Taking a break.............

Well just a quick note to let you know that I will be away for a bit, the last few weeks we have been getting ready for a cruise on the Queen Mary II following the coast of Norway right up into the arctic circle. It is a fifteen day trip and should be lots of fun but it has been taking up a bit of my time sorting out luggage clothing and the like.
We have another league match on the 3rd of August 2 days before we go and I will try and do a quick update on how that goes.

Wait? No bare bow weight .......no

Well got the bare bow weight fitted, it shot with it, hated it nuf' said .....well not really so watch this space for a longer explanation.......ha! I bet that will keep you on the edge of your seat!

How do you like it.........?

Just a few thought s today, I was thinking about last Wednesday when I was last at the club. There were a few things going on with my bow that I have mentioned, but I didn't really say much about the truly awful round I shot, so here goes.

Now most of you will know that I don't shoot with a clicker and my reasons for this, but if not then briefly it is just that I feel the more aids you use on a bow the farther away you get from the shot, I think that makes sense. I often talk about how alive or dead a bow is, in an effort to describe how they feel when shot.

One extreme would be a one piece wooden bow with no stabalisaton or dampening of any kind, which will move with every twitch of your arm or gust of wind and in turn transmit back to your bow hand every vibration when shot and will feel "alive".
 Of course the other extreme would be a target recurve bow with a long rod, v-bars and limb savers This bow will have a lot of inertia from the weights on the long rod and v-bars and so will resist any movement to the extent that it will actually hold your bow arm still. There may also quite a lot a dampening from the long rod and some from of limb savers. This will all add up to a bow that will weight a lot more but will be much more stable and will feel "dead".
 To be honest if you are going for the highest score and to be as consistent as possible you want the latter, it will let you hold the pin steady on the gold and coupled with a clicker enable you to shoot as well as you possibly can. If (and it's big one) you have good form and a well executed shot cycle, because no matter how good and well tuned your setup is, you are still the one who has to make the shot and each subsequent shot the same as the last.
But for me, I prefer the former, I like to feel that I am making the shot, not just providing the power for a well engineered machine. I will not get the same level of consistency, my bow is less stable and no matter how much I practice, my draw will vary. Maybe by only a few millimeters 90% of the time, but it is the other 10% (where a clicker would let me know that I have not reached full draw or that I had pulled too far) that will probably keep me from getting my bowman classification ( I am going to try for it next season). I do use a long
I am not knocking people who shoot with aids and not preaching that you should shoot without, you shoot the way that you enjoy in order to reach the goals that you have set yourself.

Wow gonna need to make another post the cover the original topic which was "Have you ever had one of those days?".

Loose screws and funny sizes

Grr a bit of a frustrating day yesterday, first off I could not shoot straight to save my life, really I was missing at 60 yards and even shooting over the boss!

Secondly and what might have put me in a fowl mood, I received my bare bow weight from AS Spigarelli on Tuesday, not bad as I only ordered it on Friday from the factory in Italy, which I did because all the UK stockists were quoting four week plus for a special order. So yesterday morning I thought I would fi it before I went to the club and then see how it effected the bow, I would have put it on the evening before but I had to do a quick repair on our shower, which the wife thought was more important than my bow?
Any way Wednesday morning I got all ready to fit the weight to my bow but then found that I didn't have an allen key to fit the bolts, it turns out that they will be an AF size as are the threads on the stabiliser bushings. So after going through every allen key in my house and shed I gave up and will have to get a set of AF keys.

The next fun thing happened at the club, after fitting my limbs and stringing my bow I gave the string a little twang and to my surprise the bow had quite a rattle, the same rattle that I usually tell people is my sight....hmmm. After a bit of twanging while holding the rest still and listening to various areas of the bow I narrowed the source of the noise to the top half of the riser. Now I was a little bit concerned so quickly unstrung my bow and got out my tools and started checking nuts and bolts. Well what I found was that after about three years of shooting it the top three fixings were loose. That's the nut and bolt type at the very top and the next two, the riser was not coming apart an the loosest (the one at the end) was still more than finger tight but they had moved. The easiest way to see how tight they should be done up is to check the to see how far in the others are done up. So a quick few turns and everything was back as it should be and  guess what?.........My sight doesn't rattle any more. 

One form Laurie

Laurie has sent in some images of his Revo' in response to my request, it looks like a sweet setup in the traditional Italian colours very nice. 

Thanks Laurie 

Obviously the Revolution

SF Carbon /Wood Limbs

Cartel longrod

Shibuya button

Spigarelli Clicker and rest

Decut sight with orange ring

Wrist sling

Arrows, both Easton ACC and ACE

All the best,

Laurie

Long rod back on for one round and a bit of string walking.

Hi,

Well I was up at the club yesterday and had about an hour to kill before assessing a couple of junior archers so I thought I would have a play and see if I could hit 100 yards. Well yes I can but only aiming at the top of the white with my sight all the way in and as low as possible. After a few ends shooting as I have been with no long rod I decided to pop it back on just to see what difference it made and I could out a reasonable group on the boss. So that is something to pursue maybe next season.

Then I had a pair or young arches to assess and they were surprisingly good, I don't really have anything to do with teaching/coaching at the moment and so had not see these two shoot before. They both had nice forms and took notice of everything, I have assessed adults before and managed to take two steps over the shooting line before being spotted and someone calling fast, but this time I have barely put a foot over when they caught me.  Needless to say they both passed so well done them and well done their teachers.

After a bit of a chat and a cup of 'something' warm, I went back out onto the line and as my long rod was still on decided to shoot an albion with it (I know a week early but just once won't hurt). Well I don't know if it was from shooting with out the long rod but I shot my best ever 80 yards with 238 for three dozen. That's 32 more than when I shot my last personal best, so the game was on. The problem was at 60 yards the whole thing just fell apart and I ended up with 232, less that I scored at 80! (I had 268 with my last PB), then at 50 I pulled it back a bit with 288 (against 278) and ended up on 758 a new PB by 6 points but It really should have been nearer 790 grrr!

Then I had a bit of fun, Dennis our club chairman and awesome bare bow archer was shooting next to me and as he knows I have an interest trying bare bow gave me a little taster. I used his Bernadini Nilo and for the first time shot a bow that felt similar to my revolution. I also had my first taste of the mystique art of string walking, which is weird but quite fun and while I tried out his toy Dennis shot a couple of ends with mine and was quite surprised at how well it shot even compared to his Bernadini. So an interesting day all round,  my bare bow weight should arrive from AS Spigarelli  any day and then we'll see what that does. I will talk a bit more about bare bow in my next post but that's about it for now.

Let's see your Revos'

Just thought it would be interesting see see what setups we have.......if you cannot post images then you can email them to me and I will post them.

Also has anyone got anything they want to discuss or questions that they would like answers to?

First class unstableised

Yes folks I did it, yesterday I managed to shoot a 706 albion without the long rod, and I still have one and a half weeks to go before I put it back on, so I might even equal my PB of 752. I am still really feeling like it is hard work for my bow arm by the end of the round which is another thing to keep an eye on when I put the long rod back on. This is also effecting my score at 50 yards, the last round I had 267 at 60 but only 256 at 50 and with the long rod on I almost always beat my 60yrd score at 50.
I started the round thinking that I would really pay attention to my release after it had been pointed out how inconsistent it had become, but as I shot things went from bad to worse. The more I tried to keep my release clean the bigger my groups got. By the last end I had given up and just shot normally and of course everything came right back. I carried on for the rest of the round and you know how it ended.

What can I say I just love shooting this bow naked....err... the bow not me....hmm