Tuesday, 27 November 2018

Sometimes, it is the bow.

Over the last few weeks as the weather has turned wintry I have started shooting indoors and I have had a problem. While shooting outdoors my arrows have been tending to drift to the right (but still hitting gold when I should ), which I have put down to switching from freestyle  to barebow and the changes to my form, anchor and release that has led to.

But coming indoors I found that I could not get in the gold without aiming off and that is not right, if I didn't aim off I was shooing a nice line from 2 o'clock red to 5 o'clock red, so I have been really working on keeping my form and release tight but it didn't help and I have adjusted my centre shot and button every which way but to no avail. A couple of times arrow spine has come up in conversation, but these are the same arrows I was shooting freestyle and I had 40lb limbs then as I do now.......but when I got these arrows I was using my old Uukha EX1s and now I have the EVO2s , which have the same draw weight but defiantly "feel" faster, then I though if my arrows are tending right that would indicate a slightly weak spine. So  last weekend I started of buy letting off both my limb bots by 2 turns (which should be about 1.5-2lbs), then setup my bow and shot a Portsmouth. Well so far I had only managed a 433 and straight off I shot a 504 and then after a short break I managed a 532!

So a lesson f'or me, I usually start looking at the archer is there is a problem and then the bow. in this case I was so sure of my equipment that I did not think to question it.

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

Risers, Limbs and buttons

Hi all,

It had been an interesting few months, if a tad expensive, as I have already mentioned my Revolution decided to fail earlier in the year and as it happened I was thinking about getting a barebow version and so it just hurried me up. Then a few weeks ago one of my Uukha limbs failed, not a common thing for what are just about the most popular and talked about limbs on the planet at the moment.
I was shooting a Windsor round (nine dozen arrows in total with three dozen shot at 60,50 and 40 yards on a 122 cm face), all was going well until the last two dozen when my bow started making a bit more noise than normal, I was getting a buzzy rattle and my groups started to open up. I finished the round and scored 773 only 27 off the Essex county record (but it was just practice and so would not have counted so sort of glad I missed it) and I was a bit put out that at 50 yards I had scored  262 but at 40 yards only six more points 268, as I said my groups were not as tight as they should have been.

I had check my bow several times while shooting at 40 yards trying to find the source of the noise and reason for my scores being low but it was not until I was about to unstring my bow that I noticed on either side right near the tip of my lower limb small cracks about 10 mm running along the limb.
They are four years old and I have shot them quite a lot, but I did not think they should start to come apart. I contacted Uukha and they asked me to go through the shop I got them from so I did, so far all Uukha have said is, that due to the high quality of their product and low failure rate the most likely reason is that the limb has been damaged. Well I do not know of any time that they have had any kind of trauma that could cause this and as they failed mid-way through a round I find it unlikely but we shall see.

The upshot of it is that I bought a shiny new pair of Uukha EX1 Evo2 limbs and I hate to say it because I loved shooting the old EX1s, I think they have improved on perfection.

So new riser, new limbs, I fitted a new Spigarelli secure button and new limbs meant new strings, so the only part of my bow that is the same as this time last year is the arrow rest which is new, but as the Revo' comes with a ZT rest as standard exactly the same as my old one. But then I could say I am still shooting a Spigarelli Revolution with Uukha EX1 limbs and a ZT rest just with a new button, a bit like Triggers Broom!