Hello all and a few questions

[keach]

Gday everyone,

I have been lurking this forum for a while and I finally joined to get involved. I'm not sure if this is where to introduce myself but here goes. I have had an interest in archery since I attended a medieval fair up in Caboulture many moons ago and watched Cliff Turpin hand carve a bow and saw the competition they ran. I was hooked. About 6 years ago I had a flush of money, walked into a shop with not nearly enough knowledge and walked out with my first (and still only) bow. I am 6'2 with a 30 inch draw and I was sold a 58" takedown 50# hunting recurve, 6 gamegetter xx75 2117's with 125 grain points and a foam target and went on my merry way. I mucked around shooting a bit in the back yard for a few years and the life got crazy busy and the archery hit the back burner.

This year I have had an explosion of interest, not least because I have 3 other archers at work, all compound shooters but still gives me someone to shoot with. After listening to them talk about their bows and how accurate/quiet they were, I attended the deer and hunting expo in Bendigo earlier this year to got window shopping for a new bow. All I did that day was re-enforce my love of the relative simplicity of traditional archery and that was where my heart lay.

After actually reading about things like arrow spine, brace height, technique etc, I have actually set my bow up properly with regard to nock and brace height etc and started to try to tune the bow I have. As far as I can tell it is an October Mountain products, Blue Ridge Hunter . It is stacking a lot! I have had real problems trying to get a decent anchor point going and even replaced the string to a 54" one and can finally pull it back to the corner of my mouth. I have found that shooting 3 under works for me and I am enjoying my shooting, but am ready to move to another bow.

I now know that for my height, draw length and 3 under I would be better with a different bow. The next step I reckon is to hunt around, get something to match me - match some arrows to it and crack on from there. There is the old custom bow route, expensive but I reckon would be worth it. The good old reality of finances is always problem, but for the right set up I am willing to save up. I have looked through the forum and have seen the bowyers on here and their wares and would like some feedback from you all about experiences, recommendations etc. I am reading good things about the gringa bows for example. If funds really dry up, I would also consider the factory builds such as bear, samick etc. Someone posted on the SPB forums about the Tomahawk take down longbow which I am liking the look of, however that is pushing the price barrier a bit.

Sorry for the long winded intro and questions but I reckon there should be wealth of knowledge on here to get me started.

Cheers
Keach

[flyne]

Wear are you based mate if Thea is a club near buy I'd surgest paying them a visit

[GrahameA]

Morning Keech.

Where to start???? Probably let us know where you are.

IMHO - For you the best thing is to join a Club. That way you can regularly go to the range and shoot in safely. Plus you get to meet a few new friends and that is always helpful. Find out where the guys who shoot where you work and help them out by wandering along. p.s. AA Clubs tend be more expensive and not oriented towards Trad. (We need to change that.)

Trad is good - even the converted compound shooters say that. And while you can spend a large fortume you can have some very nice equipment at much more modest prices.

Make you own arrows - the first step to saving a fortune. Stack is usually a result of either short bows or long draws. It is not good - so save the pennies for your new bow. 30" draw Maybe come down in poundage a little as you will be working the bow hard.

[NCArcher]

Hi Keach, welcome to the campfire.
Another question you need to answer is do you want to hunt or are you content to shoot at targets. This could influence your bow choice.
For a big bloke with long arms a longer bow is more comfortable to shoot but not necessarily suited to walking through the bush after game. And like the others said, a club with experienced mentors is the best way to learn.

[bigbob]

Welcome to Ozbow Keach. Gringa would be a very good choice as they are well proven. There is a variety of choice in makers some probably closer to wherever you live which can be desirable in getting the best 'fit' for a custom bow. I am always impressed by 'Greybeards' bows when he posts them and his force/draw curves, which are an indication of a bows performance are very good.Ultimately your choice should be done after a lot of 'hands on' at a local range .

[keach]

Cheers for the responses all,

I am currently located near Seymour in centralish Victoria. I chatted to a couple of people from the Bendigo mob whilst I was at the Trade show earlier this year and have been keen to get out there as it sounds like there a few trad guys there. The usual dramas of not being nearly enough time on a weekend to get everything done get in the way (bit over two hours in travel time plus having a decent go while I'm there). My work mates and I have enough targets between us to set up a decent range in a quiet are near us to get some practice in a few times a week, but it would be nice to have other trad archers around.
I might be able to drag them along, anyone here know what the club there is like?

[woodie]

Gday Keach welcome.
I can vouch for greybeards bows as I have one of his long bows VERY NICE to shoot.
woodie

[Roadie]

Trying to find the Right Bow for one self is always an on going project, it like asking how long is a piece of string. There are some very excellent Bowyers on this site, Aussie that is. I can vouch for several Bowyers as I have bows supplied by, Greybeard and LB rod Queensland, Longbow Steve, Nick Lintern (Norseman Bows), NSW. Yeoman (Dave Clarke) Canberra. Each Bow serves a purpose for me. Hope that helps. Cheers Roadie.

[Bent Stick]

Watch out Keatch, the Bow Ho starts with "just trying to find that bow that rings my bells" LOL

[GrahameA]

Morning.

Sounds like you have enough to start your own club.

I am currently located near Seymour in centralish Victoria. I chatted to a couple of people from the Bendigo mob whilst I was at the Trade show earlier this year and have been keen to get out there as it sounds like there a few trad guys there. The usual dramas of not being nearly enough time on a weekend to get everything done get in the way (bit over two hours in travel time plus having a decent go while I'm there). My work mates and I have enough targets between us to set up a decent range in a quiet are near us to get some practice in a few times a week, but it would be nice to have other trad archers around.
I might be able to drag them along, anyone here know what the club there is like?

You need to come to Queensland so you can discover what travelling is all about. Send a PM to "stringnstik" he should be able to point you towards the right contacts, etc.

[Dennis La Varenne]

Keach,

Welcome to Ozbow.

Just addressing a few of your issues -

1. Stack
Your Blue Ridge Hunter recurve is stacking a lot. It may not be. You just may be overbowed. Very few of today's manufactured bows stack in the accurate sense of the term. Stacking is the disproportionate increase in draw weigh as the bow is drawn. Most trad bows will increase at a rate of about 2 lbs per inch of draw length consistently throughout their draw range. This can be tested on a scale. Many people simply do not have as much physical strength at full draw as they think . What they are actually experiencing is muscle failure/fatigue. The old test was that a shooter should be able to easily hold their bow at full draw for at least 10 seconds without strain. If that is a struggle, then stacking is NOT the problem and a lack of pushups is.

2. Cost
As Graeme and other mention, you don't need to spend a fortune on a very good performing locally made trad bow. If your preference is for recurves, there are a couple of makers in Australia such as Mark Kimber and Dave Keable, both in Queensland who make spectacular custom recurves for a lot less than imported bows. Conventional Howard Hill style longbows are even cheaper than recurves and Gringa makes a nice good performing Howard Hill style longbow most certainly with either reflexed or deflex-reflexed limbs.

3. Drawing style and draw length
Your height and a preference for a 3-under draw does not necessarily dictate a different kind of bow. ANY bow can be shot 3-under. A long draw length simply requires slightly longer limbs or a slightly shorter riser or a combination of both to accommodate a long draw. If you can buy a second set of longer limbs for your Blue Ridge Hunter, that is also a cost beneficial option for you. You could also possibly have one of our local recurve makers build you a second set of limbs if Blue Ridge does not supply them.

4. Arrows
Again, as Graeme pointed out, there is great satisfaction to be had as well as money saved in making your own wood arrows. Don't bother with expensive imports such as Port Orford Cedar which breaks very easily behind the point. Australian hardwoods are very good for arrows and I have made quite a lot of arrows from Bunnings Tas Oak dowel in both 9.5 and 8mm diameters depending upon the draw weight of the bow. You will need to build yourself a spine jig sometime to test the bending strenth and deflection (amount of bend) of the shafts you use to match them, but in the early days I used to match my arrows in spine by simply flexing them between my two hands after I got used to the feel of an alloy arrow of the required spine. I found I could match them very closely just by feel after a little while. Later, when I built my first spine jig, I was surprised at how well I could do it when compared on the jig. Anyway, have a good look at the Glossary on Ozbow (http://www.ozbow.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2927) where you can find out a lot more on arrows and their requirements.

Others on Ozbow and I can supply you with drawings from which you can build your own accurate spine jig using common hand tools at home. It is not rocket science. Eventually, you may even like to have a go at building your own bows, either composite laminates or selfbow. You can find pretty much any information about any aspect of trad archery on this site if you do a little bit of searching and you will not lack for advice or assistance.

[keach]

Heya Dennis, Thanks for the tips.
A few questions

Stacking

So with my bow set at 50# @ 28" - and my draw length at 30" -I''m actually pulling around 54# ?

My bow feels fine up to a certain point, then gets noticeably difficult the last couple of inches. Before I knew any better, I was anchoring my first knuckle of my thumb to the crook on the side of my nose because this just felt comfortable. After reading about consistent anchor, I switched to the old finger to the corner of the mouth trick and this is where it got harder to pull all the way back. A rough look at my hand tells me this is about 2 inches further to draw. The corner of the mouth is much more repeatable for me, and I have been able to get much more consistent groups etc.

Having said that, I can't hold at full draw for 10 seconds with out getting some wobbles going like you suggested. I can however hold it comfortably at my old anchor, which i think might be an inconsistent spot teaching me some bad habits. (BTW, lack of pushups is not a problem, my bloody job makes me do enough).

I really am going to have to go somewhere where I can have a go at lower poundage bows or same poundage but longer limbs I think.

I enjoy the target shooting aspect but I do plan on going hunting with my mates one day when I'm good enough so I will need to be able to pull a 50# to legally hunt deer.

Cost

Always an issue, 2 mortgages, 2.5 kids, single income etc. When I get my next bow, I think it will have to be a little bit budget, the custom might have to be my next next one. I'll have a sniff around for longer limbs for my bow but I really would like to get a longbow with a bit of Reflex/Deflex, they really appeal to me. Even the factory made ones I read about are retailing for the $700 mark plus matched arrows etc. More research to do. Roughly how much are the Gringa ones?

As for the rest, I am keen to give making my own gear a go. Definitely arrows, and after reading http://www.poorfolkbows.com/ I reckon bows will be doable with a bit of trial and error. Maybe a Bunnings special like I have seen on here to get the basics down and practice tillering etc. Ultimately, I reckon landing an animal with something you have built from scratch arrow,bow, broadhead the lot would be the ultimate (long term) goal.

Cheers
Keach

[bigbob]

Regards the cost of a Gringa, shoot lbrod a pm and I'm sure he will give you a good deal.

[flyne]

keach hey mate I'm the president of the bendigo club I was the ond handed bloke at the expo I think you will find we are a pritty easy going club at least I think so any way if you got any questions just ask il be more then happy to help
Jim

[Dennis La Varenne]

Keach -

Stack
Where you said

My bow feels fine up to a certain point, then gets noticeably difficult the last couple of inches.

still does not demonstrate stack in its correct sense. Only a scale will really prove that and remove the subjective element. In the last couple of inches, it is quite possible that your muscles have reached their absolute strength limit in the same way as the last two pushes of a set in bench press. It is always those last two that are the killers because your muscles just have nothing left. Check your bow on a scale at a club if you can to make certain which it is.

Drawing and Anchor point
Next thing in regard to your anchor point and the sensation of loss of power, try this little trick. When you draw, think of drawing your elbow back until your drawing hand comes to your anchor point RATHER than drawing your hand to its anchor. There is a big difference. Drawing your elbow back and keeping your elbow higher than your shoulder will bring your trapezius muscles into play. As soon as your elbow drops below the level of your shoulder, you begin to use only your deltoids and your biceps which even together are much less strong by far than your upper back muscles. Bows were meant to be drawn with the strength of your back muscles, not your arms.

Try closing your eyes and draw your bow, but thinking in terms of moving your elbow backwards until it cannot go back any further. Do it without a bow first so you get an idea of what it is supposed to feel like. Keep your elbow up. To get the sensation of what muscles are meant to do the work, stand in a doorway and assume the drawing stance but with your elbow against a door frame. Commence drawing back by pushing your elbow against the door frame. You will immediately feel which muscles are doing the work. These are the muscles you must activate during your draw sequence.

Pushups
That was a metaphor for lack of strength in the required drawing muscles. Bent-over rowing is perhaps the best of the non-specific exercises for bowyers, but all of the upper body exercises benefit in a supporting way. Getting the wobbles up before 10 seconds means you are overbowed. Your description of your other anchor suggests to me that you are bracing your drawing hand against your face to take some/much of the drawing load off your arm muscles. If I can be more specific, you need to be able to hold your bow at full draw away from your anchor which we call a floating anchor. You don't shoot from such an anchor. It is just a training exercise.

Suggested exercise regime
Do not shoot your bow for at least 2 weeks. This is important. Trying to shoot accurately at the same time as building up strength work against each other and accuracy always suffers.

Get a bit of dowel just a bit longer than your 30 inch draw - say 32 inches long - cut some kind of nock in one end so it holds your string then mark this dowel in one inch increments starting from about 24 inches right out to your 30 inches. Next drill a small horizontal hole through the dowel at each increment big enough to slide a 1 1/2 inch nail through.

Bracing your bow, draw this dowel back toward your preferred anchor point as if it is an arrow until the nail through the dowel starting at around 26 inches stops against the back of your bow and cannot be drawn any further. HOLD for 10 seconds and let down. Rest. Repeat again and rest. Repeat a third time and leave it for that day.

Repeat the next day.

Every second day, move the nail one inch further out along the dowel and repeat until you can draw easily and comfortably to 30 inches. By that time, you should be able to control your bow with relative ease. THEN recommence your accuracy shooting with a bow you can easily control. It is always better to be a bit underbowed than overbowed.

Hunting bows
For hunting big animals, you need heavy arrows to optimise lethal penetration and hence more power in your bow to shift them. Build up first then start shooting.

In my experience, second to accuracy, if your bow can shift an arrow of at least 10 grains per pound of draw weight at a minimum of 150 fps, there is not much you cannot humanely kill in Australia. That ballistic is very easily achievable with almost any trad bow today. 50lbs is minimum for all deer in Victoria, but 55lbs or even 60lbs is even better and not beyond the ability of most men to build up to.

If your bow is of marginal power for the animals you are hunting, accuracy needs to be dead on because a less than perfect placement with less than full penetration is less likely to result in a humane kill. A bow which is bit heavier than needed is more likely to be able to drive an arrow through much more tissue and still cause exsanguination than if the hit is not perfectly placed with a lighter bow.

Building your own
You will not get much more satisfaction from any other part of archery than when you make your first successful bow. Ozbow is replete with people who have taken it up. Some have gone on to be very accomplished bowyer who could hold their own anywhere in the world. Some of the work done is astonishing, and Australian hardwoods are as good as any in my opinion.

Here are my main criteria for selection of any unknown piece of wood of any origin.
1. It must split with tough fibrous strings attaching the splits which need to be chopped away to free them. This shows that the wood is long fibred. Wood which cleaves cleanly is usually very short fibred and ruptures on the back because it is poor in tension.
2. The wood should be heavy and dense, preferably above Air Dry Density of 700kg/m^3, because bending strength lies therein.
3. In boards, quartersawn is more reliable than plank/backsawn.
4. With one famous exception (Yew), avoid all softwoods.

[bigbob]

Great lot of advise there Dennis, particularly liked the strengthening exercise with the dowel and nail. This indeed could be equally applied to any one who have had some time away from their bow, to enable them to re-condition their muscles again so that they don't run the risk of severe damage due to not having used them in that manner for a while.

[greybeard]

Hi Keach,

Re stack the following graph illustrates the increase in draw weight as you get to full draw. The figures represent draw weight measured from the throat of the riser [dlpp]. Add 1 ¾“to convert to the AMO standard.

43# Takedown Recurve Graph.jpg (100.15 KiB) Viewed 4355 times

At 26” dlpp the draw weight is 43#, at 29” draw weight is 51 ½ # and at 30” draw weight is 55.2#.
Between 26 and 29 inches the force curve is virtually a straight line and then starts into a slight incline. Extending the draw length further would probably result in a sharper upward trend and moving in to ‘stack’.

Daryl.

[bigbob]

Great to hear from you again Greybeard, thought you must have gone into hibernation for the winter

[Dennis La Varenne]

Keach,

Daryl's graph shows exactly what stack is. After 29 inches on his graph, the force required to draw the bow each inch thereafter is beginning to increase at an exponential rate.

The interesting part of his graph is the lower end of the curve where it 'bellies' out. A bow which shows this kind of curve is more efficient than one with a straight-line curve because this bow has an early 'pre-load' built into the limbs.

Importantly, a bow with this kind of curve loses what I might call ''push-power' on the arrow at a slower rate than a straight line curve and hence is more efficient at converting stored energy in the bent limbs into thrust against the arrow. Commonly, but not always, this kind of graph is produced by bows with some degree of reflex built into the outer limb such as the modern recurve bow or the deflex-reflex bow design which used to be called a semi-recurve back in the 1950s when it was first developed by Fred Bear, Ben Pearson and a few others.

Looking at any force-draw graph, the relative efficiency of a bow can be judged just by totalling the number of graph squares below the curve.

EXERCISE REGIME
In regard to the exercise regime I suggested above, I left out one important thing, and that is to do those exercises on BOTH sides of your bow, ie. draw opposite handed. This will balance out the relative strength on both sides of your arm and upper back muscles so that there is no untoward amount of load on your spinal column from the one direction. Of course, do some limbering warmup exercises before you start of course.

[bigbob]

Dennis re totalling the number of squares under , in greybeards graph as an example, there is something like 73 at a rough count. Is this then expressed as a percentage?

[Dennis La Varenne]

bigbob,

It used to be called pound-inches and was a reference to mechanical work done by the bow (if I remember my schoolboy physics). You only need to count the squares and express them as 'x' number of pound-inches, which number can be compared with any other bow.

For practical purposes, the greater the number, the more efficient the bow at storing energy and, by extrapolation, and all other externals being equal, the more of that stored energy will be converted into thrust against the arrow.

The main elements which decrease the efficiency with which that stored energy is converted to thrust are -
1. the mass and vibrations of the arrow,
2. the string mass,
3. the mass of the limbs themselves
4. friction of the arrow against the arrow shelf,
5. air friction against arrow, string and limbs,
6. hysteresis (material fatigue due to the internal friction within the limbs which is dissipated as small amounts of heat).

Hysteresis can easily be seen when you measure the force draw of a bow up to its draw weight, then take the same measurements again on the DOWNWARD run. You will be surprised at the amount of loss. This lower downward force draw curve is the actual curve which shows thrust against the arrow, unlike the upward curve which is what is usually depicted in force-draw curves.

One bow may store energy more efficiently than another, but it will never apply all that stored energy as thrust.

The upward curve is the one which demonstrates how much energy is stored, whilst the downward curve demonstrates how much of that stored energy is actually applied as thrust. Then additionally deducting the effects of items 1, 2,3,4 and 5 above from that number, you can get an idea of how efficient the average trad bow is.

Any measure of the efficiency of any bow must take into account the effects of hysteresis - the forgotten factor.

[greybeard]

Hi Bob,

The force draw graph was generated from the data recorded on the chart below.

Total energy is shown in inch-lbs at the bottom of the chart.

Takedown Recurve Chart.jpg (124.51 KiB) Viewed 4292 times

Daryl.

[GrahameA]

Good Morning Bob.

Dennis re totalling the number of squares under , in greybeards graph as an example, there is something like 73 at a rough count. Is this then expressed as a percentage?

WRT F/D Curves. The area under the curve is the energy stored in the bow.

Efficiency is a measure of what you get out of a system compared to what you put. So if you put 100 Joules of Energy into a bow and you get out 50 Joules it :

50/100 efficient. ie %50

As a comment you need a method to measure the energy that goes into the system and a method to measure what comes out. Please Note It is not hard to do some rough measurements to determine the amount of energy stored in a bow system. And is not hard to measure the amount of energy in an arrow. Since the purpose of the bow is to propel an arrow it is simple to determine how efficient a bow is in propelling an arrow. The energy that is not in the arrow has gone somewhere else and if people are keen they can proportion out the components.

Effectiveness is not the same as efficiency:

Effectiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness
Efficiency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency

[bigbob]

Thanks you Dennis Daryl and Grahame.Now I just need a week or two to digest the information!

[keach]

Wow.

I knew I was coming to the right place for detailed information here, but.....wow. There is a lot more to all of this than I thought and it is all pretty damn fascinating.

I have taken on board the advice for building up strength and have had a bit of a win. I nearly choked when you said don't shoot for two weeks but it all made sense so I gave it a crack. I spent the time reading up on form a bit more and watching some very helpful videos on YouTube. A quick shoot outside this afternoon felt a whole lot better. Using the right muscles in the first place makes a huge difference and I am feeling a lot more comfortable with my bow and shooting. I'll endevour to have a decent shoot this weekend to confirm it....

I also managed to get into an archery shop to check out some factory made longbows and pick a few brains while I was there. It was great to feel the difference between the lower and higher poundage bows. For the asking price of those bows though I am thinking the money would definitely go towards a nice custom longbow. Come on lotto win! (or a decent tax refund).

[kerrille]

gday keach and welcome ,if you can, get to dunolly for their trad shoot ,its on the first week of august ,i know its the other side of bendigo for you but its well worth the trip and you will meet some of the best trad bloke's and blokett's in victoria ,i dont miss this event and im 400k's away and some come from a lot further,so i hope to see you there .


...nev...

[greybeard]

Keach,

Further to Grahame’s reply the following data illustrates stored energy and bow efficiency.

In this instance 500 grain wooden arrows with feathers were used in the chronograph tests. Average fps was taken from the best five of ten arrows.
Although the one piece recurve stored a little more energy the takedown had a greater percentage of efficiency.
The limbs for the take down recurve were laid up on the same form that I used to build the one piece recurve and therefore have a similar profile. The working length of the limb of the takedown is just on one inch longer than the one piece and the takedown limbs are marginally thicker and slightly narrower than the one piece bow.

001 Bow Test.jpg (68.34 KiB) Viewed 4193 times

Gathering and analysing data such as this can aid in producing a more efficient bow.

Daryl.