European Archery Festival

Hi all, just a quick note to let you know that I did go and had a great time but I have come down with a stinking cold so as soon as I feel a bit better I will give you the details.

Just a little post to show off our new indoor range, which some of our members have built, the whole of the right hand side can be removed to allow shooting from under cover. 

While I am on here I will update on my new limbs as well. I shot them on Sunday in a frostbite and I still like them a lot, I also had the first chance I have had to weight them on the bow and I got a bit of a surprise. My Kaya Tomcats were rated as 34 lb @ 28" and with them fully wound in I had weighed them at 37.5 lb, now the Uuhkas are rated at 40 lb @ 28" so with them wound out I was expecting a small overall increase in weight, what I got was 42.7 lb nearly five pounds more, no wonder they feel like hard work! Guess I need to spend more time building up my strength. I will have to see if there are any funky training aids at the European Festival on Saturday.

Grip results,

On Saturday evening I sat down and took the grip off my Riser to see how the Sugru had set and if the fix worked and I must say I was pretty impressed with the results.

The grip came off nicely thanks to the cling film and that peeled easily off the Sugru, leaving a perfect impression of the underside of the grip. I refitted the grip and it felt nice and firm with possibly just a little bit of give but none of the movement it had before. The Sugru sets just like a layer of rubber and should give a nice seating for the grip.

I got up to the club yesterday (Sunday) and shot a Portsmouth and everything felt really nice with the grip no longer rocking and I managed a respectable (for me) 516. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the extra weight from the new limbs so soon it will be time to start winding them up a bit ...MORE POWER!!! (If you used to watch Home Improvements you'll get it).   

Feed back

OK guys been doing this blog for a while now and I know people out there are reading it but I am not getting much feed back. So either I am covering everything and getting it all right first time or I am really failing. I will publish all comments as long as they are suitable for my son to read and not blatant commercial adverts. So come on lets have some input, even if it just to say "your blog stinks I hate it". 

OK lets sort out this grip (Part One)

So let's see if this works, the first thing I did was remove the grip by undoing the single screw that holds it on, I then cleaned the area of the risers under the grip to remove any grease. I then applied a layer of Sugru about 2mm think over the area.

Next I covered the area with a layer of cling film to stop the handle sticking to the Sugru (it is fairly easy to get of non porous material but can be a real pain on wood the like) so that I can still remove it when I want. Next I put the grip back on and pressed in down firmly to form the layer of Sugru and line up the fixing screw, which I then put back in.

So in theory that's it job done, the Sugru will normally take about twenty four hours to cure (2 mm thickness if it was thicker it would take longer) and will then be like a layer of rubber firmly fixed to the riser. Well I did that last night so tonight when I get in from work I can have a look and see how it is doing, I am expecting it to take a bit longer to cure because it is tucked away under the clingfilm and the grip but we will see and I will report back. 

That ********** grip!

Ok so as the title says I am going to have a look at the grip on my Revo', it is one of the things that bugs a lot of owners as they always seem to have quite a bit of movement. Well I have been thinking about it for a while and have now decided to do something about it and my solution is Sugru. If you have not heard of it, it is a bit like silicon but comes in small sachets and can be used for lots of thing. What I will do is take off my grip apply a layer of sugru then put some cling film over it and refit the grip. The idea is that when the grip goes back on it will form the sugru to the correct shape to take up the gaps and stop the grip moving but as it stays flexible it should act as a cushion, the cling film is to stop the grip sticking on and will be removed once it has cured. I will post some images as I do it and report back on how well it works. 

I got them and they are..................

OK so Christmas has been and gone and  have my nice new shiny Uuhka EX-1s. With the filthy weather and the need to be sociable over the festive season, it was not until the 31st of December that I managed to get up to the club and have a proper got with them. I did have a rather stupid go in the back garden on Christmas day (yes I know I always so don't do it unless you have a proper safe area to shoot), I just wanted to try them so shot two arrows into the lawn, or that's what I meant to do (you know it's not going to go well don't you), the first one was fine and felt nice the second one went a bit further up the garden and embedded itself in one of the sleepers we have setup in front of the throwing board (my son has no interest in archery but instead throws knives and now axes) it is only about twenty feet away and you heard the shaft fracture as it hit, when I tried  to pull it the pile and about one and a half inches of shaft stayed in the sleeper and the rest came away.
Anyway I did get to the club, had my first go in our new indoor range and shot my first indoor round. I had done a bit of setting up before hand and as I have gone up fair bit in weight from my 34lb Tomcats to the 40lb EX-1s I moved the limb bolts from all the way in to all the way out ( I am planning on getting the at least halfway back in by the time the summer season starts......where are those bands), so at 28" I would in theory be going from about 36lb to 38lb. Spigarelli recommend an 8-9" brace height and Uuhka say about 9" on a 68" bow for the EX-1s, when I first strung it up it was at 8.75" so I started there. The limbs are a little bit tight on the limb bolts so it is hard to settle them before you shoot and my first shot had a nice loud crack to it as did my second, third and forth, hmm that string is slapping on those limbs (they really do have an impressive recurve on them), time to look at that brace height. I took it up to 8 and seven eighths and it was a bit better but still there so up it went a bit more and a bit more until it hit a sweet spot at 9 1/8".

  On to shooting and how they feel, well my first impression once the brace height was sorted is that they feel quite a bit heavier than the Tomcats, after just two and a half dozen arrows I felt just about done, they also feel faster than the Tomcats with more of a snap to the shot. But of course all of this is very subjective, I don't normally analyze how my bow feels I just shoot it so when I am looking for a difference I'm going to find one even if it is not there and until I weight the bow and maybe see if I can borrow a chrono I can't really confirm anything. One thing I can say is that they feel very smooth through the draw and seem very stable to shoot even if it did seem harder to hold at full draw while settling on the gold.  I shot a Bray, my first indoor round and my first round with my new limbs, I scored 205, no records there but no too bad as that included working out a sight mark and then 2 days later shot a 220 so heading in the right direction.

  One thing I have noticed on the limbs is cracking on the decals on the back of them obviously due to the outside edge stretching as they bow is drawn and something I have seen mention by others. I did try a few shots outside from 30yrds out to 80yrds and even wound in there is a big improvement in sight marks, they went up when I changed from Skyart Sapphires to my ACGs but are now better then they were wih the Skyarts, whether I can hit 100yrds will have to wait until I work up to getting them wound back in and we have some better weather.