bow string hitting wrist

[bigbob]

Wonder if any one can enlighten me as to why my string is slapping my wrist, yeh I know it must be in the way! Just getting back into trad gear after 20 years on the ' dark side' using compounds and remember way back then slapping my fore arm at times but never my wrist. The string is catching the wrist at the base of the thumb where the hand joins the arm. My guess is some how I am 'cocking' the wrist inward some how, but to remedy it I had to turn my grip so that the 'v' between thumb and first finger was almost at 90 degrees to the direction of arrow alignment.Not good.

[Alex]

I would say you are shooting with a very low brace height.

Alex.

[bigbob]

Never thought of that . you are dead right, as today is the first time I have actually been able to throw a few arrows at the bale and as I am still working out the bow [ still has no nock set yet] I was using it with a very low brace height of around 5'' Thanks for that. just shows the older one gets the more stupid one becomes and as I've seen many a mango season I'll just leave the rest unsaid.

[hue]

Bob

try your brace height at about 6 1/4 inch and knock approx 3/8 above square. bring your bow hand in so that the handle sits on the thumb muscle and the webbing of the thumb is below the arrow. grip the bow "slightly" so it is not too relaxed, some longbows don't like a relaxed grip and can torque too much. see how that goes as a start mate!

Hue

[Stickbow Hunter]

I agree what the others, up your brace height to just over the six inch mark. IMO if you are shooting the bow right you will need an armguard as you will get some slap higher up the arm.

Jeff

[bigbob]

Thank you Hue and Jeff,
Will do as you say tomorrow, and see how I go. Re the shooting it , apart from ringbarking my wrist, up to 25m I am putting 3 out of 4 arrows in a reasonable group. Tried a few at 40m and am thinking about hiring a rocket launcher! Early days still [ I tell myself]

[longbowinfected]

I measure my brace height as being the height of my hand span with the thumb pointing upwards [extended] at right angles; I get light inner arm slap around four ingers breadth past my wrist but only slap if I do not anchor in the same point and do not blurr/line up the arrow parallel to but outside the line of my bowstring at my correct draw length at the correct brace height. My nocking point is 3mm above square with a 5/16th timber shaft.

If I am realy shooting well and I am in the zone and my arm guard slips down, the string lightly flicks the same point so many times that it draws a small amount of blood from a realy fine cut. If the guard stays in place I would not even know I a getting that light flick of the string.

Kev

[bigbob]

Increased brace height but still not enough, and it definitely reduced the slap. Had about 20 shots at 40 m as well as other distances and only hit the bale [ about 3'6'' high by 3' wide] four times and one was right on the dot.I was stoked! Years ago I shot a 80lb longbow in 2 ABA rounds with bare fingers and the tips of my fingers were completely numb for about 3 months after. All I got from it was ferocious arm barking on some shots, certainly drew blood. Some would say it was my brain that went numb.

[hue]

numb fingers are not good mate, at any time!

Hue

[Dennis La Varenne]

Bob,

I brace both my longbows (both wood and glass) and my recurves to 5 inches from the back of the arrow shelf and don't get any wrist slap without bracer protection. The sole reason I can do this is that I use fastflight or comparable string material which lacks the stretch of dacron. It allows an obvious longer powerstroke if the braceheight is lower. Fastflight and its clones do not stretch forward after the arrow leaves the string to hit your wrist. There is very little stretch at all. Dacron seems to stretch forwards up to 2 inches forward of braceheight after the arrow leaves the string as attested to by the place on my wrist where I used to get slapped regularly when I used to use dacron. I have used fastflight and its clones ever since it came out on all my bows, but glass and wood with not the slightest hint of a problem.

Fastflight string works the same way as the ancient string material of linen and hemp. Neither of these had any stretch and they did not wreck bows either. For safety from longitudinal limb splitting on thin limbed bows, just thicken the loop area of the string by a few strands.

Your other problem could be that if you are using a bow which is at the heavy end of what you can handle, there is a natural tendency to take some of the load on the bow arm by moving the bowarm shoulder more into line with the bow which brings it closer to being in line with your chin. That effectively straightens your bowarm against what Graeme Amy calls 'columnar loading'. That in turn, brings the line of string travel into a close line with the underside of your bowarm where the string can strike it at the end of its power stroke.

From my medical training as a nurse, the damage you sustained from using an 80lb bow without finger protection would most likely have been caused by severe compression of the nerve pathways along your fingers on the underside of your fingers which gradually recovered. Lucky you. I do shoot my bows without finger protection whilst hunting where shots are few because I prefer the feel. However, when practising and at shoots, I use finger protection.

I did find that from using bows up to the mid-70lbs range when I was much younger and shot much more often, I did develop significant toughness on the pads of my drawing fingers which did allow me to shoot without gloves for reasonable periods of time. I stopped as soon as I got that burning sensation and the string was never held in the finger joints, but just forward and on the pad. There is not much padding between the skin surface and the fingerbones where these nerves run, and this may be why your sustained your damage.

[bigbob]

Thanks Dennis for your many interesting points. I did increase brace height and shot 2 ABA rounds without any problems at all , albeit with a newly aquired arm guard. The poundage of my present self bow 55 @ 29'' is absolutely no problems at all and am considering going higher once I have set up to make my own laminated 'boo' bow. I ended up with no long term [at least no discernable] damage to finger tips and that was 20 year ago.That is unless there is any biological reason why the neurological damage I did might have migrated to my brain as some might unkindly suggest.I will remember your information regarding string making material when I do make my own bow. Thanks for your input , it is appreciated