https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/equipment/medieval-longbow-draw-weight Changes to this claim in Matteo Campagna's evidence registry: its status, its year-by-year history, revisions of the page. en-gb https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/equipment/medieval-longbow-draw-weightThe most solid figure is an estimate, and it comes from a 1997 study that models ancient bows and checks its calculations on replicas. According to the calculations it reports, the 60-gram war arrow used at Agincourt in 1415 could have been shot from bows of over 450 newtons, about a hundred pounds, against the 350, just under eighty, that present-day archers' experience considered plausible. The yew bows recovered from the Mary Rose, the ship that sank in 1545 with 139 longbows on board, point the same way, but only through the model: the originals can still be strung and drawn, yet the degraded wood no longer gives their original draw weight, so a replica was built to their measurements: the replica's draw weight measured on the scales and the one calculated by the model differ by less than 1%, and the 465 newtons the study gives in its table are the replica's. The model holds up, but the draw weight of the originals remains an estimate. And the literature is not in line: a 2018 study reports from secondary sources an average of 30 kilos for the English longbow, about 66 pounds, well below the estimate.claim:archi-guerra-libbraggi-alti:revision:2026-05-27:2Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/equipment/medieval-longbow-draw-weightclaim:archi-guerra-libbraggi-alti:new_claim:2026-04-13:trasferitoMon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 GMT