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.

First class unstableised

Yes folks I did it, yesterday I managed to shoot a 706 albion without the long rod, and I still have one and a half weeks to go before I put it back on, so I might even equal my PB of 752. I am still really feeling like it is hard work for my bow arm by the end of the round which is another thing to keep an eye on when I put the long rod back on. This is also effecting my score at 50 yards, the last round I had 267 at 60 but only 256 at 50 and with the long rod on I almost always beat my 60yrd score at 50.
I started the round thinking that I would really pay attention to my release after it had been pointed out how inconsistent it had become, but as I shot things went from bad to worse. The more I tried to keep my release clean the bigger my groups got. By the last end I had given up and just shot normally and of course everything came right back. I carried on for the rest of the round and you know how it ended.

What can I say I just love shooting this bow naked....err... the bow not me....hmm

A better perspective.

Just a quick one today thinking about Mike's bow being a bit buzzy and not a quiet as he expected it to be.

While I was shooting on Sunday one of our newer members commented on my "Professional" bow, I explained about the reasons for the strange design of the Revolution and asked if he would like to try a few shots with it. He is a beginner who started shooting in October last year and his current bow is an SF with 24# limbs, he had also spent the last hour consistently shooting four and five gold ends at fifty and sixty yards.
So after I had finished shooting my round I pulled the boss into thirty yards and let him loose, the two things I noticed were that he shot six arrows into a group about six inches across (you know how sometimes you just hate people), the second was that my bow sounded much quieter than when I am shooting it. Just being four feet away made such a difference.

I got them and they are..................

OK so Christmas has been and gone and  have my nice new shiny Uuhka EX-1s. With the filthy weather and the need to be sociable over the festive season, it was not until the 31st of December that I managed to get up to the club and have a proper got with them. I did have a rather stupid go in the back garden on Christmas day (yes I know I always so don't do it unless you have a proper safe area to shoot), I just wanted to try them so shot two arrows into the lawn, or that's what I meant to do (you know it's not going to go well don't you), the first one was fine and felt nice the second one went a bit further up the garden and embedded itself in one of the sleepers we have setup in front of the throwing board (my son has no interest in archery but instead throws knives and now axes) it is only about twenty feet away and you heard the shaft fracture as it hit, when I tried  to pull it the pile and about one and a half inches of shaft stayed in the sleeper and the rest came away.
Anyway I did get to the club, had my first go in our new indoor range and shot my first indoor round. I had done a bit of setting up before hand and as I have gone up fair bit in weight from my 34lb Tomcats to the 40lb EX-1s I moved the limb bolts from all the way in to all the way out ( I am planning on getting the at least halfway back in by the time the summer season starts......where are those bands), so at 28" I would in theory be going from about 36lb to 38lb. Spigarelli recommend an 8-9" brace height and Uuhka say about 9" on a 68" bow for the EX-1s, when I first strung it up it was at 8.75" so I started there. The limbs are a little bit tight on the limb bolts so it is hard to settle them before you shoot and my first shot had a nice loud crack to it as did my second, third and forth, hmm that string is slapping on those limbs (they really do have an impressive recurve on them), time to look at that brace height. I took it up to 8 and seven eighths and it was a bit better but still there so up it went a bit more and a bit more until it hit a sweet spot at 9 1/8".

  On to shooting and how they feel, well my first impression once the brace height was sorted is that they feel quite a bit heavier than the Tomcats, after just two and a half dozen arrows I felt just about done, they also feel faster than the Tomcats with more of a snap to the shot. But of course all of this is very subjective, I don't normally analyze how my bow feels I just shoot it so when I am looking for a difference I'm going to find one even if it is not there and until I weight the bow and maybe see if I can borrow a chrono I can't really confirm anything. One thing I can say is that they feel very smooth through the draw and seem very stable to shoot even if it did seem harder to hold at full draw while settling on the gold.  I shot a Bray, my first indoor round and my first round with my new limbs, I scored 205, no records there but no too bad as that included working out a sight mark and then 2 days later shot a 220 so heading in the right direction.

  One thing I have noticed on the limbs is cracking on the decals on the back of them obviously due to the outside edge stretching as they bow is drawn and something I have seen mention by others. I did try a few shots outside from 30yrds out to 80yrds and even wound in there is a big improvement in sight marks, they went up when I changed from Skyart Sapphires to my ACGs but are now better then they were wih the Skyarts, whether I can hit 100yrds will have to wait until I work up to getting them wound back in and we have some better weather.

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.    

Shooting the revolution

Not having spent much time shooting other bows I cannot make any real comparisons,  but I can tell you what it is like to shoot the revolution. The first thing you notice is how quiet the bow is when tuned, I have found that quite a high brace height gives the best result with the Kaya Tomcat Carbon limbs I usually have it set at between 9" and 9.125" and would be interested in hearing what bracing height  other people use.The revolution's internal damping means that it shoots very smoothly even with no extra damping and very little vibration reaches the bow hand. This where it shows it's bare bow credentials and I can imagine lots of archers would be pleasently suprised if they were to try it out. I  find that I prefer the feel of the bow without a long rod and that out to 40m I can shoot almost as well without one as with. It is also, as one of the members at Noak Hill observed 'ridiculosly well balanced' with no extras fitted. But there is a trade off between accuracy/consistency and 'feel' at longer distances, yes the bow feels much better without the long rod but the groups are much tighter with one at anything past 40m. I also feel that shooting with out any stabilisation will be increasing my basic stability, which in the long run will lead to a more stable form.