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Our Motto
"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security shall not have, nor do they deserve either one."
Thomas Jefferson
Without getting too much into the history of bows, the Recurve bow, as we know it, traces its ancestry to ancient Asian cultures. The principal reason they developed the recurve bow was that the flatbow and longbow were too large and cumbersome to use from a horse. A shorter yet powerful weapon was needed to provide the horse archer with a useful weapon. The double arch of the Recurve Bow formed by the outward curve of the ends away from the archer gave the Recurve Bow the additional power it needed to become a formidable weapon.
The double bend developed by the people of the steppes was quickly adopted and used in the Indian and Mediterranean regions. Horn were widely used for their great flexibility and durability. Farther to the east bamboo was used more prevalently to the extreme of it being the sole material used by some cultures. It works well and has a very smooth pull, but unfortunately wears out.
The Recurve design is truly a stroke of shear genius for the age of its conception - some thousands of years BC. It is simply the way you build and shape the limbs. What it does do - and this is the genius of it - is pure physics. Any time tension in a stressed member rounds a corner; energy is either lost or gained. By building the limbs pre-curved at rest (hence, "pre-stressed"), the energy is gained rather than lost.
This enables a bow that is compact with very great power and a full draw, while a straight bow of equal length and strength would have a very short draw before it would break. Recurve bows typically give greater arrow speed than flatbows of equal strength.
A Recurve provides the shooter with more easily attainable accuracy and is therefore a good choice for the beginning archer as well as the veteran shooter. This is mostly due to the "cut-out" shelf design. It does three things.
First the shelf is cut to or beyond the center point of the handle or "riser" area bringing the arrow perfectly in line with the direction of the bowstring travel. There is less to compensate for as with older longbows particularly where the arrow has to "get around the shelf", if it has a shelf at all.
Second the "scooped-out" area above a modern Recurves arrow shelf gives a definite visual perspective of the target area wherein there is a "sweet spot" that the mark, or bull's eye, is more readily found.
Third the deep-cut grip raises the wrist and arm into the shooter's perspective giving yet another sight-plane to aid in target acquisition. Now you have triangulation - your line of vision, the arrow, and your arm. Triangulation is seldom wrong.
There are variations in both types of bows - flatbows in the longbow category, and traditional Recurves with a longbow style handle. That aside, you now have enough information to help you make some choices. Bows are very animate objects, if such a term can be used. Ideally, they should be custom made for an individual. This is, in fact what was done with the early longbows. Consider how much people vary in height and arm length. For just this reason longbows were always preferably made to suit the individual archer. King Henry VIII of England Stood six feet tall. His average subject at the time was about 5'4". What would be right for one would have been a disaster for the other. In short (or long) there is no one size fits all in bowmaking.
Our Motto
"Those who would sacrifice freedom for security shall not have, nor do they deserve either one."
Thomas Jefferson
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