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.

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.

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

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. 

Grip results,

On Saturday evening I sat down and took the grip off my Riser to see how the Sugru had set and if the fix worked and I must say I was pretty impressed with the results.

The grip came off nicely thanks to the cling film and that peeled easily off the Sugru, leaving a perfect impression of the underside of the grip. I refitted the grip and it felt nice and firm with possibly just a little bit of give but none of the movement it had before. The Sugru sets just like a layer of rubber and should give a nice seating for the grip.

I got up to the club yesterday (Sunday) and shot a Portsmouth and everything felt really nice with the grip no longer rocking and I managed a respectable (for me) 516. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the extra weight from the new limbs so soon it will be time to start winding them up a bit ...MORE POWER!!! (If you used to watch Home Improvements you'll get it).   

Feed back

OK guys been doing this blog for a while now and I know people out there are reading it but I am not getting much feed back. So either I am covering everything and getting it all right first time or I am really failing. I will publish all comments as long as they are suitable for my son to read and not blatant commercial adverts. So come on lets have some input, even if it just to say "your blog stinks I hate it". 

Brace Height?

Here's a little thought does brace height really effect  how the bow shoots, or is it more a case of a noisy bow distracts you from your shot and the anticipation of the noise is enough to make you tense up?

 I don't know the answer all I do know is I like my bow to be as quiet as possible and this seems to help with my groups. Changing the brace  height will only alter the tension on the string at rest not at full draw, so it can be compared to tuning a guitar string by increasing or decreasing the tension on it and therefore it's 'tune'. I find that is the brace height is too low I get a 'buzzing' sound from the bow, which I think is the top and bottom of the string vibrating against the limbs, if the brace height is too high the bow seems to make more of a 'thunk' or 'slap' and this I think is down to the tension on the string being so high that the limbs are almost pulled to a stop. At the 'best' brace height for me (about 9.25 inches) the bow 'thrums' and just feels nice to shoot.

The other problem I have is how people say brace height effects groups, other than what I have said about being distracted by a noisy bow I cannot see the vibration of the string effecting the arrow. After release you get the power stroke as the string pushes the arrow forward this whole movement from the release point until the string reaches it brace height again is part of one oscillation (so at this point the only vibration will from a poor release see a little release in the snow), the string will continue past the it's brace height and as it does will start to slow down at which point the arrow will leave the string and from watching high speed videos of releases it would seem that the arrow leaves the bow before the string has started it's return journey, so again I wonder if the only effect the brace height has on the shot is the anticipation of the noise. Of course changing the brace height will slightly alter the nocking height and this will have a small effect on the arrows flight.    

Just a thought

Just a little thought I found that the arrow rest was hitting the riser and damaging the finish so I just put a small piece of electrical tape on the riser where the rest hits.

What are we going to do now?

So now I had my dream riser it was time to set it up and get it tuned. At home I took some time and made sure the centre shot was right and set a knocking height about 5mm above the rest and set the rest so that my nice new Easton Lightspeeds sat nicely with the button touching the centre of the shaft. So the first thing I did was to get one of the other members down at my club to check out that I had set up the bow correctly and had not done anything silly. Then I got all set up and put a boss out at 10m and then got to shoot my first arrow, I was rewarded with a nice thrumm-thunk and wow that was so cool I was grinning like a village idiot, it made my winstar feel like a bucking bronco by comparison. Once I had got over the initial excitement it was time to look at what it was doing and do some fine tuning. The big issue was my groups had gotten much too big in fact they were only groups in the widest sence and I mean widest. After a bit of testing it turned out that the lightspeeds were quite a bit too stiff and I changed to a set of Sky Art Sapphires with a weaker spine and that was that sorted. The only other inital problem I had was an issue with clearance, with the fletchings catching on the top of the handel and the bottom of the sight window. I had thought that the Sky Arts being thinner than the Lightspeeds would solve the problem but they did not and I almost resorted to bending up the arrow rest the increase clearance (NEVER DO THAT!), it was then that I found out you can loosen off the two screws that hold the rest in position get about 5mm of vertical movment, once again job done.

 At this point I will point out the biggest weakness of the Spigarelli......the manual, it was I am sure originally written in Italian and then I think an early 90s translation  program was let loose on it, it really is abysmal and if  you are novice you really do not stand a chance . So that was that one Spigarelli Revolution all set up and ready to shoot.

If you are reading this blog and have any questions or hints and tips about the Revolution or archery in general please do post them in the comments and I will include them in the blog.

Tony G