Monday 4 December 2017

Last Shoot of the Year


I went to the ILAA Windsor Great Park shoot on Sunday with my mate JT in his new(ish) Landrover. mmmm warm seats, nice.
We were lucky with the weather but I stupidly wore my Summer boots which are "water resistant" and we all know that means they are about as good as a sieve. There was a good turn out and much passing of hip flasks, great to meet up with everyone and I even managed a handful of scoring shots. I'd taken 5# off my Hickory backed Yew bow to make it more manageable, I was drawing 28" all day, but took it out to 32" for the flight shot at the end with a new arrow that I'd made the day before and it produced a creditable distance, up hill in damp conditions (about 250 yards).

One of the guys there was talking over his Adrian Hayes bow and saying that he is drawing shorter now due to injury and could do with a bit more poundage. It's an interesting looking bow, lovely and narrow with a Bamboo back Ipe belly and some other wood in the core. It's lovely and slim, as I've not worked Ipe before I offered to take an inch off each tip which should give him another 5# without over stressing the bow as it's now being drawn shorter.
I bought the bow home and took a quick bit of video to see what it's doing at present.
The right limb looks maybe a tiny hint weak and it's drawing about 50# at 28" and about 45 at 26.5"
Of course it's hard to measure that accurately due to parallax errors etc, but at least I've got the "before" shot... Just realised, I hadn't adjusted the rule to allow for the slightly thinner bow, but the odd 1/4" isn't going to make much difference.
I'll take an inch off each end, put on temporary knocks and see how it looks before re-nocking it.
Update:-
I've cut about an inch of each limb and glued on temporary nocks, the string has been threaded through my magic string adjusting ring to shorten it and I've had it on the tiller, it's about 53# at 26" now! So I'll have another look later to double check the tiller and measure limb lengths and then fit the nocks, I may bring the actual nock grooves in another 1/4" on each limb, but I don't want to over do it.


Meanwhile I'll also be working the Yew stave to see if it needs a bit more steam correction.
My replacement camera arrived this afternoon, very clean and it tests out fine. The old one had a small scratch on the lens when I got it off E-bay, this one is perfect, and now I have 3 batteries. there was no software disc with it, but of course I have the software on the PC from the camera. Result!
Dunno if I'm allowed to use it until Christmas tho' as it counts as part of my pressie from my better half.

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