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.

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......

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

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?

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

Bad Habits

Gosh really......not me....surely not!

Oh yes!

Oh no!

Well what do you know?
There I was on Wednesday afternoon happily plonking arrows into the boss at 80 yards still not using a long rod and happy to be scoring 70/dozen. When Dennis, shooting on the next boss (who really does know what he is talking about) said after one shot, "I didn't see where that landed but it should have missed!". When I asked why, he came over and said "shall I show you?", he then waited for me to draw up and then held his lite cigarette about an inch from the back of my hand holding the string, the message was clear, if that hand comes away from your face it's gonna get burned!
He did not hold his hand there while I shot but after I released he said, " Wow that was perfect, your hand came straight back under your ear without me asking, I have never seen someone go from such a dead release to that in one shot before."
 Well to me the that pretty much said it all, I do know how to shoot properly and it may sound big headed but my form is pretty near as good as it can be, but I can still forget it all and shoot like a noob in about 30 seconds flat. The end result of Dennis pointing out my transgression was an intimidate increase of about 5 points per dozen, enough said.  

Watch your form all the time and when you think that you have it all sorted and it is easy watch it even closer because that is when you will start to let things go.

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.

An unstable day.........

Well I was thinking to myself that as I had shot quite well without a long rod last week, I went to the club yesterday  with the intention of shooting an albion with no stabalisation.
So off I went to the club and got setup and things started pretty well at 80 yards I scored 202 with three dozen arrows which is not too bad with my best end pictured below.

(Oh and I think I had forgotten just how nice my Revo' feels when it is bare.....)

At 60 yards I scored 244 and at 50 yards 250, for a total of 696 (only 4 points off a first class score). The only distance I was a bit disappointed with was the 50 yards , as I know I can shoot close to 280 even without a long rod at that distance. 

The only thing that stands out is that by the time I got down to 50 yards my bow arm was really starting to feel tired. Now this is not a problem I normally have shooing even long rounds, so all I can think is that I was  feeling the extra work I was having to do to keep the bow still with no long rod. If that is the case then one of my reasons for shooting with no stabs' (to strengthen the muscles that give fine control) would seem to be working.

My theory is that although it is fairly easy to build strength into the  big muscle groups that do all the hard work such as lifting the bow and drawing the string, it is much harder to build strength into the smaller muscle groups that control the fine movements. But if you take yours stabs' off and shoot with a sighted bare bow you will have to use these very muscles to hold the bow steady, then when you put your stabs back on you should notice a difference.....in theory. 

The other interesting thing was I scored 10 golds in total at 80 yards compared with 9 when I shot a PB on Sunday in the league match. Now this is a one off so far but I am going to shoot for the next three weeks with no stabs and see how my scores go and then put my long rod back on and see how it effects things. 

  

Unstable

Hi all, I got to the club yesterday in the end (or rather the beginning) nice and early to get in a last practice round before our next league match, against West Essex on Sunday. It did not go well, so not well that after the first two ends at eighty yards I decided that I was not going to get any kind of reasonable score so I might as well just enjoy myself. Off came my long rod and I shot with just the sight on the bow. Now the first thing lots of people will tell you is that without the long rod your gonna get hit by your bow as after the shot it will rotate backwards instead of forwards as modern bows are made to be shot with a long rod on them (if I was cynical I would say that is an excuse for making a badly balanced bow in the first place). But they will then be proved wrong as even with just a sight on it the Revo' (well mine anyway) stays vertical after you release, I also find that my sight marks are much better without the long rod pulling the bow down. To cut a long  story short I ended up shooting 673 for an albion, which I didn't think was too bad with no stabilization (well not after the first dozen which I only scored 53 with) against a personal best of 748.

Once again the thing that really hit me was just how much I like shooting my bow without the long rod on it, I think next year I am going to have a serious look  at doing some bare bow work.

Ouch II

OK so i didn't shoot for seven weeks while on some major anti-inflammatory pills and then came the weekend of the 11th May and the first of this years Summer League matches what to do?

Well the Friday before I had an appointment to see the Doc' and see where to go from there, my elbow felt about 85% back to normal so it was decided that an injection into the joint, which would have made it effectively unusable for two to three days was not warranted. I asked what the are implications for me shooting without it fully healed and his reply was.
 "Well it's going to aggravate it again and most likely put you back a bit on complete recovery, but having said that if it was me a few years ago and I had an important rugby match then I know I would have played. So there you are"

Well of course I shot and in the words of my thirteen year old son I shot  "Meh!", 634 is hardly something to shout about. The effect on my elbow was OUCH!, by the end of the round I was really struggling to hold at full draw and not just let go, but it did seems to ease off quite quickly even without taking anything. Shooting again three days later felt pretty good up to the last one and a half dozen, with a score of 666. I then followed that four days later with a 734 and then three days after that with a 748, so that's two first class scores for this season and I really feel that there is better to come.

This was my first end and while not the highest scoring end it was my best group I had at 80 yrds.

 Over these last two weeks what I have noticed is that my elbow seems to be standing up better each time I shoot and it is taking less time to recover after each session, so it seems that Laurie's advise was the best.

Look what I found

Just a quick one saw this today on ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPIGARELLI-REVOLUTION-RISER-/231178580163

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".