wood arrows & compound bows

[Timelord]

Thankyou for that Tartar Horde, it is really in informative. For target type weight of arrows, do you think wood arrows would have a greater mass impact, the same or less? The flexing of a wooden shaft can also be an important factor at the receiving end. Although the shaft has stopped flexing during its flight, when the head impacts a less forgiving material, the head can momentarily stop dead. The shaft behind however does not due to its mass impetus. The shaft then flexes substantially from one direction to the other and back again repeatedly, but it can be so fast it is not really visible to the naked eye. This flexing motion can literally drive the point through the material in a pecking motion. This was observed using high speed cameras with an arrow shot a some type of bullet proof glass. The arrow was seen to momentarily stop and then the shaft literally pecked its way through the glass while a bullet fired at the same glass could not penetrate. This was an extreme scientific test and I do not advocate that arrows make good armour piercing missiles for real world use, but the material physics of it are very interesting and will have effects in other areas of the subject of bows. I am sure an aluminium arrow will not have these qualities. As for carbon I have not looked into it. Atlats have a high enough mass inertia to not need the shaft to bend on impact and I do not think the flight speed and larger dynamics would result in the "pecking action" to any degree that would improve the impact action any further. I am of course talking about ancient hunter gatherer type atlats and the game they were used for, which brings an interesting point into discussion - The S.American Indians are reputed to have been able to pierce the Conquistadors armour at times with their obsidian tipped war atlats. That point starts a whole new train of thought! lol. TL.

---

lol - should read at the beginning as "is really informative", without the previous "in" TL