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............

New year new things and resolutions.........

Hi all,

Well it has been a busy time in the G house hold over the last few months:

                                                                   New Drive.

New car to go on the new drive

A new provisional  driving licence and driving lessons to go with the new car....my first one at 48 years old.

New bathroom being completed as I type (only 2 more days to go).

G Junior has been doing his mocks at school and doing very well,

Mrs G has enjoyed her first term working as a newly qualified teacher,

and I really must try to work on my archery and loose a few pounds as well.

So there you are a good start to 2016 (apart from the bank account taking a hammering), and lots to look forwards to. As for resolutions, well they are the same as always, I must take my archery more seriously, I must really post to my blog more often and I really, really have to get rid of all this potential muscle around my middle. 

Will I keep any or all of them?

Well you will just have to keep checking back to see won't you. 

I hope you all had a great Christmas and New year and that 2016 will be good for you and yours.

Tony G. 

Going for a ramble.....verbally

Hi all, so been a few weeks since I posted anything on here and I just thought I would have a little ramble.
So good news, yesterday was our club championships and I managed to lift the freestyle re-curve cup, the only fly in the ointment was that the four people that I would really have like to beat to take the cup did not shoot, but hay ho I am the CHAMPION!  :)

while we were shooting I encountered a mystery to rival Loch Ness.
There was an archer who was bemoaning the fact that their sight marks were not working and that they were fine just a few days ago so something must be wrong. I try to say to him that if the bow had not been altered and the weather was not a big factor ( it was  a lovely  day with just a gentle breeze), then the biggest variable was the big fleshy bit hanging on the end of the bow. He was insistent that he was doing exactly the same as he always did and would not contemplate that it could be him, but he also insisted that he had not altered his bow in any way. So what could have caused this apparent loss of performance?

Well I think we all know the answer, it was those little green me...........

No it was the archer of course it was, but why did he not realise it?

Well I think it was that although we all notice things that make a big difference to our shooting, like a pull or a sprain that we can feel, we don't always notice the small things that can effect our shooting. We are not static our bodies are constantly changing, when things are not working as they should your first port of call should be you. Stop check that your sight mark is right and everything is tight, think about what you are doing, go through your shot cycle in your head, for me this is :

Nock arrow.

Relax shoulders and look straight ahead (for me that is at the archer to my right as I am right handed).

Turn head to look at target and focus on the gold.

Lift bow to put the pin on the gold keeping the shoulder down and the arm relaxed.

Open the bow hand as I start to draw slowly towards my anchor, loading the weight onto my back muscles.

As I reach my anchor my draw slows right down to a crawl but DOES NOT STOP ( this way lies creeping). Remember I do not use a clicker .

Let the pin settle on the gold (let it float a little).

Roll the draw arm shoulder back and relax the fingers just a little bit so they are pulled off the string and the hand comes back to brush my ear lobe (just cos I like it!).

Hold! don't move until you hear the arrow land.

 Then take your next arrow from the quiver.

 This might seem a very long winded cycle but by focusing on the minute you can exclude anything that is distracting. The whole of the above only takes me about ten seconds to run through in my head, about half the time it takes me to actually shoot an arrow. About ninety five percent of the time my second arrow goes right where it should.

Had my head turned....

Just a quick one here I have been looking at getting Bare Bow Revolution and had pretty much decided that I would ask the missus if Santa could bring me one....and then.....one of the members at the club mentioned that he may be selling his six month old Bernardini ...............and I sort of want it. Have to see how much he wants for it he has decided that he does not get on with the 25" riser and is going to get a 23" instead.

Watch this space for more info......

Feed Back

OK so I know there are quite a few people visiting this blog, but I don't know if they find it useful or if there is anything that they would like to know that is not on here so......

GIVE ME SOME FEED BACK...

IF you have a question ask it, if you have a Revo' let's see it and if you think I am posting a load of tosh then tell me.

Something has to give....

Hi all,

Here we are again at the beginning of another season and I have come to the sad conclusion that I am going to have to stop shooting bare bow for as long as I am captaining our summer league team. I just cannot shoot two different styles well and as I have made a commitment to the league team that will have to take precedence over my bare bow aspirations.  

 I know there are lots of people who shoot more than one style but how many of them can honestly say they are shooting both as well as the could, I was finding myself using the corner of my mouth, where I anchor for bare bow when I was shooting target when I should be under my jaw. I am going to shoot bare bow but it is going to have to wait until I can either pass on the summer league hat or until the team is at a point where my score is not so important, so I have  anew goal....get the summer league team up to scratch.

We have a problem with target archery at Noak Hill that I think I have mentioned before, unfortunatly it is also one of our greatest assets, we have our own record status ground that we can use from an hour after dawn till and hour before dusk 365 days of the year. "Big problem!" I hear you all shout, we should try only having a field for one or two day a week, when everyone wants to shoot at the same time and there is our catch 22. Because we can use the club at any time people are not tied shooting at set times and so they come whenever the can/want to. I see other clubs in the area with a busy shooting line with 20 or 30 people on a Sunday morning and then I look at us with  five or six archers on the line, the difference is that there will be the same number almost everyday of the week and field big enough for two independent shooing areas with a safety line in the middle we don't all have to shoot at the same time, which again splits us up. This is not a huge problem for established members as they tend to come over in the same group on the same day. For beginners it can be more of a problem as once they have finished their course passed their assessment and paid their membership they are left to their own devises, don't get me wrong we have lots of people ho are more than willing to give help and advice. But with on set shooting schedule they do tend to end up just shooting at a boss with no real aim other than shooting.

So we are going to try and get back to a regular Sunday shoot, using rounds that have several options for distance we will be able to accommodate anyone who wants to shoot and  start giving some direction to their shooting. The initial aim will be for archers to work up through their classifications and we will also have the odd week when we do not shoot a round but just spend the time working on good shooting maybe by pairing up a novice/improving archer with a more experience archer. I am also playing about with the idea of a sort of informal mentor type set up where each new member will have a go to person who will help them with their progression, this will I hope stop the old problem of being told six different thing by six different people. It will also mean that if you see a novice doing something not quite right you can tell their mentor and then they can deal with it with them.

So that is where I am going this season hopfuly I will be able to report back on good progress as we go forwards, but time will tell.

 

Stuff

Sorry for the lack of posts I just have some stuff going on (just normal stuff not any kind of exciting or scandalous type stuff) and archery is kinda taking a back seat, but the summer league is coming up so hopefully that will get me back in the game. (It better I am our clubs team captain).

Keep the comments coming and if you have any suggestion for thing you would like to see let me know. 

Aiming without aiming?

Ok so I went to the club on Sunday and tried out my old Winstar with the Tomcat limbs on it and it was fun.

The idea of instinctive shooting appeals to me and it is as far away from sighted target as you can get, with string/face walking and gaping you are still using a distance reference and adjusting to compensate for it. With instinctive the idea is to shoot at the target almost the same way you would throw a stone, with no conscious thought about adjusting for distance. This is not something that happens overnight, it is a case of shooting lots of arrows at a target and your body/brain should gradually learn where to aim.
 I recently had a chance to see some instinctive shooting at the club, our field archers asked if there is a way to have a classification system as there is in target so that they can gauge their progress. The solution that was put forwards is a set field course that will challenge even the most experienced archers and that we can setup again exactly the same any time we want to. A lot of thought went into how high a score would be needed for each classification and we needed as many archers shooing as many styles as possible to shoot the course to see if these were right. One the day I was shooing with my targeted recurve and just felt so out of my depth, each target is set at a different distance and height often partially obscured by leaves or long grass, all making it very hard to judge the distance. On most of the targets I was withing ten meters with my first guess and when my first arrow was high or low my second shot normally hit (usually not in the kill zone), but by the end of the round I was really feeling uncomfortable shooting  not knowing the distance. The three people I was shooting with were all shooting instinctive and all did much better than me.

Even though we have quite a few barebow archers at the club, I decided to just setup and see how I got on. So I set up a boss on the ten yard line over on the practice side of the field and had a go, just drew up focused on the gold and released....straight over the top of the boss, tired it again with the same results. OK so it looks like I need to aim a bit, or as it turns out find a sort of neutral position to start from. Once I worked that out I started putting nice groups of six arrows on the boss, well it was only ten yards and soon they were getting to close real arrow bashing stuff. So I pushed the boss out to twenty and then thirty yards, now things started to get a bit more interesting.

The first thing I noticed at the longer distance was that I kept looking for a sight or at least a reference point on my bow and had to really work  at just looking at the boss, the second was that as I relaxed and stopped looking for a reference my arrows started to group up again but as soon as I start to 'try' harder things went awry including arrows flying over the boss again. By the end of my little session my group was  moving in towards the gold almost of it's own accord. So not a bad start going to keep at it and see how I get on.

Back again

Hi all,

Sorry that I have not been very active over the last few months, had a few things going on and have been a bit huffy about some archery related stuff (not the shooting side of things).

So back to the blog. I have decided that it is time to actually give barebow a proper try so I was looking at risers. I could us my existing revo' but as it is the target version it has all the bits drilled out and is not legal for barebow, I a also going to use some thicker arrows and that is going to change the centre shot and as the bow is shooting so nicely I don't want to play with it. So what to do?

Well I could buy a barebow revo (yes yes do it do it!) which I would really like but I can't really spend much at the moment as my wife has given up work for a year to do her PGCE teacher training. So I have been looking at second hand stuff then I was sorting my office at home and came across my old KAP Winstar II riser and a pair of Kaya Tomcat carbon limbs (sounds like a starter kit to me), so I think I am going to get to the club on Sunday and see how they shoot together and go from there. The Tomcats are 34lb (6lb less than my EX-1s) so should be a bit easier to get used to a different anchor point.

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