Well a lot has been happening in my archery life.

As you know my old faithful Revolution went and died on me and I now have a nice new shiny 25" bare bow Revolution riser. The second big change is that as of the end of the 2018 season I am no longer captain of our clubs Summer Albion league recurve team. So how does that effect my shooting you may be asking, well in a big way, because now that I am no longer shooting in the Albion league I can concentrate on shooting bare bow (yay!).

I have started playing about with the tune of my bow but other than taking off the sight and swapping the long rod for a weight ( I never used a clicker), the biggest change was to alter the weight a bit by altering the limb bolts. The reason for this was not to fine tune the arrows but my point on distance, basically at fifty yards with three fingers under the arrow I was having to aim six o'clock blue black to hit the gold, by easing off the limb bolts one turn I am now point on the gold at fifty yards.

Which brings me to my first point (about point on), lots of archers assume that "point on" literally means putting the point of the arrow on the gold, which is logical but causes a problem. If you do this particularly at longer distances you obscure the gold and cannot see if you are a bit left or right of where you should be. So what you actually do is bring the tip of the arrow (you actually see the top curve of the tip/shaft) up until it just covers the bottom edge of the gold, this lets you keep your focus on the gold through the shot and improves constancy.

I have played a bit with the other distances and so far (oh and I am string walking, I forgot to mention that) what I have is 80 yards basically a Mediterranean draw with two fingers under and on over the nock and point on the gold, 60 yard three fingers under and point on 12 0'clock blue black, 50 yards three fingers under and point on the gold, 40 yards crawl down the string three stitches (on my black widow tab), 30 yards crawl five stitches and twenty yards crawl five then two (the black widow is a split tab). So far so good really enjoying shooting the way I have wanted to for the last five years and I will keep you all informed on my progress.

End of the revolution viva la reveloution!

Ah! it happened my beloved revolution failed.

I was shooting a few weeks ago and at the end of the round my bow go quite loud and felt a bit weird, well that happens with a revo' if you shoot it enough the bolts that hold it together start to get a bit loose and need to be tightened up once in a while, so I just thought I should check them out before I shot again. Three days later I was back at the club and as I was setting up I noticed a sharp "catch" or "snag" on my riser that caught on my hand as I put the limbs on, when I looked closer the front element ((back of the bow)the bit that faces the target when you shoot)) had cracked on either side of the cutout above the sight window. After six years of shooting my revo' had failed.

So here we are after all this time with an actual failed revolution, and I think that after six years use there is not much to complain about. I have shot so many rounds with it that I have really lost count of the thousands of arrow it has shot and when you look at how the bow is constructed there are some real forces at work. Each time you draw the bow the front element is being stretched while the back one is being compressed, the revolution riser is a "working" part of the bow that flexes and helps to store energy, then when you release the opposite will happen as the riser flexes. When ever you apply these types of forces to metals you are going to eventually get a failure.

The result of this is that I now have a riser that has a broken back element and I am suspicious of the rest of it, is the front element ready to fail as well?

So off I went to my local stockist and ordered a replacement, but this time it is a 25"  bare bow version in grey and white. It cost just about 25% more than my first revolution six years ago, which I don't think is too bad.

They quoted me two week for delivery, which went to four then six and in the end nearly eight, but now it is here. I took it to the club did a quick setup (centre shot, tiller and brace height) and my second three arrows at 25 yards were all in the gold of a 60cm face. So I will have to do a little bit of tuning to but basically right out of the box it shoots just like my old riser.