So i see there are steel and iron arrows. They can be found quite easily, and hunting bows and long bows are usually associated with them, But why not bows of the same metal? I dont see why they weren't added, maybe for realism?

I would suppose so. There were iron and steel bows in all the previous games, and that always bugged me - those two materials are almost hilariously bad to use for a bow in pretty much any way, while at least the name could refer to what the point is made from for arrows.

Longbow=Iron, Hunting Bow=Steel

The Hunting bow benefits the steel smithing perk I think.

I agree. A actual bow made of iron or steel would be a pretty useless paperweight.

I'd rather see a mod that adds a craftable bow to the Skyforge lineup.

I may be mistaken, but perk-wise, Steel Smithing affects hunting bows, and long bows might as well be considered iron. I'm not sure why they chose different names for these weapons, though.

Why would anyone want a bow made out of steel ?.

Because it's more logical for them to be named something else, if they named the Longbow an "Iron Bow" it'd just be idiotic since the bow itself is made of wood.

Yeah. Bows being made out of any kind of metal, is just stupid. While some small metal components may be used in modern high-tech bows, every bow in past history was made from wood, horn, animal sinew, or other non-metal materials of some form. Metal doesn't bend worth a crap, and bending is what makes bows do what they do. Metal is also very heavy, and bows are all about lightness and ease of carrying and shooting. Crossbows are an exception of course, with lots of metal parts in their stocks. But even with crossbows, the actual 'bow' part is not metal.

The thought of bows being made out of the same stiff, very hard and heavy metal that swords, maces and armor can be made out of (ebony, moonstone, dwarven metal, glass, etc.), is chucklicious. But hey, it's a fantasy.

Iron=long bow and hunting bow
Steel=Imperial bow

Indeed. Longbow and Hunting bow is their replacements, which makes more sense IMO.

I'm sure that given a thin enough sheet of iron / steel you could make a working, if crappy bow, but the concept is a bit silly. If they weren't lazy they would have included a wood category in smithing where all bows and arrows could be crafted, and implemented wood tiers.

Dwarven bows are ridiculous enough, but I almost died laughing when I saw an iron bow in Oblivion's starting dungeon. Thanks, but I'd rather stick to wood.

Hell I would love to be able to make Dragon weapons. Like Bows, Arrows, Swords, and any other type of weapon in the game. Make them out of Dragon, bone, Scales, and other peaces of a Dragon.

A dragon bone bow will not work, it needs to be flexible enough for it to bend to launch the arrow, and neither will bladed weapons like axes and swords work unless you make the blade out of metal and use the dragon bone to hold it in place.

Longbow=wood

Isn't the ancient nord bow steel?

Iron and steel bows are ridiculous, but so are dwarven, ebony, etc. bows also.

The Long Bow was the replacement for the iron bow, that's what I was getting at, I wasn't saying that the Long Bow uses iron. I also forgot to seperate the two examples.

Sad thing is.. Jagex got this right on RuneScape. RS's bows are only wood/demonic/crystal... A few bows in Skyrim makes sense, like Daedric Bow, Hunting, etc.. But most of them don't.

I believe they should have craftable bows starting out instead of waiting until you have either the dwarven or elven smithing perk.

The elven bow makes alot of sense, though I highly doubt that an elven bow would be made out of solid moonstone (assuming elves exist ofcourse), it'd probably be made of wood with some moonstone decoration on it, but besides that the Dwemer bow makes little to no sense since the dwarves used Crossbows, the Ebony bow makes sense since you can see that it's partly made of wood, the glass bow is questionable though.

I think it's more realistic having bows made of wood. So they replaced Iron/Steel with Long/Hunting.

Yeah. Should've added Crossbows. I miss Crossbows... Elven and Daedric are some-what highly needed due to Elven and Dremora Races. Ebony is agree-able, I guess. Glass and Orcish are questionable.

Remember, this is a game and a fantasy game at that. Trying to apply real life concepts to a game may not be the best thing to do.

It honestly doesn't bother me seeing dwarven bows or elven bows. It didn't bother me in Oblivion seeing iron and steel bows. Some things are done for gameplay reasons.

You have got to think about it from the perspective of the smith-meister. Depending on your level of skill you'll be more nuanced and thus more capable of creating better weapons. So, when you can only build with Iron you only have enough knowledge to build a hunting bow. When you learn Steel you can build a long bow. (note: hunting bows and long bows actually cannot be crafted, they can only be found) But, it's the knowledge associated with your crafting skill that associates hunting bows to iron and long bows to steel, it's not at all about the material used for the bow.

Wood is much MUCH better for a bow than Iron or Steel. The material characteristics of those two metals is all wrong for bows.