Compound Bow
A compound bow is little-affected by changes
of temperature and humidity and gives superior accuracy,
velocity, and distance in comparison to other bows.
The modern compound bow uses
a levering system of cables and usually cams and
pulleys to draw the limbs back.
Compound bow limbs
are usually much stiffer than those of a recurve
bow or longbow. This limb stiffness makes the bow
more energy efficient than other types of bows,
but the limbs are too stiff to be drawn comfortably
with a string attached directly to them. The compound
bow uses a string attached to pulleys,
one or both of which has one or more cables attached
to the opposite limb. When a compound bow string
is drawn back, the string causes the pulleys to turn.
This causes the pulleys to pull the cables, which
in turn causes the limbs to bend and thus store energy.
The use of this levering system gives the compound
bow a characteristic draw-force curve which rises
to a peak weight and then "lets off" to a lower holding
weight.
First developed and
patented by Holless Wilbur Allen in Missouri in 1967,
the compound bow is not the most popular type of
bow in the United States.
