Tribute bow beginnings
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:37 pm
Firstly, many thanks again to Eddie and the La Varenne family for offering this bow up, I truly do feel lucky to be on the receiving end!
I've had it for a little while now and it is my first bow shot off the knuckle, so it was a bit of a tough initiation. I only had a couple of generic 500 carbons on hand that were likely to be close, so I flung a few through and quickly found I was waay off the mark. After a bit of mucking around, i started to get a bit of a better grouping when I changed to shooting instinctive and split rather than the 3 under/fixed crawl I've shot mostly so far.
With another 40#(ish) bow to tune up, I ordered a dozen .500 XX75 Gamegetters and some 100gr brass inserts. The inserts have a tapped thread in the back, so tuning with a 145gr field point gave me a bit of leeway with alternative broadheads while still maintaining my aim of getting a high FOC (>20 ideally). It took a few iterations of points, inserts and some trimming before I found a combo that bare shafted sweetly out of the imperial to 18m but like a dog out of the nominal 40# mongrel sage/nighthawk. 40# is 40# is 40# right? Sure, off the knuckle vs nearly center cut and the hybrid stacked badly from 27" but still none of the variations in tune were even close. Grabbing the hybrid, I put it on the tillering block and stepped back. Hmmm, 53 @ 28 - not even close. Still, problem solved and I put it aside to find an arrow combo later.
Quickly fletching up the test shaft with 3x5" parabolic feathers, I weighed and measured the finished arrow and arrived at a tickle over 20% FOC and 580gr Stepping outside I hit the target bale and found that out to 18m the cast was fine, but I won't be shooting animals past 15m as it falls like a rock once past that. What surprised me most was that the benefits of a high FOC began to shine through despite the 15gpp - it hit harder and penetrated further on the bale than a lighter faster arrow, and the flight was as good as if not better than a lighter arrow with lower FOC. With such a heavy arrow, the bow is very quiet so I'm not going to bother fitting silencers as the loudest part seems to be the hollow aluminium shaft sliding past the wooden index mark, but I will probably fit a small leather patch to quieten it even more and give me a definite reference point.
With a freezer full of a goat and half, I can concentrate on bettering my groups within hunting distances and get back out in the hills chasing some goats
I've had it for a little while now and it is my first bow shot off the knuckle, so it was a bit of a tough initiation. I only had a couple of generic 500 carbons on hand that were likely to be close, so I flung a few through and quickly found I was waay off the mark. After a bit of mucking around, i started to get a bit of a better grouping when I changed to shooting instinctive and split rather than the 3 under/fixed crawl I've shot mostly so far.
With another 40#(ish) bow to tune up, I ordered a dozen .500 XX75 Gamegetters and some 100gr brass inserts. The inserts have a tapped thread in the back, so tuning with a 145gr field point gave me a bit of leeway with alternative broadheads while still maintaining my aim of getting a high FOC (>20 ideally). It took a few iterations of points, inserts and some trimming before I found a combo that bare shafted sweetly out of the imperial to 18m but like a dog out of the nominal 40# mongrel sage/nighthawk. 40# is 40# is 40# right? Sure, off the knuckle vs nearly center cut and the hybrid stacked badly from 27" but still none of the variations in tune were even close. Grabbing the hybrid, I put it on the tillering block and stepped back. Hmmm, 53 @ 28 - not even close. Still, problem solved and I put it aside to find an arrow combo later.
Quickly fletching up the test shaft with 3x5" parabolic feathers, I weighed and measured the finished arrow and arrived at a tickle over 20% FOC and 580gr Stepping outside I hit the target bale and found that out to 18m the cast was fine, but I won't be shooting animals past 15m as it falls like a rock once past that. What surprised me most was that the benefits of a high FOC began to shine through despite the 15gpp - it hit harder and penetrated further on the bale than a lighter faster arrow, and the flight was as good as if not better than a lighter arrow with lower FOC. With such a heavy arrow, the bow is very quiet so I'm not going to bother fitting silencers as the loudest part seems to be the hollow aluminium shaft sliding past the wooden index mark, but I will probably fit a small leather patch to quieten it even more and give me a definite reference point.
With a freezer full of a goat and half, I can concentrate on bettering my groups within hunting distances and get back out in the hills chasing some goats