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.