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!

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?".

Long rod back on for one round and a bit of string walking.

Hi,

Well I was up at the club yesterday and had about an hour to kill before assessing a couple of junior archers so I thought I would have a play and see if I could hit 100 yards. Well yes I can but only aiming at the top of the white with my sight all the way in and as low as possible. After a few ends shooting as I have been with no long rod I decided to pop it back on just to see what difference it made and I could out a reasonable group on the boss. So that is something to pursue maybe next season.

Then I had a pair or young arches to assess and they were surprisingly good, I don't really have anything to do with teaching/coaching at the moment and so had not see these two shoot before. They both had nice forms and took notice of everything, I have assessed adults before and managed to take two steps over the shooting line before being spotted and someone calling fast, but this time I have barely put a foot over when they caught me.  Needless to say they both passed so well done them and well done their teachers.

After a bit of a chat and a cup of 'something' warm, I went back out onto the line and as my long rod was still on decided to shoot an albion with it (I know a week early but just once won't hurt). Well I don't know if it was from shooting with out the long rod but I shot my best ever 80 yards with 238 for three dozen. That's 32 more than when I shot my last personal best, so the game was on. The problem was at 60 yards the whole thing just fell apart and I ended up with 232, less that I scored at 80! (I had 268 with my last PB), then at 50 I pulled it back a bit with 288 (against 278) and ended up on 758 a new PB by 6 points but It really should have been nearer 790 grrr!

Then I had a bit of fun, Dennis our club chairman and awesome bare bow archer was shooting next to me and as he knows I have an interest trying bare bow gave me a little taster. I used his Bernadini Nilo and for the first time shot a bow that felt similar to my revolution. I also had my first taste of the mystique art of string walking, which is weird but quite fun and while I tried out his toy Dennis shot a couple of ends with mine and was quite surprised at how well it shot even compared to his Bernadini. So an interesting day all round,  my bare bow weight should arrive from AS Spigarelli  any day and then we'll see what that does. I will talk a bit more about bare bow in my next post but that's about it for now.

Let's see your Revos'

Just thought it would be interesting see see what setups we have.......if you cannot post images then you can email them to me and I will post them.

Also has anyone got anything they want to discuss or questions that they would like answers to?