What draw weights do traditional bows have?
A. It appears that most traditional archery, except for longbow and Kyudo, used draw weights of 40-60 lbs. Surviving native American bows have draws of 55-60 lbs — the upper end of the range. But these bows were comparatively short, so they needed a heavy draw to compensate for the short power stroke. Kyudo bows tend to have relatively low draw weights, but a very long power strong — the draw might be to the ear or even behind the head. Some mediaeval military longbows probably had draw weights over a hundred pounds. Heavy draws were necessary to counteract for the inherent inefficiency of the longbow design, and the fact that an extremely heavy arrow was used. However, there is some uncertainty about this, because no bows from this era have survived in shootable condition. If we assume that the mediaeval bowyers knew about arrow spine (see above), from measurements made on the surviving arrows we can determine that the corresponding bows had draws of 110-180 pounds. The bows recover
