Main Discussion Area > English Warbow

Acceptable amount of set

<< < (2/4) > >>

Mo_coon-catcher:
A 30" draw works for me, I doubt I could get to 32" anyway, even at a much lower draw weight. I always thought that 32" draw had become the standard draw length. Right now it sitting at about 1.5 fingers under the handle. But I still need to work down the tips a bit. Right now I'm debating on putting on horn, or just clean up the wood and put a thread wrap under the side nock that's in the wood now.

Kyle

WillS:
From what I understand, the 32" draw length became standard once the BL-BS "Standard arrow" was created as a specification.  It wasn't based on an actual medieval arrow, it just came about from various "medieval-ish" things they had to hand at the time.  As a result, bows were tillered to 32" in order to be safe when shooting the Standard arrow and have remained that way ever since. 

When you look at the MR arrows, the average length is about 30", and for pretty much every normal sized guy under compression from a really heavy bow 30" is more than enough.  It also means that you can make bows "proper" length - 72, 75 or even 77" as compared to the huge 80" or even 82" bows you used to see being made and sold.  A shorter bow weighs less obviously, and if you can find that optimal ratio between bow length and draw length and draw weight you're onto a winner.

I would add that if you're using modern strings like FastFlight etc, you'll want to be really careful with bare wood sidenocks.  Modern strings have a real tendency to bite into the wood and split it down the length of the limb, so either make the loops really nice and thick by laying in some extra strands, or whack some nice small neat horn nocks over the tips.  Horn sidenocks are cut through to the wood, but the horn around the rest of the tip stops the string biting down into it.  It's usually worth the 10 minutes it takes to fit a pair just to save the heartbreak when you brace it up one day and suddenly find that the string loop has buried itself somewhere down the bow limb!

Mo_coon-catcher:
I went ahead and put in on some horn nocks. This was my first attempt at them. The grooves on the back are the stringing groove while the side nocks are for the string. I might have to try a bit shorter on my next one too. This one is 84" between the nocks. The next one will be a good bit shorter and probably drop the weight to 100# so it'll be easier to shoot. I still havnt tried to pull back this one yet.

So how do the horns look? I still have to polish then up.

Kyle

WillS:
It looks like buffalo horn, in which case you might want to try making them with the grooves quite a lot higher up the horn.  Buffalo splits really easily, and you need loads of horn and a good contact between wooden bow tip and string loop to make them safe.  Sidenocks and buffalo horn don't really go together too well - it's cow horn you want, as it has a different grain structure than buffalo.

WillS:
This is one of Dave Pim's beautiful little sidenocks - notice how high up the horn the actual nock is.  For cow horn this can be brought down a bit, but you certainly don't want to go any lower than this really, when using buffalo.



You also want to make absolutely sure that the string loops aren't too big.  They need to be almost too small to come down the bow limb, as if they're too big they'll just hang off the sidenocks weirdly, and cause so much downwards stress on the lip of the nock that it'll split as soon as it's braced.

The simple solution is to use running loops on the nocks (make a normal Flemish string, but make the loops at each end really tiny - no bigger than the diameter of a drinking straw, and pass the main string through the loops, so you form a slipknot type arrangement.)  This works superbly well on one nock, but you will find with modern string materials like FastFlight getting the loop off the other nock to unbrace a complete nightmare.  I usually combine a running loop on one end, and a normal (but small as possible) loop on the other, which I unbrace like normal.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page