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.

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!

So what is this bare bow thing all about?

Hi all

So as it says "What is bare bow thing all about?"

Well for those of you who are not aware it is shooting a bow with little or no aids on it, by aids I am referring to anything that helps the archer have a consistent and stable shot cycle, including stabilisers (long/short rods),weights, clickers, arrow rests, sights and plunger/buttons, yes even the rest and plunger are aids as they assist in a clean launch of the arrow from the bow helping to avoid the shaft contacting the riser.

But why would you give up all these wonderful little gadgets that help you put all your arrows in the ten ring I hear you ask?

The answer will vary from one archery to another, for me it is the absences of all those aids that makes bare bow attractive, because then it is all down to me to make the shot. The more aids on a bow the more I feel like I am operating a machine. I don't mean to take anything away from freestyle archers, even with all aids on a bow that you can use the shot still comes down to you and you are the only variable, you may have a bow that is rock steady with a one hundred percent consistent draw length, but you can still have a bad release, snatch the bow or drop your bow arm and the more stable and consistent your equipment the more those little mistakes hurt your score. So in part I think it is the fact that bare bow is a bit more forgiving and as I shoot primarily for relaxation that is a big plus.

I have been shooting freestyle for the last six years and wanting more than anything to shoot bare bow, the reason I have not is that just as I was about to put away my sight I was asked to be the caption of our clubs Summer Albion League team and I said yes. I then had to concentrate on shooting freestyle as my scores were needed for the team as we were struggling to put a team together for each match, now were have an excess of people wanting to shoot on the team (and most of them can out shoot me by a margin), last season we won our division and were promoted and in our first season the B division we came second. So I am not really needed to shoot on the team (I didn't make the cut for out last match) and we have a new captain taking over the team for next season (good luck Sharon). So now at last I am hanging up my sight.

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.

So bad at keeping this going .........

HI all

Just a quick update, still shooting but not as often as I should be and my scores are showing it, on a lighter note so far this season our Summer League team has won all our matches and with one to go we look pretty good to.......no I won't say it and tempt fate but watch this space.

I seem to have covered pretty much everything I can think of in this blog so please do feel free to make comments or if there is some aspect of archery (shooting tuning or anything else) that you want to know more about do let me know and I will try to answer or find out the answer.

Happy shooting guys

A bit of a long one but it might contain something useful....or maybe not who knows.....does anyone even take any notice anyway............

I posted this to an archery forum and then thought it might be good on here as well.



Ok first off I am not a coach and to be honest I really don't enjoy coaching, mainly because it really hacks me off when someone asks the way to somewhere and when you tell them where it is they immediately go in the opposite direction. So.....


I had a spare hour or so the other evening and thought I would pop over to the club (because at 7pm on a Wednesday nobody will be there) and spend a quiet hour just working on my release (which to be honest has got a bit raggedy over the winter). When I walked in it was right into the middle of two members (no that is not a euphemism) discussing whether a bow was twisted/out of alignment or not. Basically the owner of the bow was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his groups in the middle of the target as they kept drifting further and further to the right, this had been ongoing over the last year or so and his sight pin was soon going to disappear if he moved it any further to the right. As I walked in he asked me if I knew how to tell if a bow was twisted, I said that it was more likely a limb alignment issue and indeed that was the case which was easily sorted.


But as he had been shooting the bow for two years and the adjustment screws were snug with no play I told him that he if he was shooting OK with the bow a year ago then that was not the problem. "Ah! it's my sight then, look how far you guy have your sight pin from the riser mine is much closer, do you think it need changing for a better one?", I told him to stop worrying about his bow and look at his form and release, "but that can't be the problem, I practise four time a week shooting about a hundred arrows each time" he said. Now we get to the problem he does indeed shoot lots and often, but he NEVER shoots a round or even scores an end so has no way to quantify how well he is shooting, we have all I am sure shot a round at at the end found that we have score much higher or lower than we expected and he was pretty much estimating over a years shooting!


I then watched him shoot an end, his bow arm was good and to be honest he has a pretty good form, but his release was not good and his arrows were 15 to 20 cm off to the right of a 60cm face at 25m, I asked him to do me a favour and just work on one thing. When he released could he make sure that his hand touched his ear, just touched it nothing more definite than that, his next three arrows were a group on the right hand edge of the face. "OK now I just need to move my sight", I told him not to but to just keep shooting slow and steady making sure that hand touched that ear, about four ends later he was putting three arrow in a fist sized group at nine o'clock red/blue. His main problem was that he had no reference for his follow through so as his hand came off the string it was moving away from his face but not always to the same degree.


By this time I had to go (having shot no arrows), see told you I don't like coaching.


I was told by my first coach that the unless you move something on your bow the only thing that will change is you and I have always looked at myself first when things start to slip, ninety percent of the time the solution is to slow down and go right back to how you were taught to stand, look, draw and release the bow. I see so many archers chasing their arrows around a face, shooting, spotting, adjusting, shooting, spotting, cursing, adjusting, shooting....you get the idea. If they shot three arrows before spotting then they might find that they have a group that is high, low, left or right of the gold and then they can adjust, but if they just have three arrows spread around the face no amount of adjustment will help because they don't know which, if any was shot well.


You cannot adjust you sight without a group, if you have not adjusted your bow, then any change in your shooting is almost definitely you and quality of practice is far more imprint than quantity. Shooing a hundred arrows badly will only increase you stamina and ability to shoot badly, shooting ten arrows well will improve your shooting.


I hope that within these ramblings there is something of use to someone, but if not at least I have let off a bit............