have feelings on this subject. No answer is a bad one - I'm only curious. Thanks.

Howard Hill books are great reads!

I love my HH Big 5!!

I think that Mr. Hill believed his statement.

Starting from scratch, at least for me, a center shot modern recurve or longbow would be/was easier to become proficient with. With that said, if you put in your time with a HH style bow and arrows that you are familiar with, it is quite eye-opening how well this "old" technology gets the job done. Lots of fun too!

 

I agree with kestimator, especially that last remark. I find nothing more sheer fun to shoot than my pet Tembo Hill bow. Sometimes I wish I had never bought another bow. - lbg