Fast Flight overlays?

[Kegan]

A friend of mine has an older bow I helped him make, and needs a new string. He's got a roll of Fast Flight he was going to use on his old recurve. He asked what sort of overlays he should put on the limb tips- but I had no idea. All I could tell hi was to make sure it was smooth.

What sort of overlays hold up to Fast Flight strings?

[Hillbilly]

Horn or antler would be good.

[Jesse]

What Hillbilly said. Ive also been adding  extra strands of B50 just in the loops to pad the wood from abrasion.  I use 4 strands each loop. Still comes out plenty thin.

[Kegan]

Bone wouldn't work, would it?

[Hillbilly]

I don't see why not. It's probably not as hard as antler or horn, but should hold up fine. I've seen people shoot FF strings with wooden overlays.

[Kegan]

Really? He's got a buch of deer leg bones around.

[Jesse]

I use wood overlays and have not had an issue yet but the ff strings have not been on the bows for multiple years to see what it will do. I have heard it is very abrasive and will eventually cut the tips if the loops are not padded or you dont use horn or something.

[Kegan]

I use wood overlays and have not had an issue yet but the ff strings have not been on the bows for multiple years to see what it will do. I have heard it is very abrasive and will eventually cut the tips if the loops are not padded or you dont use horn or something.

What sort of wood do you use?

[Jesse]

ipe, ebony

[mullet]

 All those Brazilean and African, oily, hardwoods work. And deer leg bone is very tough. Kegan I'll send you some tip overlay stuff that will work when I send the stave.

[Kegan]

Thank you Eddie! Might have to get a roll of FF for myself if that's the case .

[sailordad]

i would think leopard and zebra wood would also hold up to ff strings.
these are some incredibly hard woods.

[orcbow]

I'm no expert here...but don't those overlays just give you extra time to notice if the string is cutting through? Seems like anything that was dense and could be glued would do that.

[DCM]

I've used FF on woods as soft as yew and hackberry.  I padded the loops up on the yew to 18, but 14 is my normal.  Have never had a problem.  It's important to make the string grooves a nice teardrop shape to spread the load over more surface area.  And it needs to match the string angles perfectly too, so it's not bent around, rather hanging straight from the back of the bow.  Have had trouble with wood grain, you need to orient properly or the string may split the wood.  Had that happen once, with mesquite and I did read the grain right, it was burl.  Only trouble I've ever had, including using elm overlay on a fiarly high performance (after I re-tillered it) Lofton glass longbow, ~60# @ 30" using 14 strand FF no padded loops.

I honestly don't get the precautionary hype about FF, other than for older pre-80s type glass bows.  But when you look at the string grooves on those old bows, they are really just notches cut into the glass lams with no re-enforcement or teardrop shape whatsoever.  Like duh.

[Badger]

     If I pad the loops with strands of linen I might use wood overlays, otherwise nothing but antler, I have destroyed some real nice bows when fastflight cut the overlay off, antler never seems to fail this way. Steve