Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: Kegan on January 25, 2009, 09:52:46 pm
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It doesn't help, shooting lighter arrows, unless the tips are very light (like flight bows) right? Building a bow to shoot lighter arrows quickly requires jsut as much as to get a bow to shoot normal weight arrows quickly, right?
Oh, and can horn hold up to FF Plus?
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Kegan, A lighter arrow will alwys fly faster than a heavy arrow. Funny thing about bows, all bows is that they become more efficient as arrow weight goes up and less efficient as it goes down. If you were shooting arrows that weighed 1# for instance there is a good chance that a very crappy bow could beat one of your fastest bows simply because it stored more energy and with a heavy arrow like that became almost 100% efficient. To take advantage of shooting light arrows often concentrating on ways to make your bow more efficient is more important than storing a lot of energy. You still want a good amount of both obviously but efficiency will trump the energy storage once the arrow gets light enough. In the 500 grain arrow weight range it is kind of a battle between the highest energy storers and the decent energy storing bows that maintain slighlty better efficiency. many of the things that store energy rob efficiency. The trick is trying to come up with the best compromise. A skilled bowyer such as Mark St Louis for instance ( sorry for using your name Mark) is able to build high energy storing designs and still keep outer limb mass at a minimum, that makes for a hard combo to beat, I concentrate on moderately high energy storing designs that allow me a bit more effieciency. When I am building a bow strictly for light arrows I still try to keep the energy storage up primarily by adding a little reflex but concentrate more on lower outer limb mass. Hope this helps. Steve
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Thanks Steve, that answers my quetion perfectly. I had noticed my heavy-limbed longbow would shoot arrows from 600-900 gr without trouble, but with a carbon arrow I found, they just sorta slumped out of the bow. I had reread the chapter on flight shooting in TBB IV, and that's where I started to think that. Thanks :)!
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About the ff string part of the question. I have no experience, but have just been reading A. Karpowicz' new book on the Turkish bow. He reports having destroyed several horn bows by using ff string. He suggests using nothing but B50 or natural matreials on horn bows. Ron
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About the ff string part of the question. I have no experience, but have just been reading A. Karpowicz' new book on the Turkish bow. He reports having destroyed several horn bows by using ff string. He suggests using nothing but B50 or natural matreials on horn bows. Ron
Whoops. I meant for overlays. Do you think horn could be used as overlays?
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Kegan, cow horn will seperate, antler or bone will work ok. Steve
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Wow,
im glad i read taht i was going to try dome bull horn for a future tip over lay here in the next few weeks... i though it would be a nice addition to a project bow im going ot be starting here soon...
why is it that a cow or bull horn seperate and what do you mean seperat ???? do you menat that the horn itself will seperate in layers or will it just not adhere to the bow wood proper enough to make a good over lay ????
can you please explain...? ??? ???
thanks..
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The very tips are usually pretty hard, but beyond the first inch or two they just seperate into paper thin layers, It will happen after only a few shots if not the first shot. Steve
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Bone will work? I can find deer bones- and a friend of mine has a number of cow leg bones he normally just saves for his dogs.
The antler I would have used has been deemed "off limits" by my family :P.
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I used buffalo horn on an 80# bamboo backed Ipe flightbow recently, with 3-4mm wide nocks together with a D-75 string. The overlays held up quite nicely, although the sting did leave an impression in them. Just make sure the horn is thick enough, and it will hold very well. - at least the black buffalo horn does.
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Most cow horn grows in a spiral up the length of the horn .It adds a new layer each year with a slightly different slope angle because the horn is now longer . Every horn of this type I have tried to use ,tends to delaminate between these layers ,as the different angles of 'grain' diverge . I have had limited success delaminating the horn on purpose (like in half) then cutting it into short lengths with very small divergence of growth angle /slope within each length. And soaking the pieces in thinned hide glue, for a while.
Ralph
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I cut a section of bone, and sanded it flat and square. It's about 1/8" or less thick. Anything I should do special to prep it for use as FF overlays?