I have been trying to look up and see if anyone has ever made a steel bow in real life, and the only references I can find are to the BofM story and weapons that appeared in video games.

In fact, the only bows I can find made not of wood, in real life, are the aluminum and fiber glass bows that first appeared last century. Oh, and composite bows that were made of a mix of bone, plant fibers, and wood. Even in the couple thousand years that steel has been available, wood has been the preferred material.

I can't think of a single worse material to make a bow out of then steel. It doesn't bend, and if it does, it wouldn't spring back. Even if you could find a way to make a springy steel bow, does anyone actually think it would be better then a wooden one?

This may help. "Difficult to replicate," indeed. :-)

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705379400/Nephis-steel-bow-difficult-to-replicate-at-BYU-competition.html

Wait, the YBU engineer students actually disproved the idea of Nephite steel bows in that story. They had to use all kinds of springs, and modern technology to get anything that could actually fire an arrow, and then 66 yards was the best they could manage, with a heavy cumbersome weapon. English archers using yew bows were reported to be able to routinely fire arrows three times that range.

Someone apparently got a much longer distance.

http://me.byu.edu/news/modern-nephites-engineering-students-build-steel-bows-shooting-competition

Apparently Nephi had access to a machine shop.

and a smelter

*snicker*

Idiots. I have to admit, I had never thought about the practical aspects of that. But if I had, it would have been a huge blow to my esteem for the BoM. Can't imagine thinking about it and then going, "Gee, God is sure neat-o, making impractical stuff work out like that."

Next years headline: "Drowning BYU students require rescue after failed Jaredite Barge competion."

If one of the barges manages to make it more then a few feet before sinking, they will hold that up as proof.

All my dishes are glass or plastic. And they're not all that tight.

But as we know, with God, all things are possible. Like surviving a year on the ocean in a tight wooden dish full of cattle poop.

Laman and lemuel had them. They stood up to that testimonkeying Nephi and told him where to stick his steel bow.

But I need to reread the books.

If horses are tapirs and maize is wheat I don't see why a steel bow is problematic?

forbiddencokedrinker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I can't think of a single worse material to make a
> bow out of then steel. It doesn't bend, and if it
> does, it wouldn't spring back. Even if you could
> find a way to make a springy steel bow, does
> anyone actually think it would be better then a
> wooden one?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_steel

Those Nephites must have been some major league metallurgists.

This is slightly off topic, but it still has to do with steel weapons. I remember FAIR trying to justify the lack of pre-columbian steel swords found in America by saying that it was rare to find swords in archeological digs. Does anyone know if this is true or not? I don't even remember if they provided a source, but if they did it was, without a doubt, a mormon source.

I am not an expert on this subject, but I am going to make some guesses. First, most archeological digs probably do not involve military related sites. Digs at battlefields would probably not provide a lot of weapons, as these would probably be quickly picked up by the victors, or scavengers as parts of the spoils of war. Third, when you abandon a military camp, you probably took the weapons with you, leaving behind stuff like buttons and arrow heads. That said, we still have a fair number of old iron and steel weapons, including swords, from nearly every place in the world where we knew they had metal technology.

I do know for a fact, that river beds are considered a great place to find ancient weapons. Have any pre-Columbian metal swords been found in American river beds? No.

Now, I am going to venture that while metal swords are rare, a society that knew how to make metal swords would make other metal goods. How many, non-sword, steel items have been found from Ancient America? None.

Cenotes are underground limestone caverns cut out of the rock by water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote

That is where they need to look for Nephite artifacts.

Are you serious? Do you mean that if they can't find it in a Cenote, then it never existed, or are you saying that you firmly believe they will find proof at the bottom of a Cenote, if they look hard enough?

Funny, they have, and are, looking there. Still, no BoM artifacts:

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/cenotes/

Well, it is true that swords are rare/non-existent in pre-Columbian New World archaeological sites. Other parts of the world? Not so much:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-08/world/israel.artifacts_1_menorah-eli-shukron-sword?_s=PM:WORLD

http://io9.com/5851467/amazing-find-viking-tomb-includes-a-warriors-boat-ax-spear-and-sword

It was a lot easier to get away with those kind of statements before the internet.

would be hugely visible. Those never go away. Oh wait, again, there aren't any.

And learning to control high temperatures necessary for refining steel would have given them the ability to greatly improve their pottery firing. Oh wait, nothing to see here either.

Next year they'll have a peepstone contest to see who can find the most buried treasure -- they pay tuition at this place?

I was involved in archery for many years. I talked to a steel engineering expert about a steel bow. First it would be impossiable to control the the thickness and flexability. Steel has no cast like wood has. The tempeture and weather would make it very inconsistant. It would be very heavy. I used a solid fiberglass bow once,,it about ripped your arm off from the shock. Typical mormon garabage..

I guess this can of worms originates from the word "steel" appearing in the King James Version of the bible.
Richard Packham does an excellent job of explaining why the word steel is a problem for the BoM:
http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm#STEEL

(great page BTW - thanks Richard.)

God told him how to fashion it the same way He told Lehi how to build that miraculous boat that crossed two oceans without a compass...

Na uh. Had the gps er i mean the Liahona.

That was always my favorite magic artifact in the bom. Reading about that was almost exactly like playing D&D: 'Your party finds a curious ball thing on the ground. What do you do?" "We throw it in the ocean?" "we check to see if it is ticking?'

Then we look in the magic window for an answer. ;)

Steel bows seem to have been used by the Indians, as in people from India, with some success as weapon of war.


http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/steelbow/steelbow.html

they didn't even to bother mentioning the idea of using period technology in the YBU article (first one cited at least).

Pure BS, manufactured, packaged & marketed by LDS, Inc.

Steel has some great mechanical properties,( so dont trash it too much) far superior to many other common materials, our current civilization literally rests on the back of steel's strength and availability.

Its most aggravating characteristic is that it quickly degrades /rusts, something we'd really like to do with out....
except that we are also dependent on that same feature for our life as iron is the critical carrier of oxygen in our bloodstreams. it is not a good material for bows. big mouth Joe really screwed himself with that BS story in his POS BOM.