This test is made by
shooting at a cake of paraffin and comparing the penetration with that
made by falling weights. Such a striking force is, of course,
insignificant when compared with that of a modern bullet, viz., three
thousand foot pounds. Yet the damage done by an arrow armed with a
sharp steel broad-head is often greater than that done by a bullet, as
we shall see later on.
A standard English target arrow rotates during flight six complete
revolutions every twenty yards, or approximately fifteen times a
second. Heavy hunting shafts turn more slowly. This was ascertained by
shooting two arrows at once from the same bow, their shafts being
connected by a silk thread, so that one paid off as the other wound up
the thread. The number of complete loops, of course, indicated the
number of revolutions. A sand-bank makes a good butt to catch them. In
rotating, much depends on the size and shape of the feather.
Shooting a blunt arrow from a seventy-five pound bow at a white pine
board an inch thick, the shaft will often go completely through it. A
broad hunting head will penetrate two or three inches, then bind.
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