Sunday 31 March 2013

Big Bow Gets a Workout

We went up the club with the big bow and got it throwing 32" arrows.
We played with different weights and looses, slightly up hill and into a head wind. At one point it seemed to lose a little distance, but the string had settled a tad and the brace height dropped about 1/2".
I shot my big old Yew bow which did pretty well, we were both getting just beyond the 180 yards, but expected more from the big bow. I had a go with one of the 11/32" shafts I'd made up with the 150gn point. We walked up the the flag and seemed to be an arrow short, until we spotted the one I'd shot about 30 yards beyond the others. John shot some different arrows and started to get a cleaner arrow flight and was making the same distance. There seemed to be a lot of variables in play and we had a good session.
The bow was declared shot in as it had even had a few arrows over 32" through it (and a car door!)
Examining the bow afterwards showed it had taken a whisker of string follow. The tips were bent maybe a 1/4" towards the belly (E.G with the tips against a straight edge there was about 1/4" between straight edge and grip). It will be interesting to know if that recovers after a few hours rest.
Here's a vid and a still. The video is cut down for a speedier download, the audio is probably annoying as it's cropped, but I'm saying 'At your leisure' at the beginning.

Update:-
I've messed about looking at the tiller by drawing ellipses, the pic with two ellipses allows for the stiff grip section, you can see the two ellipses aren't the same ovality which shows the different curve on the two limbs. The the single ellipse looks pretty good. We notice after the shoot that the scuff marks on the bow were a bit above the arrow pass (I hadn't tied a nocking point on the string).  Also of note, the linen thread binding the rather long fletchings (which were across the bow at brace) had been acting like a cheese grater and ripped out a couple of grooves in the bow!
I filed out the grooves, adjusting the curve of the side of the bow to ease the path of the arrow. A little sanding and a wipe of beeswax polish restored the look of it, maybe it will need an arrow plate adding. I tied a nocking point to give a consistent arrow location. I've heard people say that arrow plates aren't necessary, and I must admit I thought so myself, but then I don't shoot linen bound arrows!

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