I have both;
Recurve and longbow have different draws...the longbow limbs put more weight on your fingers at Full draw.

My recurve limbs are a little faster...a lot faster than some LB limbs but mine are the Dryad's....

The longbow limbs are quieter.......

 

Basically, longbow limb length is the same throughout the draw. The draw force curve would be a straight line if it were not for geometric effects. As you draw you are pulling the limbs together. Eventually, that leads to stacking.

Recurve limbs length increases until you reach the lift point where the string loses contact with the limb. "Therefore, leverage increases as you draw, until....you start pulling the limb tips to together. That is where stacking builds from.

So they feel different to draw. Design dictates where limbs start to stack, and how much different two identically marked limbs will be at a particular draw length.

 

Recurve in general are also faster. It doesn't push the arrow in a linear fashion like longbow would. Correct me if I'm wrong but with recurve you get an extra boost of speed towards the end because of the extra curvature hence the word recurve.

 

A recurve achieves more speed by storing more energy. Think about a bow with a siyah. In the beginning of the draw cycle you are actually pulling a shorter heavier bow because you are pulling from the point the string loses contact with the siyah. Once you are past the siyah and pulling from the nocks, the bow is longer, lighter and you gain leverage. It is a trick that allows more energy to be stored. A recurve does the same thing except you progressively gain bow length and leverage as you draw. This is what causes the positive bump in the draw force curve where a lot of extra energy is stored. An active recurve will actually store some energy from the unbending of the recurve, which is what differentiates the the active from the static recurve. If you put more energy in, you get more energy out, unless you have an efficiency problem.

 

ok, excellent info guys.
i appreciate it.

 

I also was curious about the longbow ilf limbs, so I put some on my new morrison riser (the new tradtech limbs made by dryad). They are a bit slower than my recurve limbs, but quieter for sure. I've had problems with recurve limbs twisting (I have a big draw length), that's sort of the reason I wanted to try some longbow limbs out, time will tell. They don't draw as smooth in my opinion, but I'm enamored with how they look....Also this is kind of my travel bow, longbow limbs travel better.

 

I also was curious about the longbow ilf limbs, so I put some on my new morrison riser (the new tradtech limbs made by dryad). They are a bit slower than my recurve limbs, but quieter for sure. I've had problems with recurve limbs twisting (I have a big draw length), that's sort of the reason I wanted to try some longbow limbs out, time will tell. They don't draw as smooth in my opinion, but I'm enamored with how they look....Also this is kind of my travel bow, longbow limbs travel better.

View attachment 6387439

beautiful

 

I went from uukha limbs to morrison longbow limbs. The lb limbs are slower with the same arrow. But no slouch at all,i also enjoy the look of them on the bow. Draw cycle wise they are different and there seems to be more weight on the fingers. Glad i made the switch though

 

Recurve limbs won't noodle.

Bowmania

 

I need an explanation of how the same draw weight equal more weight.

I think on an ILF recurve limbs work better, and it isn't as if you get style points for the longbow aspect, as in first guy to shoot the Grand Slam with a bow that looks like a compound, draws as much like a recurve as it does an actual longbow, it's a hybrid limb. When the ILF rig got big, it was at the height of popularity of the hybrid, a time when some hybrids were deemed faster than the fastest trad recurves. Then the Ilfs came along with cheap carbon limbs, even some cheap and fast glass limbs, and way expensive limbs, etc... And the hybrid went out of style significantly, and a few of the orgs edged them out of certain classes. But the point is that at the point where all that was happening, hybrids were popular and so the companies doing the ILF thing created longbow limbs for them. But really doesn't make much sense.

The one thing I like about the Trad Tech LB limbs I have for my ILFs is that if you are in a place where you need to unstring a bow at dark, or you are packing and rigging your bow, you can string, and unstring a hybrid really easily. I have had the Poseidon missile strike from a longbow, so I know this can be risky, but it does spare you from doing a step through, which doesn't work so great with every bow. It is a nice option to have if your stringer does AWOL. That said I virtually never use those limbs.

 

Bows, by the way, don't achieve more speed solely by storing more energy, or at all. Basically the string take up speed has to be faster. Whatever is going to happen when you drop the string, needs to be supported by adequate energy, but that along isn't enough. Compounds are faster because they double string take up speed, and cams are faster because they reel string in even faster. Recurves can have a little take up advantage given that the line of the string at rest, is not straight, but it is straight to the nocks at full draw, usually. It seems the same factors that manipulate draw weight manipulate string uptake. Can't figure out to the extent that is a rule, or just an interesting coincidence. But if the limbs don't have the modulus to get out of their way quickly, and the bow geometry doesn't reel the string in fast, you aren't going to get a fast arrow on stored energy alone. Energy storage seems to explain what happen when all else is otherwise equal. Even it it did do that, that would hardly tell us what most people want to know, which is why a given bow is faster than another, not why it is the same. Having a lot of gas in the tank doesn't mean your car will be faster.