Quote Originally Posted by Spiryt View Post
I don't really think it's so... People today make excellent selfbow in weeks, not years.

If one is drying the wood for 2 years, it just means he doesn't have proper conditions for drying wood.

They were pretty much mass produced trough the centuries, causing the yew to be pretty endangered tree all over the Europe today.


Crossbow, on the other hand required -

Glues, horn, sinew, good wood, and careful shaping of it's all in case of composite technology

Steel, furnace, forging, quenching, annealing and all other stuff required to make steel prod

Or proper yew/other wood staff if making the prod selfbow, sometimes laminate too. Popular up to the middle of 13th century roughly, before composite and steel had taken over.

And then comes the stock, tying/binding bow to it, release mechanism and so on.

Final price was pretty much always ending being few times greater than that of a bow since ~ 1300

In first half of 14th century in England, bow cost was around 9 pennies, compared to 25 to 50 of crossbow, depending on it's "size". Compared to 24 for pig and 115 for cow, it wasn't all that cheap.

In Poland around the break of 14th and 15th century, bow cost was about 8 grosz'es compared to 60 to 120 of crossbow - and around 140 for cheap visored bascinet.
Self bows and english longbows are completely different things. Self bows are quick and easy to make. If you're good enough you could make it in a day or two. To have a better range it had to be the height of the archer, or rather - have a long draw. The thing to look for here is grain going along the bow and straight, and denser the wood the better, because it can make the bow thinner and be less effort to use. Woods like hickory, ash, elm and oak would qualify for this. Bows like this would generally be used by infantry.

Composite bows were made from horn, sinew and laminated wood. This combination allowed for more energy, thus making the shot stronger than the selfbow, and the range farther. However, these ingrediants are sensative to moisture and the laminating process took time to make (several months). Due to its smaller size, these bows were often used by more mobile troops such as scouts or mounted units.

Longbows are made from yew and boxwood, and are the ones that take drying the wood (which bow makers would have had a store of) for a year or two. Quickly dried wood could make the bow weaker. The shaping the wood takes a long process, as I mentioned earlier. The process itself makes the bow stronger than the self bow, and is able to be drawn farther back without damage to the bow. This causes it to have a farther range, thus giving the bow its name - long (can shoot up to 400 yards). Long bows are also difficult to master due to the hardness of drawing it back and firing acurately, and must be continually practiced. It can cause an arrow to pierce light armor, though full plate could defeat it (though full plate was costly and so, rare in the common soldier). To weather proof the long bow, they covered it in wax.

Crossbows depended on size for many things. The smaller the cheaper/easier to make/easier to use.

Heavy crossbows were the most expensive of the crossbows, as they had metal in place of wood to reinforce it, and usually required a mechanism to reload as they were too heavily strung to pull by hand. However hand crossbows were cheap to make (as they weren't composited like their heavier brothers), and could be placed in anyone's hands, even a peasant's. In fact, there are accounts of wagon forts that were used as defensive positions that they filled full of peasants with handcrossbows that were highly effective. Crossbows had many parts to them, sure, but the process to put them together was fairly simple once you had them. Often the individual parts were mass produced and then put together by an individual to save time, where as all the elements were made by one specialist with bows. Just because more elements were involved doesn't mean it was necessarily more expensive. Self bows were usually cheaper, but hand crossbows likely were less costly than self. I can't quote numbers (not sure where you got yours, and I'm not really keen on researching more than I know at the moment) so I'll have to differ to you on that. But I'd still say that longbows were more expensive than the average crossbow. Short bows less. Composite somewhere inbetween.

Rate of fire between the two weapons are something to note as well. It was recommended that rate of fire for a bow was six arrows per minute so as not to wear out a bow. Crossbows would have been less than that, but for different reasons - loading the weapon too longer. Often there would be teams of two with heavy crossbows - one to load while the other fired, and then switch the weapons out each shot.