Sunday 1 March 2015

Flight bow Fumblings

I think the flight bow is really a 40# at 28" (or 27" measured for flight).
I asked on Primitive Archer how to find the optimum draw without over stressing the bow.
The trick is measure the poundage at say 26", draw it to 27" and note the poundage.
Then let the bow down and try again at 26" its should be where it was before, if it's now a lower draw weight at 26" than it was the first time then it's beginning to be stressed.
I used this procedure to tease it back to 28" (measured from about the mid point of the grip). It had lost a whisker from it's previous 27" measurement, so I think that's about it.
This means I can pretty much shoot it with my regular arrows.
I've taken a lot of excess from the tips and narrows the limbs a bit to.
Being honest I'm disappointed as I wanted to break the 200fps, but it's shooting 189fps and I feel it should be able to stay at that speed.
There is one more ace up my sleeve and that's a lighter string, I don't even know what this string is made from as it's off an old Osage bow of mine and it has far too much weight for a flight string.
The pic shows how hard it's working now, the right limb has been narrowed a whisker over it's outer half to weaken it a tad and save weight as it seems to be bending less than the left (lower) limb.

I'll press on with the longbow tomorrow and get the arrow plate and maybe the grip done.
While I was messing about I offered the flight bow up against the form where it was glued up. I could see it had taken about 2" of set, all in the outer half of the limbs.

D'uh, well I made a 6 strand string, made no difference through the chrono', but at least I've done the arrow plate on the longbow... nice black waterbuffalo horn really clean inlay.

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