Saturday 25 June 2011

Shooting the Character Bow

I helped to set up the club's end of month 3D shoot. Twenty eight targets including a big Tiger and my fave' big Crocodile.
The bow shoots smooth and well, being almost centreshot the arrow flight is nice and straight even at close range. One of the guys at the club had a go with it and described it as "Fast and flat, for a knobly bow" he also agreed that it had a bit more hand shock than you'd expect.
I was shooting pretty well and managed to get some nice first arrow kills and wounds on the long shots. On a long shot wolf I thought, "that's about point on" and as I loosed I though it was going way over, but it just seemed to run out of steam and dropped nicely into the kill.

There has been some discussion of the tiller, it being suggested that the lower limb is weak (someone online and the guy at the club both suggested it). I was slightly worried myself, but I cropped the full draw shot, rotated it to give a horizontal arrow and drew an elipse in 'paint', it shows it's pretty good, although there is a slightly tighter bend at about half way down the lower limb.
Generally the lower limb, being shorter, will have to bend through a tighter radius to draw back the same distance as the upper. The tip of the upper limb is slightly stiff due to the two big knots, this makes it look worse.
Anyhow, I reversed the string and tried shooting it upside down to test the theory. It shot like a pig, the arrows seemed to twitch and nosedive, so I'm happy that the tiller and nocking point are set up about right as they are.
If I was concerned, I'd possibly heat temper the lower limb in the middle to stiffen it a tad, or ease off the last third of the top limb, however I'm certainly not going to risk it on this bow.

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